The City, Urbanisation and Modernity in China

Dr Ian MorleyChinese University of Hong Kong

Introduction

• Urbanisation has historically shown itself to be an effect and a cause of broad societal changes instigated by industrialisation

• Alliance between urban and industrial growth means they act as age markers

• Culturally defining processes, move from the traditional to the modern

• Analysis of the urban perspective of China’s contemporary development

• Alteration of the urban landscape in terms of scale, density and complexity

Background (i)• Past three decades the adoption of a new econ

omic paradigm• Restructuring from a Soviet style command eco

nomy to a market economy ‘with Chinese characteristics’

• Reorganising of good and services through local, regional, national and international markets

• Introduction of land and housing reforms• Momentum for urban growth enlarged, morphol

ogy and appearance of cities altered• Changes relating to the complexity, demograph

y and spatial extent of urban communities

Background (ii)• Chinese Statistical Yearbook for Cities (1985 and

2005)• Urban sprawl• Growing verticality• Internationalisation of cities (self-perception)• Contrasting meaning of contemporary cities with

those of previous times• Urban transformation occurring at the detriment

of the built environment, cultural identity, heritage

• Process of replacement and the building of a ‘new city’ with divergent urban spatial patterns, new urban design values, a new urban vision exercised through the implementation of high-tech industrial zones, skyscrapers, luxury housing enclaves

Cities, Opening-up• Profundity of empiricism in China• Experience of grave social problems, ‘s

truggles of the peasantry’• Regulation of urban growth as pragmati

c exercises in population control given experiences, predicaments and lessons from China’s lengthy past

• Iron collar attitude to urbanisation assisted by attitudes of the Elites

• December 1978 – ‘Four Modernisations’

Urban Motors• Largest Chinese cities as growth centre

s, with externalities and spill-over effects• Guangdong – ‘Industrial Satellite Towns’• Cities at the top of the national urban hie

rarchy as motors for regional progress• Sites to actualise the replacement of arc

haic environments and problems through the construction of new surroundings of vastly different imagery and meanings

• Large cities as the beds of razing ‘Old China’ and its associated problems

Out with the Old, In with the New

• Cities as subject to a plethora of influences that affects their nature, size and urban form

• Cities as sites of political and economic expression, these being markers of a nation’s cultural position at a given point in time

• Exogenous economic factors has led to new insights about cities, economic advancements, new forms of spatial segregation

• Displacement from demolition, economic control of urban space

• Commoditisation of space and urban culture

Cultural Urban Development

• Been considered essential by some local Elites to elevate the nature of the urban community

• Guangzhou – ‘uplifted’ by the policies of public authorities since the 1990s, in so doing presenting a new city image

• CITIC Plaza• Guangzhou Opera House• Boosting of a city’s cultural ambiance and

status• Filling a perceived void so that the city can

define itself as a modern, international settlement

• Amount of culture evident visibly indicates its modernity and the citizens’ affluence

International Icons and Reflections

• Age-old images associated with many Chinese cities

• Post-1980s altering of city images to an economically defined vision of skyscrapers and cultural facilities

• ‘One World, One Dream’ - Beijing• Construction of a new CBD – Shanghai• Vision of corporate and cultural might

comparable to ‘Asia’s World City’, Hong Kong

Becoming Hong Kong• Process of taking on the visual and economic tr

aits of Hong Kong• Shenzhen, arguably the most modern and dyn

amic of all cities in China• Rapid urban and economic expansion as it bec

ame China’s gateway to the modern world• Ideal location, self-proclaimed ‘City of Sunshine

and Modernity’, to witness, observe and gauge the meaning of the modern, international city in China

• Idealised environment for China’s urban transformation and national development

• Environment explicitely speaking the values of China’s modernisation

Actors, Standards, Critiques

• Attention given to contemporary urban meanings that have emerged in China

• Focus given to anthropological matters

• Society engages in social and economic development new spatial forms are generated

• New spatial expressions

• The ‘new city’ is especially meaningful for the Elites

• Differentiation of the contemporary city, and so open-era, from environments and problems of past times

• Impression that modernity is architecturally expressible

• The value of the modern settlement is expressed through tokens by which it may be ranked

• Certain building types, road infrastructures, architectural forms, etc., are the means by which conceptual values/ranks are brought into being

• Graeber – ‘medias of value’• City as a symbol and setting of modern cultur

al values, a setting where modern life and social progress can be qualitatively defined

• Basis upon which critiques are founded

Medias of Value• Materially realised nature of urban China has l

ed to visual and morphological alterations• The changes, such as increased vertical scale

s, maybe said to be ‘medias of value’, i.e. means to bring abstract values into being

• Use of non-traditional names, e.g. ‘…Plaza’ and ‘…Gardens’, for housing areas

• Thames Town paradigm, Songjiang (Shanghai)

• Use of colours, mouldings, columns and roofs – utilising of overseas architectural traditions

• Urban micro-morphology• Urban space has become materialistic, and in

such a context people will naturally be perceived with implications of difference

The Abstract Reading of the City

• Visual reading of the setting1. Confers edifying values through which

people irrespective of wealth, age, life experiences can ‘read’

2. Grants a sense of time, a sense of now, a sense of consciousness with regards to society’s evolution

• What was once the imaginary is now real

• What was once otherworldly is now socially beneficial

• Lefebvre – productive energy

Predicaments of Modernity• Lack of arbitration over the economic

hegemony of land• Unequal distribution of wealth and inability to

compete in the housing market• Social and economic fragmentation• Feelings of separation from those who have

lost their home due to urban renewal• Lack of access to urban resources, lack of

well-being, inattentiveness to contemporary political discourse

• Production of alternative identities• Actions of razing and rebuilding although

designed to speak common values of betterment fabricate varying identifications as the benefits of progress

Rivalry

• Civic competition between cities, local governments, elite social groups

• Erection of more large buildings, high-rise housing estates, use of modern architecture, more comprehensive road systems, transport infrastructures

• Demonstration of high ranking of the community within the region and nation

• Lauding by city officials of modern urban elements

• Skyscrapers, major road junctions, long bridges – elements perceived to define the contemporary nature of the settlement (Gaubatz)

Conclusion• Chinese quest for societal advancement focused

on economic developmentalism, local restructuring of the Chinese city to exploit global processes

• Economic, social and architectural imagination• A new understanding of the city in China due to t

he potential of society created by economic growth

• Reshaping of the urban form • Modernisation amalgamated with resource mana

gement• Historical experience, China’s quest to transform

the conditions that produces its society, in turn reshaping its identity, imagination and aspirations