The City, Urbanisation and Modernity in China

1. The City, Urbanisation and Modernity in China Dr Ian Morley Chinese University of Hong Kong

2. 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

3. Background (i) • Past three decades the adoption of a new economic paradigm • Restructuring from a Soviet style command economy 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, morphology and appearance of cities altered • Changes relating to the complexity, demography and spatial extent of urban communities

4. 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

5. Cities, Opening-up • Profundity of empiricism in China • Experience of grave social problems, ‘struggles of the peasantry’ • Regulation of urban growth as pragmatic 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’

6. Urban Motors • Largest Chinese cities as growth centres, with externalities and spill-over effects • Guangdong – ‘Industrial Satellite Towns’ • Cities at the top of the national urban hierarchy as motors for regional progress • Sites to actualise the replacement of archaic 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Becoming Hong Kong • Process of taking on the visual and economic traits of Hong Kong • Shenzhen, arguably the most modern and dynamic of all cities in China • Rapid urban and economic expansion as it became 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

11. 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

12. 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 cultural values, a setting where modern life and social progress can be qualitatively defined • Basis upon which critiques are founded

13. Medias of Value • Materially realised nature of urban China has led to visual and morphological alterations • The changes, such as increased vertical scales, 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

14. The Abstract Reading of the City • Visual reading of the setting • Confers edifying values through which people irrespective of wealth, age, life experiences can ‘read’ • 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

15. 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

16. 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)

17. 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 the potential of society created by economic growth • Reshaping of the urban form • Modernisation amalgamated with resource management • Historical experience, China’s quest to transform the conditions that produces its society, in turn reshaping its identity, imagination and aspirations