City and Countryside

Abstract

In this chapter, the author starts with the example of “city failure” – Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013 – and writes about the contraction between the shrinking cities in North America and Europe and the expanding cities in Asia which caused by the restructurings of global industries. He analyzes in detail how China’s reform and opening-up policy started in the late 1970s has promoted the radical urbanization, how the redistribution of social resources in the process of urbanization has led to serious social conflicts, and how urbanization has led to depopulation and decline in rural areas. He then commented on the wider and faster urbanization after the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 Shanghai World Expo due to China’s vigorous investment in infrastructure such as highways and high-speed rail. He believed that the improvement of mobility, the population evacuation of large cities and the influx of overflowing capital into small and medium-sized cities and rural areas have changed the imbalance of regional development, but also have brought pressure on ecological environment, agricultural production and historical preservation to rural areas. While examining these problems of urbanization, the author also takes the Bishan Project as an example, puts forward possible solutions from the perspective of “rural reconstruction,” and shares how he applied the experience of “placemaking” accumulated in countryside to the later city regeneration and historical preservation project – Kwan-Yen Project in Yantai, Shandong Province.