In a Field of Party Walls

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

When Deng Xiaoping initiated market reforms in 1978, reopening the country and inviting the newest phase of foreign investment in Chinese cities, the structure and scale of these cities changed dramatically. Today, the governing process rewards the official who can most rapidly transform his or her city into guoji dadushi , a “great international city.”1 With an unprecedented release of capital,2 China has built more—more skyscrapers and high-rises, more housing and malls, more rail systems and highways—than any other country in a thirty-year period.3 In Shanghai, the traditional lilong (alleyway or lane) housing compounds are being replaced by new gated communities of luxury housing towers surrounded by landscaped parks or paved parking (Figure 1). Widened streets, elevated highways, and spiraling approach ramps to suspension bridges impose a new, vehicular, logic on the city (Figure 2). On its expanding edges, rows upon rows of repetitive housing blocks are organized by an economic logic of mass reproduction and the strict daylight standards that govern the spacing of buildings to ensure that sunlight penetrates residential spaces. Along what were once tow roads running beside canals, new shopping malls have organized their indoor public spaces according to the logic of retailing rather than that of public streets. Figure 1 Aerial view of Shanghai, 2004 (author’s photo) Figure 2 Aerial view of Puxi from Pudong, 2012. The sense of the Huangpu River in the city is now understood only from the heights of new skyscrapers (author’s photo) Developers, to ensure that each project announces itself as an icon, intentionally dissociate it from its surrounding context. Each building is a discrete object whose separation from other buildings is more important than the relation between them. Spaces between buildings are undefined and cars dominate public space. Urbanism is fragmented as identity is transferred from the city to its …