Abstract
During the rapid process of urbanization in post-reform China, cities assumed the role of a catalyst for economic growth and quantitative construction. In this context, territorially bounded and well delimited urban cells, globally known as ‘gated communities’, xiaoqu, continued to define the very essence of Chinese cities becoming the most attractive urban form for city planners, real estate developers, and citizens alike. Considering the guidelines in China’s National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020), focusing on the promotion of humanistic and harmonious cities, in addition to the directive of 2016 by China’s Central Urban Work Conference to open up the gates and ban the construction of new enclosed residential compounds, this paper raises the following questions: As the matrix of the Chinese urban fabric, what would be the role of the gated communities in China’s desire for a human-qualitative urbanism? And How to rethink the gated communities to meet the new urban challenges? Seeking alternative perspectives, this paper looks at the gated communities beyond the apparent limits they seem to represent, considering them not simply as the ‘cancer’ of Chinese cities, rather the container of the primary ingredients to reshape the urban fabric dominated by the gate.
Highlights
Introduction and methodologySince the opening up and economic reforms in the late 1970s, China’s urbanization has been undergoing an unprecedented rapid process
This paper, reflecting on China’s National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020), and its direction to shift from the traditional ‘quantitative’ urban development to ‘qualitative and people-oriented’ approaches, brings to the attention of the readers the important questions of what would be the role of the gated community in the new urban agenda, and how to rethink the gated community as an opportunity
Gated communities are the dominant urban form of the Chinese urban fabric, they had been often at the center of hot debates, one in particular was raised by the directive of 2016, calling for banning new gated communities, and encouraging the openness of the existing ones
Summary
Introduction and methodologySince the opening up and economic reforms in the late 1970s, China’s urbanization has been undergoing an unprecedented rapid process. Contemporary gated communities in China between cultural continuation and neo‐liberal urbanization After the collapse of the work unit estates, and the introduction of housing and land market, enclosed neighbourhoods became a remarkable feature in the Chinese urban context (Bray 2005; Webster et al 2006; Huang 2006; Miao and Zhen 2009; Junxi 2014; Zeng et al 2016).
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