Urbanization in China during the past three decades or so has constituted the largest construction project in the planet’s history. One half of the world’s construction cranes in the world are currently in China. The proportion of Chinese citizens living in cities has increased from 18% in 1978 to 43% in 2005, a number which to boot excludes unofficial rural-to-urban migrants, estimated to be almost 150 million people, another 10% of the national population. Where has China’s révolution urbaine come from? How has it changed lives and landscapes in Chinese cities? This course introduces students to major debates and questions in the study of urban China, drawing on a number of disciplinary approaches. We will first examine the historical status of the city in various periods of Chinese history, from the Qing reforms to the Maoist anti-urban experiments to the present, with a special focus on how different physical urban forms have emerged during these periods to suit social and political goals. The bulk of the course will consist of debates regarding various urban problems in reform era China, including rural-to-urban migration and urban villages, housing changes and commodification, the design and use of public spaces, and neighborhood and community politics. These weeks will primarily focus on how these issues play out in Beijing. A final section of the course will require students to debate both changes in the urban system in China and the quality of new Chinese urban forms.
Prerequisites:
None
Learning outcomes:
The course will borrow thematic concerns from contemporary urban studies in reference to the situation in China generally, and Beijing in particular. Students will be required to apply and adapt theoretical concepts to readings, observations and experience during their stay in Beijing. In this respect the course is ethnographic and will guide students in conducting primary research and compositions that link first-person observations and experience to background literature.
By the end of the course students will be able to:
• Demonstrate awareness of major issues and concerns in urban studies as they relate to contemporary China.
• An increased understanding of the city in China and the process of urbanisation as linked to modernisation in 20-21st century China.
• Demonstrate awareness and sensitivity towards social, economic and cultural processes taking place in contemporary urban China.
• Discuss changes taking place in the city-scape, social spaces and everyday practices of Beijing.
• Conduct primary sociological/ethnographic research based on resources available and language skills.
Method of presentation:
The course demands full participation from all students. Lectures and discussions will be organised around specific secondary readings and questions that students will prepare ahead of time. Students will be expected to apply and discuss concepts from the reading in direct reference to their observations and interactions in Beijing. In addition we will discuss selected films (viewed in and out of class), fiction and media coverage. There will be a small number of organised field trips during the course of the semester, but students will be encouraged and expected to undertake a variety of independent research ‘expeditions’.
We will cover the following broad themes in a loose sequential order, but continually return to earlier material in our discussions of contemporary practices.
- Urban theory: introduces basic ideas and concerns of theorists ranging from Marx to current cyber culture.
- History of the Chinese city: locates the urban in a specifically Chinese context from imperial administrative centres through trade concessions to contemporary Olympic cities.
- Development policy in China: traces the shifting emphasis of state planners and policy makers in the PRC.
- Urban space: the bulk of the course will be concerned with case studies on a variety of locations (such as a museum or shopping mall) and ideas (such as ‘community’ or ‘middle class’) apropos contemporary Beijing.
In parallel to the structured lectures and discussions, students will prepare an independent research project on which they will work throughout the semester to culminate in a final paper and presentation (with visual illustrations required in each).
Required work and form of assessment:
Full attendance and participation is required. 20%
There will be one mid-term paper based on readings and lectures. 20%
Students will submit a proposal and two progress reports on their final project. 20%
A final paper and presentation. 40%
No grades will be given during the course of the term. Instead, the instructor will give detailed feedback on all assignments and students are welcome to talk personally if they are concerned about their standing. A final grade will be awarded as per university requirements at the end of the course.
content:
1. Introduction: Urbanization in China and Beyond
Mark R. Montgomery, “The Urban Transformation of the Developing World,” Science. February 8, 2008. Vol. 319.
George Packer, “The Megacity,” The New Yorker, November 13, 2006.
Thomas Campanella, Ch. 2 “The Urbanism of Ambition,” in The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World. 2008. Princeton Architectural Press: 12-25.
Background: Chinese Cities Through Reform and Opening
2. Chinese Cities Past I: Late Imperial Cities
G. William Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development in Imperial China,” in G. William Skinner, ed. The City in Late Imperial China. 1977. Stanford UP.
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, Chapter 8: “Ming, Qing and Beyond,” in Chinese Imperial City Planning. 1999. University of Hawaii Press.
3. Chinese Cities Past II: Republican Cities
David Strand. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Chapters 1 “The Twentieth Century Walled City,” and 4 “Policemen as Mediators and Street-Level Bureaucrats.” 1989. Stanford.
Qin Shao. Culturing Modernity: the Nantong Model, 1890-1930. 2003. Stanford. Pp. 1-10, 21-30, and 55-85.
David Strand, “, “’A High Place is no Better than a Low Place:’ The City in the Making of Modern China,” in Yeh Wen-hsin, ed. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. University of California Press: 2000.
4. Urban Revolution and Building the Socialist City
Jack C. Fisher, “Planning the City of Socialist Man,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners. 1962. Vol. 28 (No. 4)
Bray, David. Chapter 4: “ From the Government of Space to the Spatialization of Governance: The Emergence of Revolutionary Spatial Practice,” in Social Space and Governance in Urban China: The Danwei System from Origins to Reform. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 37-65
5. China’s Anti-Urban Experiments: Industrialization Without Urbanization
PROJECT PROPOSALS DUE: Identify two places worthy of comparison and a question on which to base your research. 2-3 pages.
Janet Salaff. “The Urban Communes and the Anti-City Experiment in Communist China,” The China Quarterly. Vol. 29, January 1967: 82-110.
Something on Daqing: Either Li Hou’s Doctoral Dissertation or the film Iron Man
Reforms and its Dilemmas
6. Urban China Under Reform
Tony Saich, “The Changing Role of Urban Government,” in Shahid Yusuf and Tony Saich, eds., China Urbanizes. 2008. World Bank.
Fulong Wu, Jiang Xu, and Anthony Gar-On Yeh, Urban Development in post-Reform China: State, Market, and Space. Routledge: 2006. “Changing City Planning: From Resource Allocation to Place Promotion,” and “Entrepreneurial City and Competitive Urban Strategies,” pp. 158-229.
Micheal Leaf and Li Hou, “ The ‘Third Spring’ of Urban Planning in China: The Resurrection of Professional Planning in the post-Mao era.” China Information. 2006. Vol. 20 (No. 3): 553-585.
Peter Ho. “Who Owns China’s Land?” China Quarterly. 2001. No. 166: 394-491.
You-Tien Hsiang, “Land and Territorial Politics in Urban China,” China Quarterly. 2006. No. 187: 575-91.
8. Inequality – Spatial and Otherwise
Film: Manufactured Landscapes. Directed by Jennifer Baichwal with Edward Burtynsky.
Whyte, Martin. 1996. “City Versus Countryside in China’s Development,” Problems of Post-Communism.
Lin, G.C.S. (2002) The growth and structural change of Chinese cities: a contextual and geographic analysis. Cities 19(5):299-316.
Youqin Huang, “From work unit compounds to gated communities: housing inequality and residential segregation in transitional Beijing,” in Laurence Ma and Fulong Wu, eds. Restructuring the Chinese City. Routledge, 2005: 192-221.
Urbanization and Beijing
9. Changing Beijing’s Urban Form
Field Trip: Beijing City Planning Exhibition
Piper Rae Gaubatz, “Urban transformation in post-Mao China: impacts of the reform era on China’s urban form,” in Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, in Davis, Kraus, Naughton, and Perry, eds. 1995. Cambridge University Press.
Xue Fengxuan. Beijing: The Nature and Planning of a Chinese Capital City. Wiley and Sons: 1995. Selections.
McKinsey Global Institute, Preparing for China’s Urban Billion (McKinsey & Co., March 2009) http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/china_urban_billion/ Part II Chapter 1 “Local Urbanization.” Beijing section required, and choose 2 other cities in different regions.
10. Urban Villages
PROJECT RESEARCH UPDATE MEMO DUE: 4-5 pages on your progress so far, including research resources, potential arguments that explain differences in your cases and secondary literature relevant to your topic. Please be candid! These memos should also include potential obstacles to your research.
Optional: Dorothy Solinger, “Introduction” from Contesting Citizenship in Urban China. 1999. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Laurence Ma and Xiang Biao, “Native Place Migration ad the Emergence of Peasant Enclaves in Beijing,” China Quarterly. No. 155: 546-81.
Li Zhang, “Migrant Enclaves and the Impacts of Redevelopment Policies in Chinese Cities,” in Laurence Ma and Fulong Wu, eds. Restructuring the Chinese City. Routledge, 2005:: 243-259.
Selections from Xue Fengxuan
11. A New Middle Class?
Field Trip: Xicheng District Homeowners’ Association
Luigi Tomba. “Creating an Urban Middle Class: Social Engineering in Beijing", in The China Journal, No. 51, January 2004.
Read, Ben. “Democratizing the Neighborhood? New Private Housing and Homeowner ‘s Self-Organization in Urban China.” The China Journal, No. 49, 2003.
12. Public and Private Spaces
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, The Making and Selling of post-Mao Beijing, “The Making of Wangfujing,” and “Selling the Past: Nationalism and the Commodification of History at Yuanmingyuan.” Routledge, 2004: 42-85, 94-147.
Wu Heng, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen and the Creation of a Political Space. Reaktion Books, 2005. Selections.
13. Spatial Ecology and Politics
Film: West of the Tracks (铁西区)。Directed by Wang Bing. “Rust”
Zhao Dingxin. 2001. The Power of Tiananmen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 8: “Ecology-based Mobilization and Movement Dynamics,” pp. 239-266.
Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt. 2007. U of California Press: Selections from Chapter 4. “Life after Danwei: Surviving Enterprise Collapse,” and Chapter 6, “Dagong as a Way of Life” on danwei compounds and new worker dormitories.
14. Student Presentations
15. Critical Approaches
A. City size: mega-cities or small and medium cities?
McKinsey Global Institute, Preparing for China’s Urban Billion (McKinsey & Co., March 2009), (excerpt from Executive Summary). The entire report is available on-line at http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/china_urban_billion/
Development Research Center, 2006, “A Study on China’s
Urbanization; Current Situation and Some Key Issues”, Part 1: Introduction, 1-16; Part 2: Debate on China’s Urbanization Strategies, 17-31.
B. City Form
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of American Cities, “Introduction,” and “The generators of diversity” 1961. New York: Random House.
Kabir Mansingh Heimsath recently completed his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oxford with a dissertation on ‘The Urban Space of Lhasa’. His background has been in Tibetan studies (with a BA and MA in Religious Studies from UC Berkeley, and University of Washington, respectively) with a focus on urbanisation and development in contemporary China during the last ten years.
Urbanization in China during the past three decades or so has constituted the largest construction project in the planet’s history. One half of the world’s construction cranes in the world are currently in China. The proportion of Chinese citizens living in cities has increased from 18% in 1978 to 43% in 2005, a number which to boot excludes unofficial rural-to-urban migrants, estimated to be almost 150 million people, another 10% of the national population. Where has China’s révolution urbaine come from? How has it changed lives and landscapes in Chinese cities? This course introduces students to major debates and questions in the study of urban China, drawing on a number of disciplinary approaches. We will first examine the historical status of the city in various periods of Chinese history, from the Qing reforms to the Maoist anti-urban experiments to the present, with a special focus on how different physical urban forms have emerged during these periods to suit social and political goals. The bulk of the course will consist of debates regarding various urban problems in reform era China, including rural-to-urban migration and urban villages, housing changes and commodification, the design and use of public spaces, and neighborhood and community politics. These weeks will primarily focus on how these issues play out in Beijing. A final section of the course will require students to debate both changes in the urban system in China and the quality of new Chinese urban forms.
None
The course will borrow thematic concerns from contemporary urban studies in reference to the situation in China generally, and Beijing in particular. Students will be required to apply and adapt theoretical concepts to readings, observations and experience during their stay in Beijing. In this respect the course is ethnographic and will guide students in conducting primary research and compositions that link first-person observations and experience to background literature.
By the end of the course students will be able to:
• Demonstrate awareness of major issues and concerns in urban studies as they relate to contemporary China.
• An increased understanding of the city in China and the process of urbanisation as linked to modernisation in 20-21st century China.
• Demonstrate awareness and sensitivity towards social, economic and cultural processes taking place in contemporary urban China.
• Discuss changes taking place in the city-scape, social spaces and everyday practices of Beijing.
• Conduct primary sociological/ethnographic research based on resources available and language skills.
The course demands full participation from all students. Lectures and discussions will be organised around specific secondary readings and questions that students will prepare ahead of time. Students will be expected to apply and discuss concepts from the reading in direct reference to their observations and interactions in Beijing. In addition we will discuss selected films (viewed in and out of class), fiction and media coverage. There will be a small number of organised field trips during the course of the semester, but students will be encouraged and expected to undertake a variety of independent research ‘expeditions’.
We will cover the following broad themes in a loose sequential order, but continually return to earlier material in our discussions of contemporary practices.
- Urban theory: introduces basic ideas and concerns of theorists ranging from Marx to current cyber culture.
- History of the Chinese city: locates the urban in a specifically Chinese context from imperial administrative centres through trade concessions to contemporary Olympic cities.
- Development policy in China: traces the shifting emphasis of state planners and policy makers in the PRC.
- Urban space: the bulk of the course will be concerned with case studies on a variety of locations (such as a museum or shopping mall) and ideas (such as ‘community’ or ‘middle class’) apropos contemporary Beijing.
In parallel to the structured lectures and discussions, students will prepare an independent research project on which they will work throughout the semester to culminate in a final paper and presentation (with visual illustrations required in each).
Full attendance and participation is required. 20%
There will be one mid-term paper based on readings and lectures. 20%
Students will submit a proposal and two progress reports on their final project. 20%
A final paper and presentation. 40%
No grades will be given during the course of the term. Instead, the instructor will give detailed feedback on all assignments and students are welcome to talk personally if they are concerned about their standing. A final grade will be awarded as per university requirements at the end of the course.
1. Introduction: Urbanization in China and Beyond
Mark R. Montgomery, “The Urban Transformation of the Developing World,” Science. February 8, 2008. Vol. 319.
George Packer, “The Megacity,” The New Yorker, November 13, 2006.
Thomas Campanella, Ch. 2 “The Urbanism of Ambition,” in The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World. 2008. Princeton Architectural Press: 12-25.
Background: Chinese Cities Through Reform and Opening
2. Chinese Cities Past I: Late Imperial Cities
G. William Skinner, “Introduction: Urban Development in Imperial China,” in G. William Skinner, ed. The City in Late Imperial China. 1977. Stanford UP.
Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, Chapter 8: “Ming, Qing and Beyond,” in Chinese Imperial City Planning. 1999. University of Hawaii Press.
3. Chinese Cities Past II: Republican Cities
David Strand. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Chapters 1 “The Twentieth Century Walled City,” and 4 “Policemen as Mediators and Street-Level Bureaucrats.” 1989. Stanford.
Qin Shao. Culturing Modernity: the Nantong Model, 1890-1930. 2003. Stanford. Pp. 1-10, 21-30, and 55-85.
David Strand, “, “’A High Place is no Better than a Low Place:’ The City in the Making of Modern China,” in Yeh Wen-hsin, ed. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. University of California Press: 2000.
4. Urban Revolution and Building the Socialist City
Jack C. Fisher, “Planning the City of Socialist Man,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners. 1962. Vol. 28 (No. 4)
Bray, David. Chapter 4: “ From the Government of Space to the Spatialization of Governance: The Emergence of Revolutionary Spatial Practice,” in Social Space and Governance in Urban China: The Danwei System from Origins to Reform. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 37-65
5. China’s Anti-Urban Experiments: Industrialization Without Urbanization
PROJECT PROPOSALS DUE: Identify two places worthy of comparison and a question on which to base your research. 2-3 pages.
Janet Salaff. “The Urban Communes and the Anti-City Experiment in Communist China,” The China Quarterly. Vol. 29, January 1967: 82-110.
Something on Daqing: Either Li Hou’s Doctoral Dissertation or the film Iron Man
Reforms and its Dilemmas
6. Urban China Under Reform
Tony Saich, “The Changing Role of Urban Government,” in Shahid Yusuf and Tony Saich, eds., China Urbanizes. 2008. World Bank.
Fulong Wu, Jiang Xu, and Anthony Gar-On Yeh, Urban Development in post-Reform China: State, Market, and Space. Routledge: 2006. “Changing City Planning: From Resource Allocation to Place Promotion,” and “Entrepreneurial City and Competitive Urban Strategies,” pp. 158-229.
Micheal Leaf and Li Hou, “ The ‘Third Spring’ of Urban Planning in China: The Resurrection of Professional Planning in the post-Mao era.” China Information. 2006. Vol. 20 (No. 3): 553-585.
7. Land and Property Rights
Optional: The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html
(Students should be familiar with the articles on ownership)
Peter Ho. “Who Owns China’s Land?” China Quarterly. 2001. No. 166: 394-491.
You-Tien Hsiang, “Land and Territorial Politics in Urban China,” China Quarterly. 2006. No. 187: 575-91.
8. Inequality – Spatial and Otherwise
Film: Manufactured Landscapes. Directed by Jennifer Baichwal with Edward Burtynsky.
Whyte, Martin. 1996. “City Versus Countryside in China’s Development,” Problems of Post-Communism.
Lin, G.C.S. (2002) The growth and structural change of Chinese cities: a contextual and geographic analysis. Cities 19(5):299-316.
Youqin Huang, “From work unit compounds to gated communities: housing inequality and residential segregation in transitional Beijing,” in Laurence Ma and Fulong Wu, eds. Restructuring the Chinese City. Routledge, 2005: 192-221.
Urbanization and Beijing
9. Changing Beijing’s Urban Form
Field Trip: Beijing City Planning Exhibition
Piper Rae Gaubatz, “Urban transformation in post-Mao China: impacts of the reform era on China’s urban form,” in Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, in Davis, Kraus, Naughton, and Perry, eds. 1995. Cambridge University Press.
Xue Fengxuan. Beijing: The Nature and Planning of a Chinese Capital City. Wiley and Sons: 1995. Selections.
McKinsey Global Institute, Preparing for China’s Urban Billion (McKinsey & Co., March 2009) http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/china_urban_billion/ Part II Chapter 1 “Local Urbanization.” Beijing section required, and choose 2 other cities in different regions.
10. Urban Villages
PROJECT RESEARCH UPDATE MEMO DUE: 4-5 pages on your progress so far, including research resources, potential arguments that explain differences in your cases and secondary literature relevant to your topic. Please be candid! These memos should also include potential obstacles to your research.
Optional: Dorothy Solinger, “Introduction” from Contesting Citizenship in Urban China. 1999. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Laurence Ma and Xiang Biao, “Native Place Migration ad the Emergence of Peasant Enclaves in Beijing,” China Quarterly. No. 155: 546-81.
Li Zhang, “Migrant Enclaves and the Impacts of Redevelopment Policies in Chinese Cities,” in Laurence Ma and Fulong Wu, eds. Restructuring the Chinese City. Routledge, 2005:: 243-259.
Selections from Xue Fengxuan
11. A New Middle Class?
Field Trip: Xicheng District Homeowners’ Association
Luigi Tomba. “Creating an Urban Middle Class: Social Engineering in Beijing", in The China Journal, No. 51, January 2004.
Read, Ben. “Democratizing the Neighborhood? New Private Housing and Homeowner ‘s Self-Organization in Urban China.” The China Journal, No. 49, 2003.
12. Public and Private Spaces
Anne-Marie Broudehoux, The Making and Selling of post-Mao Beijing, “The Making of Wangfujing,” and “Selling the Past: Nationalism and the Commodification of History at Yuanmingyuan.” Routledge, 2004: 42-85, 94-147.
Wu Heng, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen and the Creation of a Political Space. Reaktion Books, 2005. Selections.
13. Spatial Ecology and Politics
Film: West of the Tracks (铁西区)。Directed by Wang Bing. “Rust”
Zhao Dingxin. 2001. The Power of Tiananmen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chapter 8: “Ecology-based Mobilization and Movement Dynamics,” pp. 239-266.
Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt. 2007. U of California Press: Selections from Chapter 4. “Life after Danwei: Surviving Enterprise Collapse,” and Chapter 6, “Dagong as a Way of Life” on danwei compounds and new worker dormitories.
14. Student Presentations
15. Critical Approaches
A. City size: mega-cities or small and medium cities?
McKinsey Global Institute, Preparing for China’s Urban Billion (McKinsey & Co., March 2009), (excerpt from Executive Summary). The entire report is available on-line at http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/china_urban_billion/
Development Research Center, 2006, “A Study on China’s
Urbanization; Current Situation and Some Key Issues”, Part 1: Introduction, 1-16; Part 2: Debate on China’s Urbanization Strategies, 17-31.
B. City Form
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of American Cities, “Introduction,” and “The generators of diversity” 1961. New York: Random House.
Film: Manufactured Lansdcapes
Fieldtrips: Urban Villages, Xicheng Neighborhood Association, Beijing City Planning Exhibitions
Kabir Mansingh Heimsath recently completed his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oxford with a dissertation on ‘The Urban Space of Lhasa’. His background has been in Tibetan studies (with a BA and MA in Religious Studies from UC Berkeley, and University of Washington, respectively) with a focus on urbanisation and development in contemporary China during the last ten years.