An assessment of urban village redevelopment in China : a case study of medium-sized city Weihai.

Under the influence of rapid urbanization and economic development in China, many cities and towns have doubled or tripled in terms of urban population and urban land extensions. As a result, a large number of traditional rural villages, once located in suburban areas of cities, became part of built up areas. They have turned into the so-called ‘urban villages’. In recent years, thousands of such villages have been demolished and rebuilt every year in a nationwide-urban village redevelopment process. Urban village redevelopment in China shares similarities with urban renewal but also has very distinct features. It takes place in suburban and peri-urban areas as well as close to city centres. Redevelopment of urban villages involves different social groups of village residents, most of who do not initially have urban resident status and live under distinct housing tenure, welfare, and government arrangements. This raises concerns for changes in housing, social welfare, health provision, the employment situation, and local environmental concerns. However, the general drive for urban and economic development has caused the rebuilding of the villages and, as a result, local administrations have sought to implement this process. This research aimed to analyse the context of urban village redevelopment and assess the advantages and disadvantages of redevelopment; particularly from the viewpoint of former rural village residents. The research is mainly qualitative in nature but combined with quantitative evidence as well. A case study approach is used to address the research questions, and a third line prefecture-level city, Weihai, was chosen for the case study (a medium-sized city in China and governed by Shandong provincial government). The context for this was provided by the national scale reviews of urbanization, urban and rural development, which helped to build a general understanding of the relationship between urbanization and the appearance of urban villages and their stages of transformation. By reviewing the background of local (case study city) urban villages, policies and practice, and through detailed fieldwork with local residents and key informants, the research sought to gain a fuller picture of the benefits and problems of village households in a medium-sized city. This research examines the extent, location, and timing of redevelopment, the reasons for redevelopment, the organizations, process, and players involved. Findings are presented on physical and social changes in local areas, and the impacts of these changes on indigenous village households’ lives. The findings present a mixed picture of changes following redevelopment. The physical environment of these now urbanized areas has generally improved, with associated improvements in safety and cleanliness. Former villagers have gained urban status and access to urban welfare and education services, transport and utilities; although the quality and generosity of health and pension schemes is variable. Higher costs of living are widely reported, however, with the loss of the benefits of own grown food and other resources, leading to reduced living standards, and some have been forced to take hard, low paid labour jobs to survive. However, some villagers have benefited from more stable jobs and better compensation. Local government and its leadership has benefitted from the enhanced economic development and associated revenues. Although there was widespread unhappiness with compensation arrangements, it is difficult for individual households to find redress. It is argued that these outcomes conflict in a significant way with relevant principles of justice, particularly those associated with ‘entitlement theory’, and raise serious questions about accountability of key actors, particularly village leaders

Physical Planning Strategies of National High-Technology Industrial Development Zones in China

Over the last two decades, High-Technology Industrial Development Zone (HIDZ) has become an important strategy for urban development in China. Modeled on earlier examples in the US and Asia, they have developed in unique ways in China because of the rapid urbanization, large-scale sites, and trend toward high-technology-based new townships or technopoles. While the 84 current national HIDZs widely use planning strategies in their government-guided development and construction, the impact of these planning strategies remains is not well understood. This dissertation explores how and to what extent planning and management strategies impact the outcomes of HIDZs. It examines closely four case examples (Beijing Zhongguancun Science Park, Shanghai Zhangjiang High-Technology Park, Suzhou Industrial Park, and Shenzhen High-Technology Industrial Park). The study reveals the diverse and sometimes competing purposes of national HIDZs, ranging from stimulating innovation and improvement of products, to serving as an economic anchor and a tool for attracting international firms. The research demonstrates the importance of adopting a sustainable strategy for development of HIDZs that it guides place-making, regulates the land development process, improves the quality of the environment, facilitates cooperation among various sectors, and attracts investment. It explores the versatility of planning approaches, identifies a series of key factors that shape planning strategies, and provides suggestions for tailoring the approach to planning to local resources and conditions

The model of Chinese ecomuseums -- benchmarking, evaluation and a comparison with Australian open-air museums

This thesis is a comparative study of Chinese and Australian ecomuseums in terms of their governance & strategies, local participation & empowerment, and heritage interpretation & conservation. It concluded their difference and critical problems. In the end, a model is built up towards a better management of Chinese ecomuseum

Community in Chinese Street Music: Sound, Song and Social Life

Jiqing guangchang is a form of amateur music performance event in Wuhan, a major city in central China. Groups of singers take turns to perform well-known Chinese popular songs for a few hours each afternoon and evening in squares, on street corners, and in parks around the city. Audiences take an active part by offering performers cash tips. Certain discourses surrounding contemporary urban life have portrayed experiences with popular music in these modern city contexts as distant from communal meaning. My ethnography of these performances and their surrounding social worlds is geared towards assessing the significance of community here, while also contributing to an understanding of the notion in contemporary urban China. Musical activity in jiqing guangchang is mundane, mainstream and rarely inspires fervent commitment or responses from participants. I analyse material from its spatial and sonic, economic, performative and social sides to look beyond understandings of community that are based on ideologies of kinship and belonging. I develop the discussion towards community’s embodied and material-level foundations, manifest in the mutual orientation and coexistence strategies of participants, their modes of sociability, and the designation and sharing of social territories. Thus, various limitations in current discourses of music and community can be transcended, particularly those tied to binary understandings of community’s position in relation to society, individualism, and several other key concepts. I aim to highlight that in contemporary urban situations, music’s ability to engender collective meaning is not only tied to ritualised contexts or those where divisive identity issues are prominent. Instead, my analysis of jiqing guangchang brings to the fore underlying and everyday modes of collective engagement that may be of deep-seated significance in interpreting all kinds of musical contexts

Understanding the form transformation of traditional towns and villages in China (1998-2021): a case study on the production of space in the cultural region of Huizhou

Not only Chinese cities have seen vast urban form transformations in the rapid urbanization process, the subordinate traditional towns and villages have also experienced profound form changes, but in a different mode compared to those in cities. This has been especially evident under waves of national policies promoting urbanization and rural development during the past two decades, such as ‘Urban Housing System Reform’, ‘New-Type Urbanization’, ‘Building a New Socialist Countryside’, ‘Construction of Beautiful Village’ and ‘Rural Revitalization’. However, in this process designers (e.g., planners, architects and urban designers) have embraced partial understandings of the form issues and offered problematic approaches to them. To more comprehensively understand the form transformation in traditional towns and villages beyond conventional planning and architectural design arena, deeper research is needed to explain the underlying social-spatial factors especially their logics, involving policy, economy, culture, capital, design, and local people’s ‘everyday life’ (Lefebvre, 1991a). The research treats the form transformation as the result of ‘production of space’, (Lefebvre, 1991b) and particularly examines the context of traditional towns and villages to customize an analytical mode of the concept of ‘production of space’. It aims to utilize the mode to more comprehensively explain the contextual form transformation with its underlying mechanisms against the backdrop of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, so as to create a valuable reference for designers and decision-makers. More specifically, inspired by Lefebvre’s dialectical triad of social space (ibid.), the research builds the analytical mode upon three levels: the top-down driving forces (government power and public/nongovernment capital) are the supplier of space, speaking of ‘representation of space (conceived space)’; the bottom-up local people are the receiver and occupier of space, inhabiting ‘representational space (lived space)’; the middle level designers should be the negotiator of space, who need to connect the conceived space and lived space through ‘spatial practice (perceived space)’. The research then focuses on a specific field: the traditional towns and villages in the cultural region of Huizhou in south-east China, where relevant themes can provide vivid examples of form change. It hence moves the analytical mode to Huizhou to carry out a case study, explaining two trends of contextual form transformation through studying two sub-cases of space production, which all involves local people’s living space. The two kinds of space production are: the space production for growth represented by local efforts of ‘building new residential districts’, and the space production in inventory represented by local causes of ‘relocating and renovating dwellings and houses’. The research argues that the ‘production of space’ in Huizhou has been in a compromised mode, being different from that in Chinese cities, and the built tradition has been diminished and fragmented. The logics, motivations and expectations of the three levels of stakeholders in the form transformation have been incredibly diverse — yet they have coexisted in the same process of space production and resulted in same form results. Also, the research suggests that designers in the context have not effectively connected the conceived space and lived space in playing their roles, and the position and significance of design have not been well recognized there. The research further recommends that the form change in Huizhou could be design-led growth or regeneration based on a mediating platform formed by urban design wisdoms, and the wisdoms should be carried out by integrated design efforts across urban and rural areas against the backdrop of the national cause of urban-rural integration, which could be implemented through potential regional design guides (e.g., Huizhou region) breaking current urban-rural separations regarding design. Upon this, designers should also hold right design values that not only conform with bigger logics from the space suppliers, but also aim to put local people first, create places, and nurture wider social awareness of design in the context

Modelling fashion microblogs to increase the influence of social media marketing in Ireland and China

With the breakthrough of social media in the 21st century, microblogging has become an influential medium for marketing fashion brands and products online. For this reason, this study explores ten Irish and another ten Chinese fashion microblogging influencers’ microblogs using Text Mining and Netnography. By this comparison, the study finds a current model of how fashion microblogs influence fashion consumption in Ireland and China. With the help of this model, the study proposes a typology of Irish and Chinese fashion microblogging influencers and their basic microblogging strategies. The proposed typology intends to help fashion marketers to model their fashion microblogs in order to increase the influence of social media marketing in Ireland and China. Furthermore, the proposed typology is applied to develop a digital artefact that not only can deal with Irish and Chinese fashion microblogs at the same time but also show the results employing text visualisation. This bilingual digital website tries to make up for the lack of attention to text analysis on fashion-related words in the development of text mining tools. Finally, the methodological combination of Text Mining and Netnography employs digital tools and computer programming to conduct studies in the field of arts and humanities. The success of methodological combination in the study opens up a bright prospect for interdisciplinary research methodology

State and Crafts in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)

This book, full of quantitative evidence and limited-circulation archives, details manufacturing and the beginnings of industrialisation in China from 1644 to 1911. It thoroughly examines the interior organisation of public craft production and the complementary activities of the private sector. It offers detailed knowledge of shipbuilding and printing. Moreover, it contributes to the research of labour history and the rise of capitalism in China through its examination of living conditions, working conditions, and wages