Xiangming Chen

China's City Hierarchy, Urban Policy and Spatial Development in the 1980s

Cities play an important role in population distribution and economic development. Policies which alter city systems can create new patterns of spatial economic development. This paper, using the most recent data, examines changes in Chinas city hierarchy, urban policy and spatial development in the 1980s in international, national and local contexts. The time series data show that the process of urbanisation had been gradual between 1949 and the late 1970s but accelerated rapidly in the 1980s. The growth of cities and towns in various size categories reflects the influence of urban policy in reshaping Chinas urban hierarchy. Using multiple measures of urban primacy, the analysis suggests that China has distinctive city systems at the regional level varying along demographic, industrial and infrastructural dimensions. Moreover, there is a growing discrepancy in socioeconomic development between inland and coastal cities that is consistent with the recent policy of favouring the coastal economy. The study provides perspectives and evidence on the extent to which economic efficiency and spatial equality are balanced under a changing model of socialist urban development.

Building for what and whom? New town development as planned suburbanization in China and India

The new town concept originated from the ideal city model of Ebenezer Howard and expanded from Europe to America in the 1900s. It has reemerged as a site for accommodating population from highly dense urban centers of China and India since the early twenty-first century. The massive infusion of public and private investments has enabled the emergence of new towns in China and India as planned centers of worldclass residential, commercial, and work spaces. The rational goal of dedensifying the crowded central cities can lead to a more balanced distribution and use of resources across the metropolitan regions with more spacious housing for the growing middle class in China and India. Yet it is a relatively small number of the wealthy and mobile people who have turned out to be beneficiaries of the mostly high-end housing and

Localizing the Production of Global Cities: A Comparison of New Town Developments Around Shanghai and Kolkata

This work was supported by Program for Young Excellent Talents in Tongji University.

Introduction: Why Chinese and Indian Megacities?

This article investigates the role played by the state in the production and management of urban space vis–à–vis global agents of change. the proliferation of new towns and special economic zones as urban restructuring strategies in rapidly developing countries like China and India are receiving much attention from the scholarly community, documenting and interrogating urban transitions from centralized planning to more participatory and often privatized modes of decentralized planning. This article seeks to tease out the kinds of relationships between the state and other urban development actors it entails, ranging from conflict to collaboration, from protest to partnerships, and from contestation to collaboration. in the Shanghai Metropolitan context, we focus on Anting New Town and Songjiang New City as two cases for understanding the relative power of the municipal government, global capital, professional planning, and the limited influence of local residents in the process and outcome of large–scale suburban development. as a comparison, we focus on the West Bengal State governments role in the development of two new townships (Rajarhat New Town and the Kolkata West International City) on the fringes of the existing core city of Kolkata (Calcutta), India. Drawing on a number of secondary sources such as development plans, newspaper articles, field–based observations, and informal discussions and interviews with official town planners, architects, and private planners, our goal is to compare and contrast the two strategies foregrounding the practices and the relationship of the state to the forces of privatization and globalization, to local grassroots actors and the precarious as well as multifarious ways in which it seeks to constantly negotiate with the dynamics of development. It seeks to answer: what kind of challenges does the state face in reorganizing the urban? Who are the other actors involved in the negotiations and exclusions, contestations, and collaborations? What are the new sociospatial, economic, and political boundaries and contents of the spaces produced?

Re-centering Central Asia: China’s “New Great Game” in the old Eurasian Heartland

The rise of China and India to global economic powers has become a familiar story and remains a dominant headline, which intrigues scholars, journalists, and policymakers everywhere to ponder its wide and deep implications. Somewhat less known, however, is the phenomenon that the boom of China and India is symbolized and driven by their key megacities such as Shanghai and Mumbai. Even less understood is how Chinese and Indian megacities have transformed themselves as they boost the rapid growth of China and India. What may be least anticipated and appreciated is that how the transformation of Chinese and Indian megacities can inform and advance urban theory and research. The four articles in this special issue of City & Community constitute a focused and synthetic look at the dynamic and complex transformation of three Chinese and Indian megacities—Shanghai, Mumbai, and Kolkata. The empirical findings and theorizing in these articles make these cities timely cases for advancing urban research, especially on megacities that are rapidly globalizing. In this short introduction, I first highlight a few striking features of the Chinese and Indian megacities to establish them as critical cases for understanding the intersected local, national, and global forces of large-scale urban transformation. Then I draw the reader’s attention to a few highlights of the four articles that complement one another in moving the frontier of global megacity research. Sujata Patel’s summary and reflections after these articles will provide an authentic Indian voice of echo and extensions to the themes I touch on. More of a happy coincidence than careful planning, the four articles, through independent and parallel development, have converged onto a set of shared themes from somewhat divergent and discrete points of departure and analytical perspectives. They have done so either through an in-depth analysis of one Chinese or Indian megacity to prompt the reader to draw comparison, or via an explicit comparative investigation of a pair of megacities. The coupling of both approaches provides a twotiered explanation for the important differences and similarities between Shanghai and

Demolition, rehabilitation, and conservation: heritage in Shanghai’s urban regeneration, 1990–2015

China’s President Xi Jinping’s Central Asian tour in fall 2013 marked Beijing’s unprecedented (re)turn to Central Asia as a lynchpin of the “Silk Road Economic Belt” of the globally ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China’s BRI positions Central Asia as the crucial nexus for the cross-regional long-distance loops of trade, investment, and infrastructure development. By revisiting the classical geopolitical theory about the original Eurasian Heartland and its contemporary offshoots, we extract some insights for understanding the new China-Central Asia transboundary regional nexus. In a double-pronged empirical analysis of China’s development strategies regarding Central Asia, we examine: (1) the construction of oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to transmit energy all the way to China’s east coast, and (2) the launch and expansion of the Eurasian Railroad to transport goods from China’s manufacturing bases in both coastal and inland regions to Europe and Central Asia. In synthesizing the findings from this coupled analysis through classical and contemporary theoretical lenses, we discuss how China’s growing influence in Central Asia via the BRI can reshape the region’s diverse national interests, development opportunities and constraints while fostering closer China-Central Asia bilateral cooperation across multiple national boundaries. In light of the analysis, we also offer an updated view and critique of the classical Heartland/Rimland theories and discuss how a China-centric “New Great Game” differs from its original nineteenth century antecedent while pointing to similar underpinnings.

Modernity and Globalization: The Local and Global Sources of Individualistic and Materialistic Values in Shanghai

Urban heritage sites in central cities are most difficult to protect during rapid and large scale urban (re)development. Rising land values from property development conflict with and constrain heritage preservation. Compared with many cities in developed and developing countries, large Chinese cities have experienced a stronger redevelopment imperative, faster population growth, and a weaker concern for urban heritages over the last three decades. We use Shanghai to examine the contested evolution of heritage preservation against massive urban redevelopment through three stages from 1990 to the present. Using three heritage projects (Xintiandi, Tianzifang, Bugaoli), we focus on: 1) how each project was implemented and the economic and spatial outcomes each has produced; 2) how the mode of each project’s development interacted with the shifting official policies for heritage preservation; and 3) the implications of the findings, theoretical and practical, for more effective urban preservation.

As Borders Bend: Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim

Abstract Sociological research has arrived at an intellectual crossroad where it faces the challenge of understanding how the dynamics of globalization have joined the forces of modernization in inducing social change. In this paper, using a survey conducted in Pudong, Shanghai, in 2001, which had captured conditions of the areas rapid transformations in a globalizing city, first, we have uncovered two distinctive dimensions of individualistic vs. materialistic values via factor analysis. Second, we have shown strong bivariate relationships between these two dimensions of values and several demographic and socioeconomic variables, as well as personal global connections (PGCs). Third, we have found that PGCs have uneven significant effects on the emergence of individualistic and materialistic values net of the demographic and socioeconomic variables. Finally, we discuss how modernizing and globalizing conditions are conducive to the formation of individualistic and materialistic values in Shanghai, heralding this process in other rapidly modernizing and globalizing cities in China and elsewhere.