The Habitable City in China

The Habitable City in China PDF Author: Toby Lincoln
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137554711
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
This book offers a new perspective on Chinese urban history by exploring cities as habitable spaces. China, the world’s most populous nation, is now its newest urban society, and the pace of this unprecedented historical transformation has increased in recent decades. The contributors to this book conceptualise cities as first providing the necessities of life, and then becoming places in which the quality of life can be improved. They focus on how cities have been made secure during times of instability, how their inhabitants have consumed everything from the simplest of foods to the most expensive luxuries, and how they have been planned as ideal spaces. Drawing examples from across the country, this book offers comparisons between different cities, highlights continuities across time and space—and in doing so may provide solutions to some of the problems that continue to affect Chinese cities today.

The Habitable City in China

The Habitable City in China PDF Author: Toby Lincoln
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137554711
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book

Book Description
This book offers a new perspective on Chinese urban history by exploring cities as habitable spaces. China, the world’s most populous nation, is now its newest urban society, and the pace of this unprecedented historical transformation has increased in recent decades. The contributors to this book conceptualise cities as first providing the necessities of life, and then becoming places in which the quality of life can be improved. They focus on how cities have been made secure during times of instability, how their inhabitants have consumed everything from the simplest of foods to the most expensive luxuries, and how they have been planned as ideal spaces. Drawing examples from across the country, this book offers comparisons between different cities, highlights continuities across time and space—and in doing so may provide solutions to some of the problems that continue to affect Chinese cities today.

Remaking the Chinese City

Remaking the Chinese City PDF Author: Joseph W. Esherick
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824825188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
In China today skyscrapers tower over ancient temples, freeways deliver lines of cars and tour buses to imperial palaces, cinema houses compete with old theaters featuring Peking Opera. The disparity evidenced in the contemporary Chinese cityscape can be traced to the early decades of the twentieth century, when government elites sought to transform cities into a new world that would be at once modern and distinctly Chinese. Remaking the Chinese City aims to capture the full diversity of recent Chinese urbanism by examining the modernist transformations of China's cities in the first half of the twentieth century. Collecting in one place some of the most interesting and exciting new work on Chinese urban history, this volume presents thirteen essays discussing ten Chinese cities: the commercial and industrial center of Shanghai; the old capital, Beijing; the southern coastal city of Canton; the interior's Chengdu; the tourist city of Hangzhou; the utopian "New Capital" built in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation; the treaty port of Tianjin; the Nationalists' capital in Nanjing; and temporary wartime capitals of Wuhan and Chongqing. Unlike past treatments of early twentieth-century China, which characterize the period as one of failure and decay, the contributors to this volume describe an exciting world in constant and fundamental change. During this time, the Chinese city was remade to accommodate parks and police, paved roads and public spaces. Rickshaws, trolleys, and buses allowed the growth of new downtowns. Department stores, theaters, newspapers, and modern advertising nourished a new urban identity. Sanitary regulations and traffic laws were enforced, and modern media and transport permitted unprecedented freedoms. Yet despite their fondness for things Western and modern, early urban planners envisioned cities that would lead the Chinese nation and preserve Chinese tradition. The very desire for modernity led to the construction of a visible and accessible national past and the imagining of a distinctive national future. In their investigation of the national capitals of the period, the essays show how cities were reshaped to represent and serve the nation. To promote tourism, traditions were invented and recycled for the pleasure and edification of new middle-class and foreign consumers of culture. Abundantly illustrated with maps and photographs, Remaking the Chinese City presents the best and most current scholarship on modern Chinese cities. Its thoroughness and detailed scholarship will appeal to the specialist, while its clarity and scope will engage the general reader. Contributors: Michael Tsin on Canton, Ruth Rogaski and Brett Sheehan on Tianjin, David Buck on Changchun, Kristin Stapleton on Chengdu, Liping Wang on Hangzhou, Madeleine Dong on Beijing, Charles Musgrove on Nanjing, Stephen MacKinnon on Wuhan, Lee MacIsaac on Chongqing, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom and David Strand with concluding essays.

An Urban History of China

An Urban History of China PDF Author: Toby Lincoln
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108169295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
In this accessible new study, Toby Lincoln offers the first history of Chinese cities from their origins to the present. Despite being an agricultural society for thousands of years, China had an imperial urban civilization. Over the last century, this urban civilization has been transformed into the world's largest modern urban society. Throughout their long history, Chinese cities have been shaped by interactions with those around the world, and the story of urban China is a crucial part of the history of how the world has become an urban society. Exploring the global connections of Chinese cities, the urban system, urban governance, and daily life alongside introductions to major historical debates and extracts from primary sources, this is essential reading for all those interested in China and in urban history.

China's Urban Development

China's Urban Development PDF Author: Shao Yisheng
Publisher: Paths International Ltd
ISBN: 1844641376
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Since 2002 the United Nations Development Programme has been running 'City Planning, Management and Development in the 21st Century' across China, a project that focuses on five pilot cities (Guizhou, Taiyuan, Liuzhou, Meishan and Sanmenxia) to help analysis urban development trends and problems across Chinas as it undertakes rapid urbanisation. This detailed and authoritative report outlines the key findings from this research project which was led by Shao Yisheng, Vice President and Professor from China Academy of Urban Planning & Design. Whilst fully acknowledging the great achievements and spectacular levels of development, the purpose of this report is to outline the faults and contradictions that have proved central to China's accelerated urbanisation. These have been gathered into seven subject sections within the report: natural resources; living environment; image projects (prestige or 'showy' construction projects); public safety; social stratification; public finance; public policies. An in-depth analysis of these problem areas and their origins is supplied by the leading members of the research team. In addition, the authors propose solutions to each problem utilising innovative concepts, systems, policies, planning systems and management techniques. China's Urban Development: Critiques and Observations offers truly unique and distinctive views on China's urban changes, both positive and negative. It will prove extremely interesting to professionals, academics and students involved in urban development and planning outside of China, plus experts engaged in the urban economy, engineering, construction, urban sociology and political science. The key editors and contributors are Shao Yisheng, Vice President and Professor from China Academy of Urban Planning & Design, plus Shi Nan, Secretary General and Professor from Urban Planning Society of China. Additional contributors include senior academics from the Department for Industry, Transportation & Trade, Research Office of the State Council, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The City after Chinese New Towns

The City after Chinese New Towns PDF Author: Michele Bonino
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 303561766X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
By 2020, some 400 Chinese New Towns will have been built, representing an unprecedented urban growth. While some of these massive developments are still empty today, others have been rather successful. The substantial effort on the part of the Chinese government is to absorb up to 250 million people, chiefly migrants from the rural parts of the country. Unlike in Europe and North America, where new towns grew in accordance to the local industries, these new Chinese cities are mostly built to the point of near completion before introducing people. The interdisciplinary publication, written by architects, planners and geographers, explores the new urbanistic phenomenon of the "Chinese New Town". Especially commissioned photographs and maps illustrate many examples of these new settlements.

China and the Philippines

China and the Philippines PDF Author: Phillip B. Guingona
Publisher:
ISBN: 1009359231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Foregrounding the entangled history of China and the Philippines, Guingona brings to life an array of understudied, but influential characters, such as Filipino jazz musicians, magnetic Chinese swimmers, expert Filipino marksmen, leading Chinese educators, Philippine-Chinese bankers, Filipina Carnival Queens, and many others. Through archival research in multiple languages, this innovative study advances a more nuanced reading of world history, reframing our understanding of the first half of the twentieth century by bringing interactions between Asian people to the fore and minimizing the role of those who historically dominated global history narratives. Through methodologically distinct case studies, Guingona presents a critique of Eurocentric approaches to world/global history, shedding light on the interconnected history of China and the Philippines in a transformative period. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Urban Life in Contemporary China

Urban Life in Contemporary China PDF Author: Martin King Whyte
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226895491
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
Through interviews with city residents, Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish provide a unique survey of urban life in the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule. They conclude that changes in society produced under communism were truly revolutionary and that, in the decade under scrutiny, the Chinese avoided ostensibly universal evils of urbanism with considerable success. At the same time, however, they find that this successful effort spawned new and equally serious urban problems—bureaucratic rigidity, low production, and more.

Ghost Cities of China

Ghost Cities of China PDF Author: Wade Shepard
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 178360221X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
Featuring everything from sports stadiums to shopping malls, hundreds of new cities in China stand empty, with hundreds more set to be built by 2030. Between now and then, the country's urban population will leap to over one billion, as the central government kicks its urbanization initiative into overdrive. In the process, traditional social structures are being torn apart, and a rootless, semi-displaced, consumption orientated culture rapidly taking their place. Ghost Cities of China is an enthralling dialogue driven, on-location search for an understanding of China's new cities and the reasons why many currently stand empty.

Urban Spaces in Contemporary China

Urban Spaces in Contemporary China PDF Author: Deborah Davis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479431
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Explores the impact of post-Mao reforms on the economic, social and cultural dimensions of China's cities.

Introduction to the Urban History of China

Introduction to the Urban History of China PDF Author: Chonglan Fu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811382077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
This book explores China’s urban development, examining the history and culture of Chinese cities and providing a cultural background to the rapid urban development of contemporary China. It offers a new perspective on Chinese urban history, showcasing the traditional culture which underpins the emergence of the modern city and highlighting how traditional Chinese philosophical thought is reflected in the culture of urban planning and architecture in China, notably examining such issues as ‘the integration of man and nature’, yin and yang, bagua, and the Wu Xing.