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Christopher C. M. Lee
The contemporary Chinese city is a developmental the cheaper version, unrelenting rubber-stamped
city (fig. 1). In the developmental city, the political blocks. The urbanization of these megaplots
legitimacy of the governing party is sustained by, results in the dissolution of the city as a legible
above all other considerations, its ability to initiate, artifact; the civic dimension and public sphere
promote, and administer economic growth. The play no part. This sea of speculative enclaves does
developmental city relies on market speculation not constitute any idea of the city, either in the
as its modus operandi; it requires that planning European tradition, as a space of coexistence, or
strategies and parameters have minimal develop- in the Chinese sense, as an administrative frame-
mental restriction or political resistance in order work with a clear and legible deep structure. What
to attract developers and financiers; and it is often is lost is the idea of the city as a common space
legitimized as rational planning or the scientific par excellence.
methodeuphemisms for a resistance-free This essay argues that a critical reading of the
utilitarianism. history and tradition of city making in China has
The developmental city uses the megaplot as the potential to counter this imbalance in develop-
a basic planning module. This oversized tract can ment. It does not aspire to a re-creation of the city
vary greatly in size between urban areas and the form or urban fabric of ancient China. Rather, it
peripheries of the city. It is an efficient planning proposes a recuperation of the cultural and philo-
apparatus that allows the government to urbanize sophical ideas that have underpinned the political,
rapidly by shifting to developers the investment artistic, and aesthetic production of the city as a
required for infrastructure. The state is responsible total work of arta collective artifact.
only for widely spaced infrastructure; the devel-
oper must provide infrastructure and public goods 1.
within the plot. In 1992, Manuel Castells referred to Singapore
The basic parcel of a master plan, the mega- as a developmental city-state. He claimed that a
plot is represented by a colored patch indicating state is developmental when it establishes as its
use. The lack of architectural and spatial attri- principle of legitimacy its ability to promote and
butes promotes efficiency in planning and land sustain development, understanding by develop-
transactions. The megaplot is a tabula rasa, a ment the combination of steady high rates of
condition that is favored by speculative develop- economic growth and structural change in the
ers for the speed and freedom of development productive system, both domestically and in
it offers. Within the megaplots, buildings are its relationship to the international economy.1
regulated by planning parameters that result in Singapore, he argued, is achieving its impressive
either freestanding towers in large unconsoli- economic success because the government
dated open spaces or colossal superblock housing exercises tight control of society and also because
developments, gated luxury communities or, in the population accepts such measures. The
9
The City as a Common Framework
1
Shanghai, c. 2012: the developmental city
developmental city-state is driven by two impor- directors and sometimes more directly as the chief
tant ideas. First, the state prioritizes the trans- executive officers. At the helm of this corporate-
formation of economic conditions above everything like organization is the Communist Party secre-
else. Second, economic development is elevated tary.3 In China, the developmental state, or
to a high status both due to its larger goals and as local government, was an outcome of the economic
an end in itself. Singapore is ruled by a one-party liberalization of 1979, in which the transfor-
system with a highly centralized decision-making mation and development of the city was central
structure that micromanages all aspects of to Chinas transition from a planned to a more
economic and social development. This structure market-oriented economy. As noted by Fulong
takes the view that the city is an apparatus for Wu, Jiang Xu and Anthony Gar-On Yeh, this
development as well as a demonstration of the transition can be summarized as one from state-
states ability to deliver tangible improvements to led extensive industrialization to urban-based
the lives of its citizens. A city conceived through intensive urbanization.4 Given that land is owned
this ideology is always in a state of becoming; con- by the state or collectively and that the state is
tinually remolded according to a political agenda, unable to address the infrastructural shortage, the
the city is made suitable and adaptive for capital government opted for extracting rent from state-
accumulation following the economic logic of owned land. With the land and housing reform that
neoliberalism. As Koolhaas declared in 1995, this followed,5 urban spaces were put to work, com-
developmental model is being implemented in modified through land-leasing that turned housing
cities across China.2 into real estate. This ideological flip did not dimin-
J. C. Oi has argued that this concept of the ish the power of the state but represented a shift
developmental state was attractive to the Chinese from the state defending proletariat ideology to
government, but with one crucial difference: The promoting economic rationality.
state responsible for much of this growth [in rural Eager to attract foreign direct investment,
industry] is local governments that treat enter- local governments began adopting the methods
prises within their administrative purview as one of global-oriented production, thereby turning
component of a larger corporate whole. Local urbanization into a tool for economic growth.
officials act as the equivalent of a board of Urbanization was no longer reactive to demands
for housing the proletariat, as in Britain and 10
Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. It was now
predictive, in the form of speculative real estate.
The socialist city, which emphasized production in
both function and symbolic representation, had
been reconceptualized as the developmental city.
To capture the flow of capital in the city, the state
increased the level of urbanization and allowed
rural to urban migration. Rural counties are subject
to the leadership of the city; the citys resources
are extracted for speculative profit.
An urbanization process that offers the least
resistance to capital, encourages speed in its real-
ization, and absolves the state from the provision
In cases where the megaplot is utilized to the cutting-edge building technology required.
serve up an alluring image of the city, the archi- The spectacular image of the CBD conveys the
tecture is designed as the exception, not the promise of success and disguises speculation
norm. Local governments, usually the city plan- as certainty.
ning bureaus, engage urban design consultants As a result, the architecture of both norm and
to make a development attractive and unique.8 exception serves up an urbanism of enclaves frag-
Once the designs have been accepted by the mented and closed off according to social class.
local government, the urban plan is subjected They are fragmented by inflated and duplicated
to the planning parameters and color patches of roadways, spaced out towers, large building
the master plan, but in a way that is calibrated blocks, remedial decorative landscape, and life-
to encourage the intended outcome. The central less ground planes. And they are closed off by
business districtan oxymoronis the most fences, security gates, hoarded open spaces and
common example of this exception in China. In luxury amenities, and roads so wide that they
a CBD, the form of an office tower is anything make walking onerous if not hazardous. This sea
but the pure extrusion of a plan (fig. 7). Instead, of urbanization is not what constitutes the true
the high-risenever less than thirty stories meaning of the city, the space of coexistence.
tapers, chamfers, folds, bends, twists, and Practitioners of new urbanism and purveyors
contorts. Exterior form molds interior floor plates. of transport-oriented development claim that
The building announces, bombastically, the the remedy to such ills is simple: narrower roads
ability of the sponsor to accumulate the capital (but more of them); buildings that define the edges
necessary to build the vast structure and to afford of streets; mixed programs; reasonably scaled
13 blocks that promote walking and bicycling; public
transport with dense transportation nodes (fig. 8).9
While practical and commendable, these solu-
tions neglect the fact that the city is not just the
efficient management of spaces for work, living,
and leisure with a functional and mechanistic
inevitability that is outside a cultural and political
will. A rethinking of the developmental city must
challenge and offer an alternative to its ideological
premise. It begins with a recuperation of the idea
of the city.
2.
The City as a Common Framework
3.
If the root of the European city is coexistence 10
from free will, the root of the Chinese city can be Leon Krier, The True City, 1983
4.
The recourse to the origin and history of the city
to uncover its very essence is not anachronistic.
The city, by definition, is a space of plurality, and
the multiplicities that define the life of the city
have architectural and spatial counterparts. The
globalization of the contemporary city has cast
it even more acutely as a space contested by
conflicting demandsa pluralistic space par
excellence. To think about the ways in which archi-
tecture can respond to the task of defining what
is common, through idea and deep structure,
is in itself an attempt to create the city as a pro-
ject. This attempt recognizes that the task for
architecture is not to articulate multiplicity
through accentuating differences, through an
architecture of novelty, but to focus on common
19 ideas and structures.
Forbidden City, Beijing
Despite the epistemological and metaphysical
differences that separate European and Chinese
conceptions, the city remains a manifestation
of the idea of coexistence, a common artifact or
framework. An alternative interpretation of Aldo
21
The City as a Common Framework
20
Aerial view of Beijing, 1943
Rossis early architectural projects offers a way to artifact of civilization. It is the sum of the culture,
locate the ideas that are common to the city; then politics, and history of its citizens. However, the
the corresponding deep structure advances an traditional European city, composed as it is of
architecture of the city. contrasting architecture, of the rule and the excep-
The most important concepts put forth by tion, cannot be read as a whole. To resolve this,
Rossi in his Larchitettura della citt are urban Rossi proposed the term urban artifact to refer to
artifacts and collective memory. The book was the architecture of the city that is both permanent
written in part as a critique of modernisms naive and propelling. In other words, the urban artifact
functionalism, in which he claims that the utilitar- must both persist over time and participate in the
ian and unitary master plan of the modernist continuous transformation of the city. Through its
city has lost its validity in the face of the realities constancy the artifact becomes a structure that
of urban life.22 Rossi returned to the historic accretes the memory of the city. The urban artifact
European city as a site for architectural rejuve- for Rossi is both the housing and the monuments
nation. The city, through its architecture, is an of the city. The former contains the memory of
everyday life; and the latter, its unique characteris- 22
tics, events, and collective will. The urban artifact,
sanctioned by use and acceptance over time, is
thus the repository of collective memory.
Rossi cites the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua
(fig. 21) as an example of an urban artifact: over
time, it has contained a multiplicity of functions
that are entirely independent of its form.23 The
building has the character of permanence as well as
of force. In other words, the palazzo is an urban
artifact because it is transparent in terms of function
and independent of any programmatic failure;
it is a permanent element because its physical
presence remains even as its function changes; it
27
Aldo Rossi, Gallaratese Housing
From Due Progetti
1 Manuel Castells, Four Asian 8 In recent years, foreign Philosophy, vol. 1, The Period 26
Tigers with a Dragon Head: A urban design and architectural of the Philosophers (From the
Comparative Analysis of the practices have been engaged by Beginnings to Circa 100 B.C.),
State, Economy, and Society city planning bureaus to design trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton:
in the Asian Pacific Rim, in the megaplots. The preparation Princeton University Press,
States and Development in the of master plans, in contrast, 1952), 27997.
Asian Pacific Rim, ed. Richard is closed to foreign consultants
P. Appelbaum and Jeffrey due to national security 15 Confucius is the Latinized
Henderson (Newbury Park: concerns. name of Kung-fu-zu, or Master
Sage, 1992). Kung, who is credited as the
9 Peter Calthorpe, Low founder of Confucianism. A
2 Rem Koolhaas, Singapore Carbon Cities: Principles and scholar, teacher, and official,
Songlines, S, M, L, XL: Small, Practices for Chinas Next he served as an adviser to
Medium, Large, Extra-Large Generation of Growth, Duke Ding of the small state of
(New York: Monacelli, 1995), <http://www.calthorpe.com/ Lu (in present-day Shandong
100989. files/China%20Design%20 province).
Manual%20Pamphlet.pdf>,
3 J. C. Oi, The Role of the Local accessed January 30, 2013. 16 Heerlee Glessner Creel,