Introducing readers to the far-reaching global orientation that is now taking place in urban China, an international team of contributors examine the impact of globalization on Chinese cities, including the economic, cultural and political impact.

Rapid urbanization in China in recent decades and the challenges of social and regional integration and governance have been issues of major concern. This book explores the course of urbanization and development in China over recent decades. It considers a range of issues including urbanization, changing urban and regional systems, regional integration and governance. The book pays particular attention to the economic relations between Hong Kong and mainland China and how regional development, integration and governance unfold in the Hong Kong-Pearl River Delta region.

A sea of change has occurred in China since the 1978 economic reforms. Bringing together the work of leading scholars specializing in urban China, this book examines what has happened to the Chinese city undergoing multiple transformations during the reform era, with an emphasis on new processes of urban formation and the consequent reconstituted urban spaces. With arguments against the convergence thesis that sees cities everywhere becoming more Western in form and suggestions that the Chinese city is best seen as a multiplex city, Restructuring the Chinese City is an indispensable text for Chinese specialists, urban scholars and advanced students in urban geography, urban planning and China studies.

With urbanism becoming the key driver of socio-economic change in China, this book provides much needed up-to-date material on Chinese urban development. Demonstrating how it transcends the centrally-planned model of economic growth, and assessing the extent to which it has gone beyond the common wisdom of Chinese ‘gradualism’, the book covers a wide range of important topics, including: local land development the local state private-public partnership foreign investment urbanization ageing home ownership. Providing a clear appraisal of recent trends in Chinese urbanism, this book puts forward important new conceptual resources to fill the gap between the outdated model of the ‘Third World’ city and the globalizing cities of the West.

Denounced as parasitical under Chairman Mao and devalued by the norms of traditional Chinese ethics, the city now functions as a site of individual and collective identity in China. Cities envelop the countryside, not only geographically and demographically but also in terms of cultural impact. Robin Visser illuminates the cultural dynamics of three decades of radical urban development in China. Interpreting fiction, cinema, visual art, architecture, and urban design, she analyzes how the aesthetics of the urban environment have shaped the emotions and behavior of people and cultures, and how individual and collective images of and practices in the city have produced urban aesthetics. By relating the built environment to culture, Visser situates postsocialist Chinese urban aesthetics within local and global economic and intellectual trends. In the 1980s, writers, filmmakers, and artists began to probe the contradictions in China’s urbanization policies and rhetoric. Powerful neorealist fiction, cinema, documentaries, paintings, photographs, performances, and installations contrasted forms of glittering urban renewal with the government’s inattention to a livable urban infrastructure. Narratives and images depicting the melancholy urban subject came to illustrate ethical quandaries raised by urban life. Visser relates her analysis of this art to major transformations in urban planning under global neoliberalism, to the development of cultural studies in the Chinese academy, and to ways that specific cities, particularly Beijing and Shanghai, figure in the cultural imagination. Despite the environmental and cultural destruction caused by China’s neoliberal policies, Visser argues for the emergence of a new urban self-awareness, one that offers creative resolutions for the dilemmas of urbanism through new forms of intellectual engagement in society and nascent forms of civic governance.

Globalization, Modernity and The City weaves together broad social themes with detailed urban analysis to explore the connections between the rise of big cities, the creation of a global network and the making of the modern world. It explains the growth of big cities, the urban bias of global flows and the creation of metropolitan modernities. The text develops broad theories of the subtle and complex interactions between urbanization, globalization and modernization in a sweep of the urban experience across the modern world. Thematic chapters explore the making of the modern city in profiles of the growth of urban spectaculars, the role of new flanerie, the traffic issues of the modernist city, recurring issues of urban utopias and the rise of the primate city.

This interdisciplinary book details the economic, cultural and social background of the development of Chinese mega-cities, as well as presenting the mechanisms of governance and urban growth strategies. Therein, the main discussion centres on the cont

The sixth edition of the highly successful The City Reader juxtaposes the very best classic and contemporary writings on the city to provide the comprehensive mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies and Planning old and new. The City Reader is the anchor volume in the Routledge Urban Reader Series and is now integrated with all ten other titles in the series. This edition has been extensively updated and expanded to reflect the latest thinking in each of the disciplinary areas included and in topical areas such as compact cities, urban history, place making, sustainable urban development, globalization, cities and climate change, the world city network, the impact of technology on cities, resilient cities, cities in Africa and the Middle East, and urban theory. The new edition places greater emphasis on cities in the developing world, globalization and the global city system of the future. The plate sections have been revised and updated. Sixty generous selections are included: forty-four from the fifth edition, and sixteen new selections, including three newly written exclusively for The City Reader. The sixth edition keeps classic writings by authors such as Ebenezer Howard, Ernest W. Burgess, LeCorbusier, Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and Louis Wirth, as well as the best contemporary writings of, among others, Peter Hall, Manuel Castells, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Kenneth Jackson. In addition to newly commissioned selections by Yasser Elshestawy, Peter Taylor, and Lawrence Vale, new selections in the sixth edition include writings by Aristotle, Peter Calthorpe, Alberto Camarillo, Filip DeBoech, Edward Glaeser, David Owen, Henri Pirenne, The Project for Public Spaces, Jonas Rabinovich and Joseph Lietman, Doug Saunders, and Bish Sanyal. The anthology features general and section introductions as well as individual introductions to the selected articles introducing the authors, providing context, relating the selection to other selection, and providing a bibliography for further study. The sixth edition includes fifty plates in four plate sections, substantially revised from the fifth edition.

This book explores how history shapes city development, assesses the role of government at national and sub-national levels through case studies of three secondary cities, Quanzhou, Yiwu and Nannin, and provides a link between city development and internationalization. In doing so, the book highlights alternative paths to development and internationalization that have received little attention in mainstream discussions. The case studies in the book provide insights into the development and internationalization of cities, linking them to historical, social, institutional and economic factors—narratives that bridge the two themes of city development and internationalization. Strong analyses are accompanied by photographs and charts that allow the reader to learn about Chinese cities beyond the major urban areas in China, garner better understanding of the role of the Chinese state, and appreciate the relevance of “city-specific assets” for city planning.

This Handbook offers an unrivalled overview of current research into how globalization is affecting the external relations and internal structures of major cities in the world. By treating cities at a global scale, it focuses on the 'stretching' of urban functions beyond specific place locations, without losing sight of the multiple divisions in contemporary world cities. The book firmly bases city networks in their historical context, critically discusses contemporary concepts and key empirical measures, and analyses major issues relating to world city infrastructures, economies, governance and divisions. The variety of urban outcomes in contemporary globalization is explored through detailed case studies. Edited by leading scholars of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network and written by over 60 experts in the field, the Handbook is a unique resource for students, researchers and academics in urban and globalization studies as well as for city professionals in planning and policy.