The City after Chinese New Towns by Birkhäuser

By 2020, roughly 400 Chinese new towns will have been built, representing an unprecedented urban growth. The government is making a substantial effort to absorb up to 250 million people, chiefly migrants from rural parts of the country. Unlike in Europe and North America, where new towns grew in parallel with local economies, the construction of contemporary Chinese new towns is almost completed before people are allowed to move in. As a result, some of these massive developments are already inhabited while others are still empty.

The City after Chinese New Towns

This interdisciplinary publication explores the phenomenon of “Chinese new towns” based on international research carried out by architects, planners and geographers. It focuses on psychological and social ramifications, for instance how new towns change perceptions of the neighbourhood and proximity, and analyses how this new urbanity affects politics and the national narrative. The book examines the spaces of three new towns in detail – Tongzhou, Zhaoqing and Zhengdong – and then moves on to investigate both the exceptionality and the ordinariness of Chinese urbanisation. An inspiring photo essay captures the poignant and cheerful moments in the everyday lives of new town residents.

The City after Chinese New Towns Spaces and Imaginaries from Contemporary Urban China

Michele Bonino Francesca Governa Maria Paola Repellino Angelo Sampieri (eds.)

ISBN 978-3-0356-1765-8

www.birkhauser.com

RESEARCH_The City after Chinese_BEZUG_190116.indd Alle Seiten

18.01.19 16:45

Preface Michele Bonino, Florence Graezer Bideau, Jian Liu 11

I. Introduction Michele Bonino, Francesca Governa, Maria Paola Repellino, Angelo Sampieri

12 Questioning New Towns 17 What Are We Talking about when We Talk about Cities? 20 Between the Exceptional and the Ordinary 23 What Does a New Town Do? 26 About This Book

Walking Through Samuele Pellecchia 59

II. Chinese New Towns in Policies, Narratives and Tradition 60 A Policy Discourse on New Town Development in Contemporary China Jian Liu, Gaofeng Xu 71 When Ends Don’t Meet. Historical Interpretations of Twenty-First-Century New Towns Filippo De Pieri, Davide Vero 78 New Urbanisation and “Go-West” Policies Mauro Berta, Francesca Frassoldati 90 Shaping Urbanity. Politics and Narratives Florence Graezer Bideau, Anna Pagani 97 Architecture and New Towns Michele Bonino 105

The New Towns of Zhaoqing, Zhengdong and Tongzhou Filippo Fiandanese, Leonardo Ramondetti, Astrid Safina

131

III. Spaces 133 Exhibition Halls Maria Paola Repellino 143 High-Rise Apartments Alessandro Armando, Francesco Carota 156 Undergrounds Valeria Federighi, Filippo Fiandanese 167 Urban Parks Bianca Maria Rinaldi 177

Mapping New Towns Michele Bonino, Francesca Governa, Maria Paola Repellino, Angelo Sampieri 203

IV. Openings 204 The City Is Available. Chinese New Towns as a Backup Space Angelo Sampieri 215 Scaling Up and Scaling Out. New Towns Building and â&#x20AC;&#x153;the Standpoint of an Absenceâ&#x20AC;? Francesca Governa 230

References 246 About the Authors 247

Index of Places 251

Illustration Credits

Walking Through Samuele Pellecchia Generally speaking my work involves observing. That’s what I’m asked to do. I pick up my cultural baggage and material luggage, charge my cameras and off I go. I try to travel light, in every respect. But often it’s not easy, because the reason why I’ve been asked to take pictures nearly always has an underlying rhetoric: the answer to the question lies in the question itself. And as far as I’m concerned, however good my intentions are, I always risk falling into the trap of what I already know. The trap of the images I’ve already seen and have stuck in my brain, over my eyes. China is no exception; it has been so extensively observed and judged in the last few decades that it was almost impossible for me to try and look at the country without those deep-rooted Western prejudices that I often find myself criticising in other people’s observations or interpretations. Although I set out with the best intentions of keeping an open mind and maintaining intellectual freedom, I landed in China f ully aware that my extremely entrenched inclination to classify, file, memorise, judge and, ultimately, appropriate myself intellectually, would be triggered in no time. That my mental colonialism would soon take over just as soon as I found myself in front of something I had already seen, or a situation that was hard to decipher, one where the signs could somehow be pigeonholed into a known category. I think this did happen to me, at least to begin with. Despite the research approach that was purposely left open-ended, as was the result, I repeated my pattern and r edid the homework I was already familiar with. I used the name I had already heard; I reproduced the images I had already seen. And just as soon as I had slipped into this comfortable vision, I realised that nevertheless Tongzhou, Zhengdong and Zhaoqing existed and grew. That despite my cultural baggage and all my ideas about the country side, cities, villages, wellbeing, practicality, beauty, speed, history, etc., I hadn’t understood anything. That from one day to the next Zhengdong had already changed, and the more I tried to fit the new town into one of my mental and visual pigeonholes, the more Tongzhou would come out the other side. And vice versa. The way these three new towns are built escapes me. Just as soon as I had put the inhabitants of Zhengdong into a model, they would build a floor on top of the ones that the builder had constructed in the organised design of the terraced houses. Woefully destroying my pigeonholes. Because just as soon as I began to consider the curves as a symbol of wealth, and straight lines as a sign of ordinariness, I was immediately contradicted by the children’s playground or the care lavished on the hedge planted under the viaduct. China and its new towns rise skywards whether or not I interpret them. Whether or not I photograph them. Whether or not everyone else, like me, that’s photographing them,

criticises them, classifies them, verbally dismantles them or simply “mentions” them. New towns are huge objects. They exist! Standing out against the sky or sprawling along riverbanks and canals. Round and curved, or long and straight. Immobile or mobile in the pathways around them, in the streets and railways built around them. At the same time, new towns are images of a new urban future those who build them, for those who watch them grow, for those who want to own them. In the practically inconceivable possibility of being able to own them. Possession is part of being Chinese. Because this endeavour is their great endeavour. I’ve understood this much, perhaps (again – perhaps). During my meanderings with eyes wide open, yes, I’ve seen how straight and curved lines divide two kinds of possibilities. The rich curved line, the more modest straight line, but nevertheless not r ural. Many times have I seen this situation elsewhere, and others have contradicted me. But as always, and therefore in this case too, it depends on how one looks at things. So I think I’ve understood that these new towns nonetheless represent a possibility. Therefore they exist. They exist because we watch them grow. And often the smiles I’ve found around them have taught me so much. Much more than my cultural prejudices. The wonderful old men sitting on the edges of the worksites, who in Italy will impart advice, impart the same advice in Zhengdong and Zhaoqing, but then they go on to tell you that they’ll live in them and that this doesn’t bother them at all. They aren’t at all bothered by being once again part of a huge, seemingly unstoppable and above all Chinese project. A project that belongs to them, one they really want to show me. Like the boys at the exhibition hall who, despite the fact they knew full well I wasn’t in Tongzhou to buy an apartment, tumbled over each other to look after me and show me the beauty of what they were promoting. They proudly wanted to show me, a Westerner, what they were doing. They. Us. This distinction is quite pointless when you’re sitting with old men next to a worksite. We are mirrors, and we constantly mirror ourselves. I’ve often had the feeling that if only either one was missing in this “reflection”, everything would be extremely less interesting and undoubtedly less amusing.

1 A man looking at plans and projects exhibited in an observation tower in the middle of the construction sites of Zhaoqing New Area, Zhaoqing, 2017. 2 Old demolished rural houses and new residential building, Zhongmu County, Zhengzhou, 2017. 3 A guard controlling the entrance of a residential compound, Tongzhou New District, Tongzhou, Beijing, 2017. 4 Building a new road along the Jailu River near Zhengzhou, 2017. 5 A historical pagoda surrounded by construction sites, Tongzhou New District, Tongzhou, Beijing, 2017. 6 A street vendor in Zhongmu County, Zhengzhou, 2017. 7 Peasants of Taiqian New Agricultural Town leaving their houses to go to work, Zhongmu County, Zhengzhou, 2017. 8 Main square of Wangjia’an, Zhongmu County, Zhengzhou, 2017. 9 High speed railway between Kaifeng and Zhengzhou, 2017. 10 Construction

site in Zhaoqing New Area, Zhaoqing, 2017. 11 A man standing in front of a construction site near the high speed railway station of Kaifeng, 2017. 12 Tongzhou New District viewed from the top of a tower, Tongzhou, Beijing, 2017. 13 A woman shelters herself from the sun outside the new high speed railway station, Zhaoqing New Area, Zhaoqing, 2017. 14 The new Convention Hall, Zhaoqing New Area, Zhaoqing, 2017. 15 Creating a wedding album on the construction site: wedding couple in Zhengdong, Zhengzhou, 2017. 16 Recently completed gardens within the residential compounds, Zhaoqing New Area, Zhaoqing, 2017. 17 The CBD , the pagoda and a new luxury residential compound in Tongzhou New District, Tongzhou, Beijing, 2017. 18 The square in front of the high speed railway station, Zhengdong, Zhengzhou, 2017.

Architecture and New Towns Michele Bonino This chapter will reflect on the role played by architectural projects in the construction of Chinese new towns by observing new spaces in cities that differ not only in

ften amaze us: whether they are copies of other buildings, propose new functional o combinations or astonish us with their obsessive ordinariness. However, a more indepth study shows that they appear to play a secondary role in the construction of the city: even if the urban plan is often sophisticated, it fails to prompt a merger between the urban dimension and the architecture. It often simply defines urban grids and boundaries, creating huge lots that can easily be assigned to developers interested in acquiring building rights. Even now, despite the warning signals sent to the Chinese economy by speculative mechanisms, building rights are one of the main sources of income for local administrations. We ignore the kind of architecture that will be built on each lot, since the choice lies with the individual promoter or builder. Of course, in some cases thoughtful planners who are aware of the problem are mindful of architectural organisation when designing lots – for example, in Zhengdong, where Kisho Kurokawa’s design reflects qualitative forms and features of a twentieth-century urban project. In the end, however, even in this case there is a missing link. P aradoxically, this situation exposes the architecture to such an extent that it is enhanced rather than nuanced behind melanges and stratifications. This leads to a second paradox: on the one hand, this collection of objects is no longer controlled by administrations and governing authorities; on the other, they understand its clarity, effectiveness and potential instrumentality. As a result, they assign it the economic, propagandistic and commercial features that buildings more rooted in the urban fabric would be unable to express as clearly. The examples illustrated in this contribution will use ten new towns to show how these features can convey certain values: Leisure, Health, Nature, Public Life and Urban Space. Architecture and Leisure The Lanzhou New Area is a state-level new area established in 2012 currently being built in Gansu Province as a logistics outpost for the New Silk Road. Thousands of families are settling in a desertic area to work on this strategic hub. New Lanzhou is a glorification of the urban grid; it so dominates the area that some parts of the surrounding mountains have been carved out in order to complete it. Several quadrants of this grid are earmarked for entertainment and leisure: when one walks around the streets under construction in Lanzhou it looks like an oversized design choice, one that is intended to create a world for the many individuals who, when they live here, will probably never be able to move. Lot by lot, quadrant by quadrant, construction is u nderway on amusement parks and artificial lagoons with bridges and watchtowers; the latter stretch as far as the tourist area, where an entrepreneur has built life-size replicas

II. Chinese New Towns in Policies, Narratives and Tradition

size, but also in administrative setup. This “on-site” observation is based on several r esearch projects carried out between 2013 and 2018.1 The buildings in new towns

of some of the most important monuments travellers would see if they went on a world tour: the Parthenon, the Sphinx, the Colosseum and the Taj Mahal (Fig. 1). All for the benefit of the new inhabitants. As in many other new towns, a civic centre will be constructed for every X number of lots to be built in the Sino- Singapore eco-city in Tianjin; this is the result of an agreement (2008) between the governments of China and Singapore to jointly develop a socially Fig. 1 Lanzhou New Area, Gansu Province, 2016. The Parthenon and harmonious and environmentally the head of the giant robot will dominate this touristic park. friendly new town. These small buildings share the same layouts and characteristics but reveal important contrasts when they are actually inhabited. On the one hand, the internal layout appears to be “scientifically” designed based on standards established according to the number of visitors and areas available for all sorts of recreational activities, from ping pong to mah-jong, and every age group, from children to the elderly. On the other, the soft, reassuring a rchitectural language often alludes to traditional architecture and facilitates the spontaneous use of open spaces around the building, even if the spaces were not actually designed to be collectively used. In a new town wishing to physically materialise the urban sustainability concept, the attempt to promote a social dimension through the calculation of quantity and performance actually produces the best results when it envisages an unforeseen use of public spaces. Architecture and Health The Chongli “Snow Town” in Zhangjiakou Prefecture is one of the two mountain venues of the next Winter Olympic Games in 2022. This event will have permanent repercussions. The Government is taking advantage of the sports event to promote a more sustainable lifestyle amongst Beijing’s middle class in line with the expectations of a rapidly growing economy. A new high-speed rail link and motorway will connect the capital with the city under construction in the mountains 300 kilometres away, possibly marking the advent of a new evolution of the urban experience. People in Beijing currently live mainly indoors, restricted on a daily basis by the environment. This f rustrates the expectations of a more cultured and discerning population that will, in the future, want to adopt a model based on outdoor life and physical exercise. This lifestyle will increasingly impact public spaces. Most of the houses in the Athletes Village in new Chongli have already been sold to people who will leave the capital permanently. Rather than a strictly functional venue, it is a manifesto of a “city of active health” sprawling along the valleys. There are opportunities for people to walk along public paths circling the buildings as well as continuous contact with nature between the urban spaces. 98

Zhaoqing New Area. The Saturation of the Pearl River Delta Astrid Safina The Pearl River Delta is one of the most representative and emblematic examples of economic and urban growth in China in the last fifty years.1 Starting in the late seventies, economic growth and a continuous urbanisation process turned this mainly agricultural area into a densely urbanised region with a current average density of over five hundred individuals per square kilometre along its eastern edge (Ng and Tang, 1999) and a diffuse and increasingly dense urban system to the west. This makes the Pearl River Delta one of the most extended and populous-regions (Florida, Gulden and Mellander, 2008),2 as well as the most polycentric global city-region in the world (Bie, Jong and Derudder, 2015).3 This ambiguous polycentrism was based on a logic which, a lbeit aimed at reinforcing certain centralities, generated a capillary expansion made up of cities and villages that emerged in the eighties (Xu and Li, 2009). These urban areas have continued to expand, each on a different scale and at their own i ndividual speed (Bie, Jong and Derudder, 2015). So in the last thirty years the entire Delta has been turned into a continuously inhabited centre (Wei et al., 2017) with a clear inner hierarchy (metropolis; big city; medium-sized city; small city; village) where s everal nuclei have gradually consolidated their national and global roles (Bie, Jong and Derudder, 2015).4 Zhaoqing is marginal to this enormous conurbation. It is a city of 665,000 inhabitants (Statistics Bureau of Zhaoqing City, 2016) located in an urban area of 85 square kilometres and situated 80 kilometres west of Guangzhou along the main infrastructures stretching up the Pearl River. However, it is positioned on the western edge of the Delta, an area that has never been part of the major processes in which this agglomeration has been involved. So its marginality is chiefly due to the topographic and geographic traits of the area, i. e., the fact it is difficult to access from the Special Administrative Zones of Hong Kong and Macao (Bie, Jong and Derudder, 2015).5 This has meant that compared to the rest of the region the city and western part of the Pearl River Delta6 have undergone less economic, urban and infrastructural development (Wei et al., 2017).7 As a result, Zhaoqing is still a compact urban nucleus surrounded by water ways, mountains and small rural villages, separated from the rest of the Pearl River Delta by vast areas of agricultural land. (Fig. 2) However, beginning in the nineties, several initiatives by the municipality were implemented to integrate Zhaoqing into the Pearl River Delta. In particular, these initiatives tried to link the settlements and infrastructures by promoting expansion eastwards, along the river. More specifically, in 1995 the municipality promoted the Zhaoqing City Masterplan (1995 – 2010) (Zhaoqing Municipal People’s Government, 1995), which involved not only doubling the size of the existing city by creating a new urban area (Fig. 1) linking Zhaoqing to the Dinghu District, but also enhancing the infrastructure network along State Road 321 between Guangzhou and Chengdu. The aim of this operation was to increase the urban density 107

10 km

Fig. 1 Masterplan of Zhaoqing City (2015 – 2030).

108

Fig. 7 Settlement under construction in the central part of Zhaoqing New Area.

Tongzhou: building the new town by replacing parts of the old city.

About the Authors Alessandro Armando, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Department of Architecture and Design ( DAD ), Politecnico di Torino. Mauro Berta, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Department of Architecture and Design ( DAD ), Politecnico di Torino.

Liu Jian, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and esign, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, D Beijing.

Michele Bonino, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Department of Architecture and Design ( DAD ), Politecnico di Torino, Rector’s Delegate for Relations with China.

Anna Pagani, PhD Candidate in the programme “Architecture and Sciences of the City”, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

Florence Graezer Bideau, Senior Scientist, College of umanities, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. H

Samuele Pellecchia, photographer and Director of Prospekt Photographers, Milano.

Francesco Carota, PhD Candidate in the programme “Architecture. History and Project”, Politecnico di Torino. Filippo De Pieri, Associate Professor of History of rchitecture, Department of Architecture and Design A ( DAD ), Politecnico di Torino. Valeria Federighi, Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Department of Architecture and Design ( DAD ), Politecnico di Torino. Filippo Fiandanese, PhD Candidate in the programme “Architecture. History and Project”, Politecnico di Torino.

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Francesca Governa, Full Professor of Economic and olitical Geography, Interuniversity Department of P Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST ) and FULL Future Urban Legacy Lab, Politecnico di Torino.

Leonardo Ramondetti, PhD Candidate in the programme “Urban and Regional Development”, Politecnico di Torino. Maria Paola Repellino, PhD in Architecture and Building Design, Politecnico di Torino. Currently Research Fellow at the Politecnico di Torino, Executive Director of China Room. Bianca Maria Rinaldi, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST ), Politecnico di Torino. Astrid Safina, PhD Candidate in the programme “Urban and Regional Development”, Politecnico di Torino.

Francesca Frassoldati, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Department of Architecture and Design ( DAD ) and FULL Future Urban Legacy Lab, Politecnico di Torino.

Angelo Sampieri, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST ), Politecnico di Torino.

Xu Gaofeng, PhD Candidate, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University.

Davide Vero, PhD Candidate in the programme “Architecture. History and Project”, Politecnico di Torino.