ANATOMY OF “XIAOQU” A Form of Residential Planning thriving in contemporary China
Zhuoyue Ma 4294491 SEM II 2014/2015 SELECTED LECTURER :Gregory Bracken
Abstract This work is focusing on a form of urban residential planning thriving in contemporary China, namely “Xiaoqu” in Chinese. By finding its theoretical origins, tracing the development, cataloguing the critiques, discovering its hidden spirit, the author frame “Xiaoqu” in a particular historical and social structure, and suggest that as the advent of information society, it is the time to challenge the old rules, and seek for new solutions. Introduction In “THINKING SHANGHAI-A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis”, the PhD thesis of Gregory Bracken, Bracken applied Foucault’s theory of panopticon to the vibrant public space of Shanghai’s alleyway house in a positive way. Since in this system, everyone can be the object under surveillance, and also conversely, be a surveyor. We can read between the lines that the author appreciates the organic tree-structure of the alleyways which can generate a vibrant social life. And by describing the deadness of new built public space in Shanghai, usually the left over space in between the skyscrapers, the success of the alleyway houses is even more highlighted. But the reality is, nowadays, more and more dead public space is taking over, while the traditional “vibrant public space” is now under threat. 1 This comparison is a representative one which tell that the Chinese traditional social life in living environment is breaking down in urban limits, but there is one thing that we have to make it clear: The vibrant social life of alleyway house happens in living environment, but most of “the dead public space” between skyscrapers is not located in living environment. So the question here will be, where do people live now? What living forms come after the old ones of alleyway house or courtyard houses and provide the Chinese citizens new forms of social life in their living environment?
1
Gregory Bracken, “THINKING SHANGHAI-A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis” (PhD diss., Delft University of Technology, 2009).
“Which ‘Xiaoqu’ do you live in?” Chinese citizens living in cities are getting used to begin a greeting like this these years instead of asking “ Which street/hutong/xiang do you live in” in the past. “Xiaoqu”, almost the only form of residential planning in modern Chinese cities, is taking over the whole country at a high speed. Literally, the terms of “Xiaoqu” means “small district”, or “small community”, but they are not really small, most of them are with an area of 12-20 ha or even larger, and a population of 10000-15000. “Xiaoqu” is a form of housing estate with characteristics of “gated communities” 2, which means they are fenced and have controlled accessibilities. Generally, the residential buildings in “Xiaoqu” are multi-storey apartment housing, and tend to have uniform appearances, they are placed within delineated limits in some particular orders, to guarantee enough sunshine for each unit and form sub-clusters. The left-over space will be used for roads and collective facilities. The form of “Xiaoqu” originates from the concept of “neighbourhood unit” proposed by American planner Clarence Perry, “it was designed by Perry to act as a framework for urban planners attempting to design functional, self-contained and desirable neighbourhoods in the early 20th century in industrialising cities”.(C. Perry) 3 This concept discouraged strange vehicles passing through the neighbourhood to improve the security for the children, which forces the vehicles bypass the whole neighbourhood. Then together with the hierarchical road systems proposed by Alker Tripp in 1942 4, they composed as a new principle for urban residential planning, and resulting in a network with wide and sparse roads which is more suitable for vehicles. Then since the Chinese economic reform in 1978 5, the Chinese economy was taking off, during the course of high speed urbanization, the principle of neighbourhood unit combined with the hierarchical road systems was employed broadly for both new residential planning and urban renewal. At the beginning of this period, since there is no development of ultralarge-scale “Xiaoqu” yet, and the demand of closing the living area is still not strong, the new residential planning can be still integrated into the urban context to some extent. But as a new mode of community management emerged at 1990s, the professional companies began to take over the management of the collective space, taking the security and privacy into consideration, so they fenced the housing estates and controlled the entrances. By then, the “gated communities” become the mainstream of housing estate development. 2
In its modern form, a gated community is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gated_community 3 Perry, C. 1998 The Neighbourhood Unit (1929) Reprinted Routledge/Thoemmes, London, 1998, p.25-44 4 Alker Tripp, 23 August 1883 – 12 December 1954, a senior British police official who served as an Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police from 1932 to 1947. He devoted fifteen years to the study of London's traffic problems, and also traffic problems of other cities throughout Europe and North America, becoming a recognised authority on the traffic control. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alker_Tripp 5 Chinese economic reform refers to the program of economic reforms called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" in the People's Republic of China (PRC) that was started in December 1978 by reformists within the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Deng Xiaoping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
The basic working principle of the housing estates in China nowadays, is that each housing estate is a relatively independent district, seeking for a self-integrity. For instance, they tend to have self-contained road system, sufficient service facilities, and closed boundaries. They strive to improve the environment within the delineation of their respective, try to maintain a partial interests, but hold an indifferent attitude to the external environment, in other words, split from the surrounding urban context. About the structures of the housing estates, the buildings are organized hierarchically, as buildings-cluster –housing estate. The collective space is assigned to subsystems of roads , collective facilities and greenery, the width of roads and size of the grassland decrease gradually by scale, thus each subsystem presents a tree-structure in hierarchy. But the treestructures here work differently with the tree-structure of the alleyway houses in a way. The tree-structure of alleyway house integrates closely with the urban context which gives a sense of complexity, the structure of the roads generates a graduated privacy, the human-scale dimension of the streets allow the communal activities happen naturally in the streets. 6The alleyway house communities have no subsystems, but each element here can be multifunctional, they work well as a whole in a dense spatial mode. During the course of the fast Chinese economic development, especially in the transition time from an agricultural economy to industrial economy, the living standard of the citizens are improving indeed along with the development of the gated-community, especially the average living space per person and the richness of the collective facilities. But as this type of residential planning sprawls crazily, the urban area is split both physically and psychologically, which bring a couple of new problems in urban area. Firstly, the “mega-blocks” forming by the housing estate block possible urban branches, which adding burdens on the main roads and secondary roads. The daily traffic jams in Chinese big cities is the very phenomenon resulting from the “mega-blocks”, and the situation isn’t getting better although the roads are built as wide as possible. In contrast, in some notable western cities such as London and New York, one of the reasons why the urban transportation works in fluency is the dense road network. 7 Secondly, the long and fenced “facades” of the “mega-blocks” are making “dead” streets. Due to the high density of Chinese big cities, the outdoor space of dwellings is limited. The citizens can only make use of the streets and parks to have activities. The loss of vitality on streets makes a missing of public life. Another notable problem it brings is that, the empty area on the street are actually contributing to the crimes, although the original purpose of the fences is for security， the long and empty streets alongside the “mega-blocks” give chance to the criminals to break in without any functional surveillance, especially when the management of the communities 6
Gregory Bracken, “THINKING SHANGHAI-A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis” (PhD diss., Delft University of Technology, 2009). 7
Yi, Zhu, “From Housing Estate to Housing Block-The discussion on the Planning Pattern of Urban Community” (PhD diss., Tianjin University, 2006).
have flaws, or there is no high-tech instrument for security around. In comparison, the “natural surveillance” which is easily generated in the alleyway house neighbourhood in Shanghai is quite functional to avoid the crimes. 8 So the closure of the housing estates is not equal to security. In addition, concerned with the issues of cityscape, since the similar types of style are repeated to build the housing estates in a long term, the cities are gradually losing their local features which originate from the history. Even in some renovation projects of small land developments, the planners haven’t adjusted the design schemes according to the local context, nor regarded the local features as an opportunity to explore new forms of settlements. During this course, the Chinese cities are more and more presenting a similar feature of the cityscape, and lost the diversity and identity to be themselves. What’s more, on the social layer, the form of closed communities further solidify the existing social segregation. Along with the fast economic development, the polarization of wealth has become increasingly evident in today’s China, and the society is presenting its characteristic of pluralistic more and more with “fracture” as a feature. In fact, people from different classed have become social components living in “different eras”, although they co-exist in the same time and space. “In a fractured society, the requirements of different social components can be so different to an extent that they cannot understand each other at all.” 9 In this context, the land developers take this phenomenon into consideration, and positioning different housing estate accordingly. For instance, the housing estate for the low-income will placed “far away enough”, “into the corner, or place with disadvantages”. By means like that, they transform the “living space” into a defensive domain. The space for communion which relying on the physical space, is further separated, intensifying the social segregation. Differentiation of living space is not only a microcosm of class differentiation but also a symbol of "fractured society". The danger around the corner will be, the higher probability of conflicts between the segregated peoples who co-exist in the same time and space but with extremely different values and interests. To sum up, there have been quite a considerable number of discussions about the negative consequences following by the closed housing estates mode. But the public seems not recognizing the problems and even being accustomed to the mode quite well. But what are the reasons, is there any clue in the history of Chinese cities? As the Chinese society shifts dramatically since the Chinese Economic reform in 1978, the anxiety of people is growing. In this background, the “gated communities” brings them a sense of security, “because it isolates us from a dangerous world” 10. For the public, the country after the reform is full of changes out of control, and the wealth gap gets wider. For instance, according to a survey taken in 1994, 20% of the population occupied the 50% of all 8
Pu MIAO, “Cancer of Urban Life, Problems of Gated Communities in China and Their Solutions”,Time+Architecture, 5, 2005, 68. 9 Liping Sun, "Fracture -Chinese society since the 1990s", Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2003, p. 13. 10 Pu MIAO, “Cancer of Urban Life, Problems of Gated Communities in China and Their Solutions”,Time+Architecture, 5, 2005, 68.
the income by all the families all over the country, that’s one of the reasons why the crime rate increased 212% between 1979 and 1998 11. The significant change also happens on the social and cultural layers, the traditional values are breaking down, the new ideals are not set yet. There forms such a vacuum of value. People focus more on the accumulation of personal wealth rather than any communal interests. As the social differentiation intensifies, with rural population flowing into the urban area in larger numbers, both the unfamiliar accents and lifestyles exacerbate the fear and suspicion of the permanent citizens to the public space. Therefore, although the crime rate in China maintains at an acceptable level, the citizens still fell unsafe when they compare the current situation with the past. Then undoubtedly, the closed housing estates are regarded as an immediate fixes. Moreover, the closure of the estates also resonate with Chinese culture and urban development in the ancient history. Different from some western cities which originated from trade and craft, the Chinese cities (not villages)are mostly built by the empire power for the tax and military purposes, Beijing is a typical example. "Flourishing Chinese cities depends primarily on the entrepreneurial spirit of imperial government in the economic and political aspects rather than of the citizens." 12 This feature lead to two profound consequences in Chinese urban culture. Firstly, the public lack of participation in public affairs of the city. Secondly, the management of municipal facilities were easily neglected by the local government if there is a lack of political pressure and budgets. The citizens have to deal with their daily affairs on their own, including the security account. These cultural features are translated in the physical environment as introverted private space(courtyard house), the weak linkages between the public and private (high walls on both sides of the streets), and a lack of diverse public space other than streets. The representative examples will be the local government courts in ancient Chinese cities, which were located in the centre of the city with a hyperbolic size and closed high walls, and interrupted the transport in a rude way. This kind of convention has been extended all along with the process of history, in different times with different faces but the same spirit. In the planned economy period, the factories and universities in the cities were built with a form of big self-sufficient compounds one by one, without any interaction in the surroundings. After 1978, the closed housing estates are taking over soon with the same spirit behind.
11
Chaoyu Hu, “On Contemporary“Chinese-style Residence”and Its Development Strategy”, Cities and Towns Construction in Guangxi, 02,2010 12 Pu MIAO, “Cancer of Urban Life, Problems of Gated Communities in China and Their Solutions”,Time+Architecture, 5, 2005, 68.
Conclusion By finding its theoretical origins, tracing the development, cataloguing the critiques, discovering its hidden spirit, we frame “Xiaoqu” in a particular historical and social structure, and it shows that the thriving of an urban living form never happens by accident, it is a complexity of economical, sociological, historical, theoretical even political factors, and all the factors have interconnections with each other. For instance, the theory of “neighbourhood unit” was applied because it resonated with Chinese culture, and also caught up with the fast developing period. Later, with the advent of the information society, the professional began to recognize the problems by comparing with the modern western cities easily, while the public are still at the stage with historical influence in mind. The gap between the professionals and the public is more evident in the shifting Chinese society. To solve the problems emerging recently by the “outdated" urban residential planning, maybe it’s the time to grasp opportunities to break down the “gated-communities” and reveal a new picture of urban living to the citizens in the new era.
Reference list C. PERRY, 1998 The Neighborhood Unit (1929) Reprinted Routledge/Thoemmes, London, 1998, p.25-44 Chaoyu HU, “On Contemporary “Chinese-style Residence “and Its Development Strategy”, Cities and Towns Construction in Guangxi, 02,2010 Gregory BRAKEN, “THINKING SHANGHAI-A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis” (PhD diss., Delft University of Technology, 2009). Liping SUN, "Fracture -Chinese society since the 1990s", Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2003, p. 13. Pu MIAO, “Cancer of Urban Life, Problems of Gated Communities in China and Their Solutions”, Time + Architecture, 5, 2005, 68. Yi, ZHU, “From Housing Estate to Housing Block-The discussion on the Planning Pattern of Urban Community” (PhD diss., Tianjin University, 2006). Website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page