FOLDED RIGHT OF URBAN RESIDENCY

Chengqian Chen

Beginning in 2010, Beijing began a decade-long state-led campaign to “Shu Jie” or decongest so-called “low-end” population from informal settlements.1 The policy aimed to eliminate potential security and fire hazards and preserve the capital’s international image by shifting this population and industry to distant suburbs, neighboring cities, or relatively underdeveloped areas. The evacuation of informal settlements in the Sanhuan Xincheng (Third Ring New Town) was completed in 2012 as a demonstration project involving the establishment of a new high-speed railway station in the vicinity. More than 2,000 residents were evacuated during the project implementation.2

This paper introduces Beijing as a global capital and point out its specificity as a postsocialist center. In terms of research methodology, this paper will adopt a topological perspective and use “folding”3 as a key analytical concept to study the changes in urban density, intensity, and height in the ring of new cities, The goal is to reveal the topological relations of state power in urban space and environment through maps of population and urban form changes, and settlement profiles, and the impact and disruption of this urban spatial change on the everyday lives of informal dwellers in local communities.

Taking the settlement removal in the Third Ring New Town as the object of study, this paper illustrates the top-down political power reshaping Chinese cities through urban renewal4 and the bottom-up networks tracking the identities and everyday lives of informal dwellers displaced in the process. The research rethink the common urban meritocracy and even anti-urbanism in China’s urban governance from the perspective of everyday urbanism.5 Through examples and critical reflections on the case of the Sweet Potato Community, we will conceive alternative ways to achieve urban spatial justice.

In the concluding section, this paper explores the agency of urban designer to delay or block this exclusionary process, through two alternative approaches: one is influencing the value judgment of the public and policy makers from the bottom up through urbanism as a tool of ideological production; the other is through opportunistic appropriation of the infrastructure improvements of as an opportunity to deliver social resources and economic benefits towards the vulnerable groups.

Keywords

Floating Population, Informal Settlement, Topological Twist, Space Justice.

URBANISMS

Critical Urbanism, Everyday Urbanism, Anti-Urbanism.

Notes

1. Beijing Municipal Commission of Planning and Natural Resources. The Beijing City Master Plan 2004-2020. Beijing Planning Review, February 2005. http://ghzrzyw.beijing.gov. cn/zhengwuxinxi/zxzt/bjcsztgh2004/202201/ t20220110_2587452.html

2. Tingting Li, “Underground space cleared of 120,000 occupants in 3 years.“ The Beijing News, February 08, 2015. http://epaper.bjnews. com.cn/html/2015-02/08/content_561650. htm?div=-1.

3. Allen, John. “Topological Twists.” Dialogues in Human Geography 1, no. 3 (2011): 283–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820611421546.

4. Rowland, Nicholas J. “Infrastructural Lives: Urban Infrastructure in Context.” Science & Technology Studies 28, no. 3 (2015): 125–27. https://doi.org/10.23987/sts.55346.

5. Luca Lazzarini. “The Everyday (in) Urbanism: What’s New on the Spot.” Sociology Study 6, no. 4 (2016). https://doi.org/10.17265/21595526/2016.04.005.