The Tale of a Research Project

Suburbanization Processes in Rural China

The urban growth that has taken place in China since 1978 is now decelerating due to different factors, above all the slowdown in economic growth and the new measures to limit urban entrepreneurialism. However, some issues from the first growth period (1978–2005) still persist: economic and social inequities, environmental problems, demographic imbalances on local and national levels, as well as disparities between rural and urban areas (Liu & Long, 2014). To cope with these problems, an increasing number of national policies have shifted focus from large urban centers toward “the invisible China:” rural, internal areas impacted only slightly by the development that came after the economic reform (Rozelle & Hell, 2020).1

Addressing the challenges of this part of the Chinese territory means dealing with what, already in 2006, were defined by the president Hu Jintao and the prime minister

Wen Jiabao as “the three rural issues:” the drop in agricultural production, the widening gap between urban and rural populations, and the lack of infrastructures and services in rural areas. In fact, over the last 20 years, agricultural production as a percentage of total GDP has declined by 30%, mainly due to the gradual disappearance of arable land, which has diminished by about 60,000 square kilometers (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2019). Not only has this triggered a problem of food security (Hong, 2016), but it has also sparked a major wave of migration which, starting in the 1990s, has witnessed the movement of about 16 million people per year toward the large urban centers; an exodus connected to economic disparities (in 2017 the income of residents in urban areas was nearly three times higher than that of rural dwellers) as well as to the lack of welfare structures and essential infrastructures. Even in 2019, 7% of the rural population had no access to running water, while 2.6% had no hospital facilities available, and the infant mortality rate in rural areas was 10% (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2019). These rural problems have been accompanied by the growing demand for environmental wellbeing among the middle and affluent classes, further fueled by the outbreak of the pandemic.

Already in the first half of the 2000s, various initiatives were put in place to improve the living conditions of inhabitants of rural and suburban areas, but it was not until the subsequent decade that these actions took on an aspect of systematic reform. In the initial phase, various economic measures were enacted: price floors for agricultural products, the abolition of most agrarian taxes, and the introduction of subsidies for farmers. During this same period, about 400 billion CNY was invested by the national government in agriculture, and the fiscal expenditure of local administrations in the primary sector rose by 20% (Su, 2009). This led to an increase in the profits of producers of over 50 billion CNY, with farmers’ incomes growing from 45 to 126 billion CNY (Ye, 2009). Alongside these economic initiatives, urbanization programs were also implemented. The most important was the Building a New Socialist Countryside program (BNSC), introduced in 2006 and still in place today. The program’s main objectives are to improve services and standards of living in rural and suburban areas, and to preserve farmland and boost agricultural production in response to the growing demand for food (Ahlers, 2014). This program, like many others, has been implemented through major infrastructural investments that have led to a radical reorganization of constructed space and productive sites in rural areas.

Though promoted on a national level, the implementation of these policies has been carried out by local administrations and design institutes (Bray, 2013). This grassroots urbanization has prompted public and private players to undertake independent projects, some with widespread success and reach. In particular, the Zhejiang Province has been a place of outstanding experimentation. In 2008, the government of Anji County enacted policies for the preservation and renewal of villages and traditional crops, strongly promoting slow tourism centered on wellbeing and health. The success of this initiative, known as “Beautiful Countryside,” led the regional government to adopt it in various parts of the territory. Five years later, the national government launched the Beautiful China Initiative (BCI), extending this strategy for the recovery of rural areas on a national scale (Weller & Hands, 2021). In parallel, the Zhejiang Province also hosted one of the pilot projects of Alibaba, the Qingyanliu Taobao Village in Yiwu City: where 10% of the families and over 100 stores are active in e-commerce through the platform Taobao Marketplace (Li, 2017). The success of this experiment, which created strong economic growth, has led this model to be adopted in the less developed areas of the Coastal and Central Regions, with exponential growth in the number of Taobao Villages, from 212 in 2014 to 7,023 in 2021 (Ali Research Institute, 2022).

There has been a boom in the number of initiatives of this kind since 2015; the fruit of the efforts by both administrative cadres and private corporations to promote novel patterns of development in suburban and rural spaces. However, all these diverse initiatives emphasize the tension between the goals of environmental conservation and protection of land on one hand, and modernization and improvement of productive activities on the other. This tension is reflected in today’s urban and architectural competitions, which require improvements in the environment of new settlements, a reduction of land consumption, an increase in agricultural production, and the preservation of the traditional character of suburban areas. In Zhejiang Province, a site of widespread experimentation in the past, the attempt to reconcile these demands is evident from the initiatives recently implemented by administrative bodies such as Lishui Municipality.

The Lishui Valley

The municipality of Lishui has an area of 17,298 square kilometers and a population of about 2.7 million people (Lishui Bureau of Statistics, 2020). It is in a marginal position in the Zhejiang Province, which is mostly developed in the northern portion, near the larger cities of Hangzhou and Ningbo, and along the eastern coast, which is the location of the Western Taiwan Strait Urban Agglomeration under the aegis of Wenzhou (Fang & Yu, 2016; Yue et al., 2014). This marginal status and the difficult orography of the area has hindered its development, making it one of the poorest on a provincial level, with the lowest per-capita GDP (less than half that of more developed areas) and the lowest annual per-capita income (an average of 30,000 CNY). Furthermore, the municipality of Lishui also has the worst ratio of facilities for education and healthcare to population, and the highest migration toward the Coastal Regions in Zhejiang Province (Zhejiang Province Bureau of Statistics, 2020).

To address these issues, the government of Lishui municipality launched the international competition Future Shan-Shui City: Dwellings in the Lishui Mountains in April 2020. The site for the competition is in Liandu District: a territory that extends over 150,000 hectares, mostly mountainous, inhabited by 417,200 people; a population that has doubled over the last two decades, and resides to a large extent in the city of Lishui, the main center of the municipality with 180,000 inhabitants (Lishui Bureau of Statistics, 2020). The competition guidelines set three main objectives: the protection and enhancement of the environment, the development of the local economy within a logic of sustainability, and the proposal of new processes and forms of urbanization suited to the context. In this sense, the theme of the shan-shui , i.e., of the landscape in its pictorial and contemplative meaning, underscores the focus on the environmental, while the adjective future encourages experimental and innovative approaches (Lishui Municipal People’s Government, 2019). This is a change in direction, given the urgent need to remedy the effects of the series of initiatives over the last 30 years to develop this area in terms of urbanization and industrialization.

Indeed, the first phase of this development can be traced back to 1993, when the provincial government of Zhejiang instituted the Lishui Economic Technology Development Zone (Lishui ETDZ); nevertheless, work began only in 2002, with the construction of the Lishui Shuige Industrial Park: an area of 14,534 hectares located four kilometers to the southwest of the existing urban nucleus, along the main traffic artery that crosses the eastern slope of the valley from north to south. In December 2005, after an initial stage of implementation, the site took on greater importance and was placed under the supervision of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which has supported its realization. With the gradual uptake of the lots, in 2007 Lishui Municipality promoted the creation of Nancheng District, a new town for 170,000 inhabitants that is an eastward extension of the existing industrial district. The project calls for the leveling of a mountainous territory of 3,528 hectares, equipping it uniformly with an infrastructural grid forming plots of about 500x500 meters. Based on this grid, one third of this development is for industry, one fourth for environmental facilities and public spaces, one fifth for residential use (Administration of Lishui

ETDZ, 2011). Work began the following year, and the new town was included in the Urban Masterplan of Lishui City (2013–2030). In parallel, the local administration undertook the creation of the Liandu-Yiwu Shanghai Cooperation Industrial Park, a low-carbon district organized on two sites. The first extends over 250 hectares close to Bihu Town, at the center of the agricultural valley and 18 kilometers to the southwest of Lishui. Since 2008, this development has been gradually equipped with infrastructure and inhabited. The second consists of 250 hectares along the western edge of the plain, which from 2013 to 2015 have been completely flattened and divided into parcels. Thanks to this set of initiatives the State Council raised Lishui ETDZ to the status of “area of national interest,” and in 2019 approval arrived for the construction of an airport to the south of the new town (Government of Zhejiang Province, 2018). Today, these areas of development produce 20% of the GDP of the Liandu

District and are home to 1,100 companies and 40,000 inhabitants. Most mobility infrastructures have been realized, about half of the area for industrial use has been leased, while the housing spaces, services, and environmental infrastructures are under construction.

This stage of development, centered on heavy industry and urbanization, has had a strong environmental impact (H. Wang & Lu, 2011), and has resulted in a growth in migration and the consequent depopulation of the rural mountainous areas (Yueqin & Minghua, 1996; Zhang & Song, 2003). At the same time, many doubts have been voiced regarding the effective ability of minor municipalities like Lishui to satisfy their ambitious plans for urban growth (Hsing, 2010; Shepard, 2015; Wu, 2015). Hence, national and provincial administrations are now pressing for alternative developmental strategies in which the primary sector takes on a particularly important role. In the municipality of Lishui, agriculture represents 7% of GDP and employs 475,000 people (one in five residents), generating revenues that have more than tripled over the last two decades to 15.5 billion CNY, of which 20% in the Liandu District alone. For this reason, over the last ten years, government agencies have adopted policies to maintain and recover arable land, which has more than doubled in area, with an increase of 5,700 hectares in the Liandu District alone (Y. Li et al., 2016; Lishui Bureau of Statistics, 2020). These measures have been accompanied by new policies to support environmental and cultural resources, and to promote the tourism industry (Government of Zhejiang Province, 2020a; Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, 2018). In the light of this, in January 2020 the administrative offices of Zhejiang identified 169 experimental sites for new growth models (Government of Zhejiang Province, 2020b; S. Liu et al., 2020). Among them, in Liandu District two strategic areas have been designated: Bihu Town, at the center of the agricultural plain, in which to organize new urbanization to integrate urban and rural areas; and Dagangtou Town, to the south of the plain, as a place of great cultural and tourism value.

The Competition Future Shan-Shui City

The international competition

Future Shan-Shui City: Dwellings in the Lishui Mountains fits into the framework of recent Chinese urban policies and continues the initiatives implemented by the municipality of Lishui, extending the objectives identified for the two main areas of interest (Bihu and Dagangtou Towns) to the entire valley plain located 20 kilometers to the southwest of the city of Lishui: 15,200 hectares crossed by the Ou River and inhabited by about 85,000 people, of whom less than 15% can be considered urban population today (Lishui Bureau of Statistics,

2020). 2 The main themes raised by the competition are: the design of a settlement system for living in mountainous and foothill areas while limiting land consumption, the insertion of new economic typologies linked to tourism and wellbeing, the organization of a network of services distributed across the territory, and the assignment of value to environmentallandscape characteristics. In May 2020, the Politecnico di Torino, through the research groups China Room and the Istituto di Architettura

Montana—IAM (Institute for Alpine Architecture)—decided to take part in the competition together with the South China University of Technology School of Architecture (SCUT), with which the Turin-based school has collaborated for years through the South China-Torino Lab. 3

The competition took place in two phases. The first, concluding on July 24, involved 93 submissions, headed by individual studios or groups of professionals, and design institutes (such as, for example, public agencies and universities). The participants were asked to submit a portfolio of works carried out in the fields of urban planning and architecture, and a preliminary draft for the design of the large-scale project. The second phase began at the start of August for ten selected studios. 4 They were asked to prepare a territorial project for an area of 152 square kilometers, with in-depth urban planning indications for five different sites, and the development of an architectural prototype for each (Lishui Municipal People’s Government, 2019). Four sites were shared by all the participants. The first, which the organizers named The Charm of the Four Capitals, extends along an area of about 4 kilometers along the bend in the Ou River that borders the northern entrance to the valley plain. The site is located in proximity to the main existing circulation arteries, and settlements are present to be grafted inside the smaller lateral valleys. The second site, Guyan Village Painting, is located at the confluence of the Ou River and the Songyin stream, to the south of the agricultural plain. This mountainous area is of remarkable importance due to its environmental and landscape characteristics. Furthermore, its proximity to Dagangtou Town, the main cultural center of the area, makes it an outstanding site for tourism. The third location, The Wind of the Koucang Mountain , is on the southern bank of the Ou River, in front of the consolidated urban nucleus of the city of Lishui. This area is marked by the intersection of two of the largest rapid mobility arteries in the vicinity: the first, on a north-south axis, connects the urban center to the new airport, passing through Nancheng District; the second, on an east-west axis, leads from the valley plain to the new high-speed rail station. The fourth site is close to the third and is named The Relics of the Ancient City: an island of 11.5 hectares at the confluence between the Ou River and the Haoxi stream, with an inhabited settlement and small agricultural parcels. Besides these areas, a specific site was assigned to each design group. The group of Politecnico di Torino was entrusted with what the guidelines call the Lishui Smart Valley: a flat portion to the north of the agricultural plain of Lishui, featuring the presence of new urban developments grafted between traditional villages and arable lands. Here a new agricultural park is planned, with the insertion of structures for high-tech farming and research.

The heterogeneous character of the areas in question has offered an opportunity to interpret the intertwining themes of the competition in detailed form, comparing the specific characteristics of each examined site. Nevertheless, grasping the problematic issues of the individual sites and developing specific solutions within a coherent overall vision has not been simple, due to the travel restrictions during and resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. To deal with this problem, the activities have been organized in two different phases. In the first phase the SCUT group went to Lishui a number of times, to visit the various project sites, discerning their essential traits by means of photographs and interviews with local personalities. During this same period, many workshops and the daylong research sessions

Prosperous Lishui: Envisioning the Future Shan-Shui City5 were organized at the Politecnico di Torino. This first phase was followed by an intense period of work in which the constant interaction between the work groups of Politecnico di Torino and SCUT was fundamental, as was the support provided by specific consulting offered by professionals external to the university. The first section of this book, “Four Operational Spaces,” illustrates this overall scenario through a selection of project materials.

At the start of November 2020, the three winners of the competition were announced: the China Academy of Urban

Planning and Design (CAUPD), the design studio of Oliver Greder Architects, and the group formed by Politecnico di Torino and SCUT. Though very different from each other, the selected projects stem from shared concerns while setting common objectives. For example, that of rethinking the city as a territorial park. In this direction, the project Future Super Shan-Shui Park of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design uses the rivers to define the main structure of this park. In a different approach, the project A Symbiotic Urban Change by Oliver Greder Architects relies on low-density urban development to reconnect the fabric of landscape, history, and culture of the valley. Similar concerns are also addressed in the finalist projects of Dialog Between Architecture and Landscape, of the group headed by Boeri Architecture Design Consulting, studying particular settlement prototypes aimed at integration of constructed space in the environment. The research on hybrid settlement prototypes capable of making residential space interact with space for work and leisure has been conducted by other studios, for example by UNStudio, Gross Max and Systematica in the project Urban Rooms, which proposes the construction of compact settlement units inserted in the rarified landscape of the agricultural countryside. Though differing from one another, all these scenarios interpret the suburban territories of contemporary China as composites, underlining the need for the project to develop new hybrid, mixed spaces, capable of bringing residential spaces into a sort of new city-park, alongside highly qualified spaces for production— agricultural and otherwise— public spaces and services.

In this sense, the projects submitted reinterpret themes that many international competitions have attempted to approach in Europe over the last two decades. 6 Among the many issues, the redefinition of urban spaces in relation to changes in modes of production, especially in agriculture, and the necessity of imagining new developments while limiting land consumption and providing services to areas outside the established urban centers. With respect to these themes, both urban and rural China seem to be capable of very quickly becoming the focus of major transformations, as the result of the most sophisticated experiments being developed through the great proliferation of projects (Petermann, 2020; Ramondetti, 2022; X. Wang, 2020; Weller & Hands, 2021). Nevertheless, this speed, together with meager forms of mediation and re-elaboration of the projects themselves, could lead to results not so different from the overly impulsive and often poorly controlled initiatives that have led, over the last two decades, to the spread of new towns (Bonino et al., 2019; Shepard, 2015). The insistence, however, with which local governments are now demanding a high level of quality in implementation, the widespread openness to professionals from a very wide range of international contexts, the incredible improvement in the quality of construction materials and labor resources provided by national industry, as well as the increasing demand for housing and services expressed by local populations, are all elements that seem to be able to radically and rapidly change the forms and characteristics of the new developments.

The Suburban Valley as Ground for Teaching Activities

After the competition, the research activities have continued in workshops held in the academic years of 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 within the Master’s program in Architecture Construction City of Politecnico di Torino and the Co-Run Master’s program of South China University of Technology (SCUT) and Politecnico di Torino. This entailed three main activities: the courses Prosperous Lishui: Envisioning

New Relations Between Urban and Rural Areas in Contemporary China and Prosperous Lishui: Living the Infrastructure, as well as the workshop of Master’s theses Lishui Living Lab. These activities have been an opportunity to continue thinking about the project, testing limits, and exploring possible alternatives. In particular, starting from the design strategy presented in the context of the competition, the workshops have made ample room in which students could propose variations— also of a radical character— regarding territorial organization, functions, and architectural choices for the individual areas. The results, gathered in the second section of this book, “Ten Site-specific Projects,” make it possible— within the limits of educational simulation—to evaluate the flexibility of the project on a vast scale, and its capacity to become a device of conversation and negotiation among the multiple players: like a shared table on which to address specific claims (Lawson, 2006).

The course Prosperous Lishui: Envisioning New Relations Between Urban and Rural Areas in Contemporary China , within the Master’s program in Architecture Construction City of Politecnico di Torino, has delved into the themes identified in the competition and developed in the proposal Prosperous Lishui, through the indication of ten areas of 2x2 kilometers inside the agricultural plain, where students have been encouraged to develop an urban and architectural project. On the other hand, the course Prosperous Lishui: Living the Infrastructure within the SCUT-PoliTo Co-Run Master’s program has focused more on the axis of the Ou River and the arteries of the main systems of rapid mobility, examining ten areas positioned on both banks of the river. These two courses took place in parallel and have included shared lectures and moments of exchange and discussion culminating in the final reviews.7 These experiences were followed by the Master’s thesis workshop Lishui Living Lab, which involved 11 students, many of them working toward a double degree in coordination with extra-European institutes. The complex of these initiatives has made it possible to discuss the various themes identified in the Prosperous Lishui project, providing different interpretations and pointing to new project themes.

These educational activities have been a way to practice and teach a research method widely utilized in the fields of architecture and urbanism, namely “research by design” or “research through design” (see Buchanan, 1992; Glanville, 1999; Jong & Voordt, 2002; Nijhuis & Vries, 2019; Viganò, 2016). This applied research carries out a thematic organization of the data and information gathered, developing critical interpretations of places through future projections and scenarios. The city and the territory are thus seen as the outcome of collective and accumulative processes: a palimpsest stemming from the labors of a high number of players, unfolding over what tend to be long-time spans, under the effects of many variables of an economic, social, environmental, and institutional nature, both local and external (Corboz, 1985; Marshall, 2012). To observe space through design is therefore a way to decipher the signs of these forces, to deconstruct them and reassemble them within new systems of signification. A dual movement, connected to the nature of design: simultaneously a tool of investigation and an object of study, not just a means to envision future scenarios, but also a tool necessary for their implementation. As a result, the spatial representations produced have a character that is simultaneously projective and performative (Hensel, 2012; Schoonderbeek, 2017).

Although this research method is well established at this point, setting the educational experiences within the Chinese context has provided opportunities to test its limits and its potentialities.

There have been many difficulties. First of all, the impossibility of in-depth knowledge of places and phenomena in progress due to the radical character and speed of the processes of urbanization in China. This makes the timing of implementation of projects much faster than in other contexts, while the materialization is more uncertain. Therefore, the territory presents itself as a fluid space: it is in continual change and hard to grasp. Second, the impossibility of fully understanding processes of decision making and activation. A condition that limits knowledge of tools in the field of urban planning and architecture (standards, indices, regulations), making it hard to explore the technical aspects necessary to make these projects effectively feasible. In the teaching activities, these limits have been countered by greater freedom of experimentation. The students were asked not to focus too much on the specificities of the contexts, but to reflect on questions of a more general order, starting from local characteristics. This is the case for several master theses presented in the second part of the book, which explore new relationships between artificial intelligence and the organization of cultures, or develop architectural prototypes for the gathering, purification, and conservation of rainwater. Therefore, the accent has been on the explorative character of “research by design,” and the capacity to detect innovative themes and solutions, beyond the particular characteristics of the context.

About this Book

This book is composed of two parts, introduced by a photographic essay by Raul Ariano, who visited the agricultural plain of Lishui several times in the fall of 2020. The first part, “Four Operational Spaces,” presents the project prepared by Politecnico di Torino and South China University of Technology across the four themes it addresses: spaces for agricultural production, dwelling on the mountains, facilities and systems of mobility, and preservation and environment. Each theme is illustrated with maps on a territorial scale, in-depth studies of specific sites, and models of architectural prototypes. The second part, “Ten Site-specific Projects,” contains project works from teaching activities. Through short texts and representations, the ten projects explore the issues that emerged in the competition phase. Finally, a further contribution by Gong Dong and Shida Liu explores the transformations of contemporary suburban China from a complementary perspective: the construction of the Yangshuo Sugarhouse in Guilin, Guangxi Province, by Vector Architects.

The objective of this set of materials is to deal with some of the main questions raised by the change in Chinese urban policies, by investigating the transformations in the rural spaces of contemporary China and envisioning future developments. The Lishui Valley, like other territories at the margins of emerging metropolitan contexts, sheds light on the attempt to construct a new suburban order that is radically different from Western models and previous Chinese urban developments. How to interpret, organize, and design these spaces, coming to grips with the questions they raise, remains an open issue that cannot be overlooked by planners and architects.

Text Credits: Suburbanization Processes in Rural China and The Lishui Valley by Leonardo Ramondetti; The Competition Future Shan-shui City by Edoardo Bruno; The Suburban Valley as Ground for Teaching Activities by Mauro Berta; About this Book by Leonardo Ramondetti, Edoardo Bruno and Mauro Berta

1 Besides the initiatives mentioned in this text, those of particular interest include the National New Type of Urbanization Plan of 2014 (Chu, 2020), the Urban Agglomeration Policies of 2015 (Fang & Yu, 2016), and the Rural Revitalization Strategy of 2017 (H. Wang & Zhuo, 2018). These programs absorbed many of the earlier initiatives for improvement of suburban and rural areas. 2 The official launch of the initiative was on May 20, 2020, with a subsequent conference for presentation in Shanghai, which took place on June 18, 2020. 3 The participants and composition of the work group are indicated at the beginning of this book. For further information on the timing of the competition and greater depth regarding applied architectural research in contemporary China, and on the relationships between Chinese and international agencies, institutions, and designers, see the doctoral research The Legacy of the Involvement: Unfolding Academic Design Praxis (2023) by Camilla Forina (PhD candidate at Politecnico di Torino and Tsinghua University of Beijing). 4 The ten selected studios are: Boeri Architecture Design Consulting + Tongji Architectural Design + WWSZ; UNStudio + Gross Max + Systematica; Politecnico di Torino + South China University of Technology; Eco Systems Design Studio

+ Cai Yongjie; Canada GA City Planning and Landscape Design + Zhejiang Province Institute of Architectural Design and Research + ZIAD; CAUPD, Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University; Olivier Greder; China Architecture Design and Research Group; DE-SO Asia Design Consultant Joint Stock Company + DDON Planning and Design. They were asked to develop a dossier composed of at least 250 drawings, a summarizing booklet, eight display panels in A1 format, a video presentation of 10 minutes, and a model of the area on a scale of 1:500. 5 The days of study on September 9, and 23, 2020 were organized by the research groups China Room and IAM, involving 45 scholars and designers, including teachers, researchers, and doctoral candidates in the Department of Architecture and Design (DAD) and the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST). 6 Consider, for example, the consultation for Gran Paris in 2007, the B ruxelles-Métropole 2040 in 2010, and the more recent consultation for Grand Genève in 2018. 7 The results have been gathered and can be examined on the digital platform TeleArchitettura of Politecnico di Torino: https://telearchitettura.polito.it/it/ta.

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