Rethinking the Urban Block - Educational Infrastructure as the Driver of Shenzhen’s Renovation
Projective Cities 2013-2015 Dissertation Yating Song
Acknowledgements
Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my tutors Sam Jacoby and Adrian Lahoud for the continuous support of my study and research during the past two years, for their patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. Their guidance helped me throughout the research and the design, and without which I would not possibly have finished this thesis. I would also like to thank my tutors Maria Giudici and Mark Campbell for the tremendous amount of valuable advice, insightful comments and encouragement they have given in the research. My sincere thanks also goes to my classmates Tianyi, Naina, Yana, Runze, Guillem, Simon and Shaun, for the enjoyable time we have spent together and for helping me to expand my knowledge and skill in many areas in the past two years. I would also like to thank my friends Phoebe, Lauren and Li for our exchanges of knowledge, skills, and venting of frustration during my master program. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family for the great support they provided me through my years of study.
Abstract
The thesis studies the urban condition formed by labour-intensive industries and mobile capital flux in China’s Pearl River Delta (PRD) cities. It takes particular interest in Shenzhen’s urban transformation in relation to its industrial transformation, labour upgrading, social mobility and vocational education in the past ten years. On the one hand, social mobility accelerates the commodification of urban space. The city continues to get reworked under the abuse of relentless mobile capital as a new class of consumers arises from the self-upgraded workers. The new rich centre towards places with better welfare provision. Public welfare such as city parks and better schools get commodified and privatised. On the other hand, the majority of the migrant workers aggregated in the city centre, struggling for opportunity. Spaces for the migrants — e.g., overcrowded urban villages to provide affordable housing and old Danwei housing block centres becoming cheap working-living complexes — selfgenerated in the leftover urban space side-by-side with highly invested commercial developments. This thesis argues from the angle of social mobility that the dualised landscapes belong to the same system and are formed while marketization privileged some — mainly the more skilled and educated — and marginalised the other. Urban conflict lies in the state’s irresponsibility in providing basic welfare, especially education, to the floating population and the struggle of the migrants to buy their access to basic services that are in return critical to their labour reproduction. Yet these working and living spaces are where, via education interventions, the earnings, social status and lifestyle of the migrant workers can be changed within generations, and new forms of business operations can be formed. Under this context, the thesis studies the potential of using educational architecture project to recreate the urban block as a way to use these leftover urban spaces to drive a city’s transformation and enters a general critique of city-making logic that excessively relies on speculative capital. key terms: social mobility, vocational education, educational infrastructure, urban block
Rethinking the Urban Block - Educational Infrastructure as the Driver of Shenzhen’s Renovation
Contents Chapter 1
Introduction
Chapter 2
Problem Definition
2.1
Post-Industrialization and Normalized Urbanization of Shenzhen
2.2
Industry, Labour, and Social Mobility in Relation to Vocational Education
2.3
Crisis of the Speculative Invested Mega-Plot/Block Planning Model – Dualisation, Marginalization and the Right to The City [Case Study of Huaqiang North to demonstrate and as design site]
2.4
Chapter 3
Design Questions
Research Hypothesis and Design Speculation
3.1
Educational Infrastructure as the Instrumental Framework and Driver
3.2
Design Framework
3.3
Design brief and typological transformation
3.4
General strategy and Conclusions
Chapter 4
Conclusions and Further Discussions
4.1
Post-Industrialization PRD Cities
4.2
Speculative Investment, the Block and Post Mega-Plot Developments
4.3
Leftover space and mass labour as driver of city transformation
4.4
Social Integration and the Creation of a New Urban Common
Bibliography
To the migrant workers, the word �floating� does not only mean working in the city and returning to their hometown during the new year, but also the fluidity between social class with the opportunities the city provides.
Migrant workers buying movies, e-books, and musics from street stalls photographed by Zhiyou Zhang
Due to better education Hong Kong provides, each year, 30,000 pregnant women from Mainland China give birth in Hong Kong in order for the kids to achieve Hong Kong citizenship. Each day, 16,000 Trans-boundary schoolchildren pass the Hong Kong - Shenzhen custom to go to school in Hong Kong near border.
Rethinking the Urban Block - Educational Infrastructure as the Driver of Shenzhen’s Renovation Introduction
Starting from China’s Opening-Up in 1979, located on Hong Kong and Mainland China’s border, Shenzhen has been China’s gateway towards the capitalist world. The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) was China’s test bed in introducing Hong Kong’s foreign capital, advanced administrative model, technology and production model into China’s market economy. The effect of the SEZ formed an industrial chain within the region called the Pearl River Delta (PRD) Model, with Hong Kong as the main driver and Shenzhen as the gateway spreading production industry to other PRD cities. In 2001, Rem Koolhaas and the Harvard Design School published Great Leap Forward, a collection of essays recording and attempting to extract from the boom in Shenzhen and the PRD. Although remains critical of the undersupply of infrastructure, repetitive constructions, and poor living condition of the floating population, Koolhaas generally finds the dynamism and unpredictability of real estate development in the socialist market economy “a source of freedom”. [1] To Koolhaas, the chaos created by the infusion of state and foreign capital signifies modernization at an unprecedented speed and scale. Seemingly absurd juxtapositions of activities happen in enclaves in every scale: cities of exacerbated difference, zones and blocks. With real estate designed less for occupation than for investment, Koolhaas suggested the demise of the role of planning and design, claiming that under the pressure of the market, the only strategy left is capitulation. [2] Yet, 10 years since this book’s publication, Shenzhen has established a solid base for knowledge economy, forming productionbased bonds with Dongguan, Huizhou and Shanwei. Power relations have changed within the Pearl River Delta, with Shenzhen turning from an industrial driver to a leader in the tertiary sector instead of Hong Kong. 2011 also saw the tearing down of the border separating the rural part and the SEZ, marking the loss of Shenzhen’s special identity and the start of its normalised urbanization. While Shenzhen and the other PRD cities continue to get reworked under the abuse of relentless mobile capital and shortterm interests, another force shaping the city emerged. While the book remains silent on the labour-intensive industry upon which
the new economy depends, it also fails to foresee the rise of a new class of consumers from the migrant workers, who have now taken on a major role in shaping the city landscape. Moreover, social mobility of the mass labour has become a drastically strong force in creating an urban landscape that is highly dualised: On the one hand, social mobility accelerates the commodification of urban space and the creation of new centres. The migrant workers laid-off during the market reform in 1990s either found their new position in private enterprises via a series of self-sponsored skill upgrading courses (night schools, vocational training institutes, etc.), or started off their own micro businesses. By 2008, 98.5% of Shenzhen’s enterprises are small and micro enterprises (SME’s), with a total contribution to 65.2% of Shenzhen’s GDP. A new class of consumer arises accompanying the self-upgrading of the mass labour. New city centres are formed firstly, where the location prevails in potential capital growth and large commercial mega-plots are developed. Secondly, with welfare commodified due to the state’s irresponsibility in providing it to the floating labour, the new rich centre towards places with better welfare provision. Public welfare such as city parks, better schools, etc. was surrounded and privatised by housing developments sold at an extremely high price. Meanwhile, with education being the main factor in one’s social mobility, new developments centring on high-quality education provision are becoming more and more popular. One extreme example is the new towns development in the New Territories of Hong Kong, near the border towards Shenzhen. Due to the better education that Hong Kong provides, each year, 30,000 pregnant women from Mainland China give birth in Hong Kong in order for the kids to achieve Hong Kong citizenship. Each day, 16,000 trans-boundary schoolchildren pass the Hong Kong - Shenzhen custom to go to school in Hong Kong near the border. Developers thus purchase large amounts of agricultural land to develop new communities with schools, housing and hospitals for mainland families with trans-boundary schoolchildren. This consequentially leads to various large protests among Hong
Kong citizens and tension between the two cities. On the other hand, the majority of the migrant workers aggregated around the commercial centres struggling for opportunity. Most of them work in labour-intensive electronic businesses or the service sector. In order to be close to work and work longer hours, the workers crowd up in high-density housing in minimum living standards with minimum provision of social services. Drawn from Marginalization in Urban China by Fulong Wu and Chris Webster , these spaces provide ‘affordable’ spaces for the marginalised migrant workers who are indispensable to the urban manufacturing and service economy. [3] Marginalization in the Chinese city context is less associated with income poverty and more to the migrants’ segregation to the city through the deprivation of welfare and rights to the city in the absence of citizenship. Contrary to ‘high-poverty neighbourhoods’ in the west, that these migrant neighbourhoods are substantially linked to the mainstream urban society through labour markets and poverty is less the issue, since the migrant workers’ minimum wage is usually higher than the city’s unemployment insurance allowance. What segregates them is the massive struggle of the migrants to generate the financial ability to buy their access to basic services that are critical to their labour reproduction. This forms the contrasting landscape that, side-by-side with the highly the invested developments in the commercial centres, ‘urban patches’ selfgenerate in the leftover space in between them. These spaces are leftover in a sense that private speculative capitals have difficulties getting in. They can be categorised into three types: 1. Urban villages 2. Old Danwei blocks centres 3. Back streets with poorly constructed facilities (restaurants, pharmacies). For Shenzhen, the dualised landscapes — either the new centres or the over-crowded leftover spaces are formed by the same market logic and belong to the same system. Marketization privileged some — mainly the more skilled and educated — and marginal-
ised the other. Yet in both cases, urban conflict lies in the state’s irresponsibility to provide welfare to the floating population, and education has become the entry ticket for bacic rights in the city, including to enjoy social welfare. It is under this context that I proposed to rethink the relationship between these dualised urban landscapes with the intervention of an educational project. The Shenzhen micro businesses are where, via education interventions, the earnings, social status and lifestyle of the workers can be drastically changed within generations. New scales and new forms business operations become possible. Urbanity created by a new relationship between different stakeholders can be imagined. Interpreting Henri Lefebvre’s notion of heterotopia (as urban practice) and isotopy (as the accomplished and rationalise spatial order of capitalism and the state), David Harvey in Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution states that spaces for the lower class are potential for revolutionary changes. In the project, to propose an educational architectural project here, rather than to deal with spaces for the unprivileged, is to deal with the in-between, the marginalised potential of transforming into the new central, both in terms of the space and the people. The inbetween in the thesis is argued to be the potential space of revolutionary urban change, in terms of a new definition of the public and private can be searched and the relationship between them can be rethought. With education to increase the social mobility of mass labour aggregated in the leftover urban space, there might be the potential to not only transform the urban marginal into new centres but also to generate a new form of development that rethinks the relationships between Shenzhen’s knowledge industry, the mass labour, enterprises, public welfare, and private real estate investments. It is under this context that the logic behind city making described in the Great Leap Forward is revisited and an alternative model of the speculative development is searched for. Disciplinary Question Why and how can vocational education or education in general, social welfare and infrastructure be conceived together to produce
urban spaces that drives the transformation of the city? Urban Question How can educational infrastructure become a strategy to conceptualise urban space, bringing together various stakeholders and different scales of developments? Design Question How can educational space become the driver in upgrading the labour in network society and transform the interiorised urban blocks to produce a different quality of the urban?
previous chapter and typological case studies. A site is chosen for closer study and a design is proposed based on the problems defined. The proposal is instrumentalised by a series of case studies of existing space in the site and related architectural projects. In the third section, we will elaborate on conclusions drawn from the design and enter a detailed revisit of the city making logic in the Pearl River Delta, how it has changed and what the alternatives are.
Notes:
To identify and study the multi-scalar research question, the research methodology comprises two interrelated aspects: urban study and typological study. The urban study is set out to identify and understand Shenzhen’s planning logic, urban form, and specific dualised landscape in socio-economic terms. A site is chosen according to the research questions. Via mapping study of the larger region and case study of block-scale and architectural-scale, the relationship between its economic rationality, governance structure and social context is examined.
[1] Ellen Dunham-Jones, ‘The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas’, in Peggy Deamer (Ed.), Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 166.
Typological analysis is used while extracting the research question to a narrower architectural question by identifying the form of vocational educational architecture as mediator between the state, enterprises and labour individuals. This conclusion is used to raise a research hypothesis, after which a design project based on typological transformation is proposed. The design is used in this study not as a solution or conclusion of the identified problems but as discussion material to provide further insights into the research.
[4] David Harvey, ‘Henri Lefebvre’s Vision’, in Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2012), p. xvii.
The research is organised in three sections. The first section briefly introduces the background of Shenzhen, focusing on its industry, the condition of its labouring population, and the associated urban conditions. This chapter explains the interest of the research and intention behind the selection of the researching questions. It also deliberates on the key terms used. In the second section, a research hypothesis is raised based on the conclusion from the
[2] Judy Chung Chuihua, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas and Sze Tsung Leong eds., Great Leap Forward (Cologne: Taschen, 2002), p. 145. [3] Fulong Wu and Chris Webster, Marginalization in Urban China (Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 7.
Real Estate Developers Presented Imagery of the Huaqiang North Electronics Trading Zone - as “the front window of the PRD’s electronic industry” to attract investments
Daily Working Route of People Behind this Prosperity (right below the high-rise building on the left) - the human networks, trolley logistics, unregulated food stalls and renewing/reconstructing buildings
Typical Single Apartment Newly built for Office Workers in Central Shenzhen Rent: $480 / month
Typical Single Room Devided from old apartments for Migrant Workers in Central Shenzhen Rent: $130 / month ROOM 1
ROOM 6
ROOM 5
ROOM 2 ROOM 4 ROOM 3
Chapter 2: Problem Definition
Chapter 2.1 Post-Industrialization Shenzhen - Its Vision and Potential Shenzhen’s new vision in knowledge economy the challenges and potential
Chapter 2.2 Industry, Labour, Social mobility in Relation to Vocational Education Shenzhen’s industrial upgrading, marketization, labour upgrading in relation to vocational education and social mobility, in economic terms and social terms
Chapter 2.3 Crisis of the Speculative Invested Mega-Plot/Block Model – Dualisation, Marginalization and the Right to the City Capital mobility, zoning and themed blocks – the planning logic of Shenzhen. The dualised landscape and marginalization of the floating labour
[Case Study of Huaqiang North to demonstrate and as design site]
Chapter 2.4 Design questions
Chapter 2.1: Post-Industrialization Shenzhen - Its Vision and Potential
10 km
Hong Kong - Shenzhen Metropolis in the Pearl River Delta
Hong Kong, 1980
Shenzhen, 1980
Hong Kong, 2010
Shenzhen, 2010
Chapter 2.1: Post-Industrialization Shenzhen, Its Vision and Potential
Since its urbanization started from China’s Opening-Up, Shenzhen has been a city defined by two borders: the first a frontier that separates China and Hong Kong, and the second a frontier that separates the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and rural Shenzhen. The difference in the development level between China and Hong Kong formed the city. The Shenzhen SEZ was China’s test bed in introducing Hong Kong’s foreign capital, advanced administrative model, technology and production model into China’s market economy, Shenzhen started to be built up as a linear city on the border. From the 1980s to the 2000s, the effect of the SEZ formed an industrial chain within the region called the Pearl River Delta (PRD) Model, with Hong Kong being the main driver that provides the advanced administration model and technology and introduces them into Shenzhen. As the gateway, Shenzhen spread its production industry to other adjacent cities.
In 1997 before the Hong Kong hand-over, to Mainland China, Hong Kong represents China’s window towards the capitalist world.
From 2000, this condition started to change when economic differences between Mainland China and Hong Kong becomes smaller. Shenzhen’s role as border and experiment field disappears. At the same time, with China’s preferential policy towards Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone, stress started to occur in Hong Kong’s economic transformation: the demise of the financial industry and the lack of production based on transforming into knowledge economy. On the other hand, during 30 years of urbanization, Shenzhen has established a solid base for knowledge industry, forming regional bonds with Dongguan, Huizhou and Shanwei to establish a strong regional industry centre. The envisioning of co-developing a Hong Kong-Shenzhen Metropolis in 2007 suggests a new hierarchy of the Pearl River Delta, with Shenzhen being the potential new regional leader of industry. In order to strengthen the cooperation between the two cities, several co-developments projects in high-end manufacturing, hitech industries and modern service industries are raised.
In 1980s, A family failed to illegally cross the border and immigrate into Hong Kong, illegal immigrants from mainland China are called ‘human snakes’ by Hong Kong people.
1979 - 2010, a city defined by two borders
Sucessful Production Models
‘2nd Frontier’
Domestic Capital Technology Labour
SEZ = Test Bed ‘1st Frontier’
Foreign Capital Technology Administration
Shenzhen Hong Kong Special Economic Zone
1980s - 2000s Hong Kong as Industry Chain Driver of the PRD
2000s - 2010s Shenzhen as the Centre of the PRD
In 2009, a state-level free trade zone, the Qianhai Cooperation Zone in Shenzhen, was proposed as a new financial and logistic centre of the two cities. It would further serve as an experimental base for integrating the PRD cities. In 2011, the Lok Ma Chau Loop, a proposed zone of higher education, high-tech research and development (R&D), and cultural and creative industries between Shenzhen’s administrative centre and Hong Kong’s New Territories, was approved. Nevertheless, within the cooperation of the two cities, two fundamental problems are obstructing Shenzhen’s further development, which I would also argue to be its potentials. Firstly, industrial upgrading in is on the way. From the 80s, the industry of Shenzhen has been mainly consisting of manufacturing and processing industries. Enormous amount of investment from both foreign countries and China has generated a number of competitive enterprises. The work force for the labour-intensive manufacturing is made up of migrant workers from rural China, who according, to China’s hukou system (residency permit), enjoy no social welfare benefits in the city. Constituting 75% of the total labouring population in Shenzhen, their average education level is fairly low, with 70% below secondary level. [1]
In the 1980s, the manufacturing and processing of products such as household electrical appliances are the main industry in Shenzhen
With the majority of the enterprises evolving from labour-intensive production to higher value-added industries, the education level of the current labour force hinders the industrial transformation. In 2012, Shenzhen faced structural human resources shortages of 830,000 workers, with 300,000 shortages in highly skilled workers. [2] Unlike using the Hukou System as a way of controlling the floating labour, The Shenzhen 2030 City Development Strategy proposed a new scoring system to calculate the worker’s education level and conditionally giving them urban Hukou. The government also carried out a plan in 2012 to provide compulsory vocational education for all workers, with a minimum of 250 hours per person, per year for migrant workers. [3]
Today, the manufacturing and processing of electronic products constitutes a large part of Shenzhen’s industry [1] [2] Statistics from the 2011 Annual Report of the Human Resources Survey by the Shenzhen Human Resource and Social Security Bureau [3] SZPL, Shenzhen 2030: Towards A Pioneering Global City With Sustainable Development, 2007
Hong Kong - Shenzhen “One-Hour Living Circle”
Qianhai Shenzhen-Hongkong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone (2009) . Global operation centre Port and Airport, logistics, infrastructure as attractor of investment . High-end service centre Finance, international conference, etc
Lok Ma Chau Loop & North East New Territories New Development Areas . High-end service centre Finance . Hi-tech Industry Shenzhen’s hi-tech industry clusters, Hong Kong’s advanced technology in IT and creative industry, education
Secondly, the low-cost land, low tax rate policy, cheap labour, external funding and technology support were the main drivers in Shenzhen’s rapid development from the 1980s to the 2000s. Set up as the Special Economic Zone, although urbanizing at an unprecedented speed, Shenzhen never gained full city status before 2010 due to the experimental attitude towards this test bed of China’s urbanism. The low cost expansion, mainly in the form of mega-plot, has been the planning logic of the SEZ ever since its establishment. As Koolhaas described in Great Leap Forward: Though the planners of the Special Economic Zone are “commissioned” by local governments to guarantee coherence, in practice, this encompassed only roads, crude infrastructures. Planning by this point is the accomplice of unrestrained development. Under the pressure of the market, the only strategy left is capitulation: all planning is, by then, retroactive: a record of constructions taking place faster than planners can anticipate. [4] Yet with the development speed — some 900 new towers in a seven-year span — the mega-plot model has also caused bottleneck for its development nowadays. According to the Land Use Planning of Shenzhen 2009-2020, Shenzhen has used up to 94% of its total constructible land. 26 renewal projects of the old mega-plot constructed during the 80s and 90s in the central district were carried out in 2012 and aimed to finish by 2015. [5]
Hong Kong
Shenzhen
GDP: $ 263 billion
GDP: $ 208 billion
GDP / Total Land Area:
GDP / Total Land Area:
$ 238 / km2
$ 102 / km2
GDP / Constructed Area:
GDP / Constructed Area:
$ 11063 / m2
$ 580 / m2
Shenzhen’s urbanization via extensive low-density developments [4] Judy Chung Chuihua, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas and Sze Tsung Leong eds., Great leap forward (Cologne: Taschen, 2002), p. 145 [5] Qingshan Huang, City Renewal Projects in the Futian District, <http:// www.sznews.com/finance/content/2012-08/03/content_7025368.htm> [accessed 15, June, 2015]
The Shenzhen General Plan of the Reform of Land Administration System, marking the third land reform in Shenzhen was published in 2012, addressing that the confirmation of three-dimensional land right (ground, underground, above ground) should be the first step in the reform. This means that the old model of large-scale parcellation served by widely spaced infrastructure, within which speculative developers produce freestanding buildings with minimum-invested basic infrastructure, would be rethought. More infrastructures working on different scales and serving different stakeholders in different dimension would occur and provide new types of densification
One of the 26 renewal projects in central Shenzhen, Futian District, proposing more high-rise commercial complexes to increase density.
Extensive Developments in the Pearl River Delta Cities
1985 The Start of Urbanization
1995 After the First Land Reform
2005 HongKong-Shenzhen Metropolis PRD Urbanized Area
1979 Establishment of Shenzhen SEZ
1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration
2007 HongKong-Shenzhen Metropolis Shenzhen Hong Kong Urbanized Area
and redevelopment. Thus the problem is twofold: the upgrading of the labour force through vocational education and the multi-scalar urban renewal and densification. Unlike in developed metropolis like Hong Kong, whose populationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s education level is high (labouring population education level: Hong Kong: 60.2% above secondary, Shenzhen: 34.5% above secondary), industry composition remains stable, and the urban area is fairly high dense, the potential of Shenzhenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urbanization lies in alternative urban development models that can be searched while taking both into consideration. This would be further discussed in the following two sub-chapters.
Chapter 2.2: Industry, Labour and Social Mobility in Relation to Vocational Education
1980s - 1990s Processing Light Industries
State-Owned
1990s - 2000s 1990s - 2010s 2000s - 2010s Processing Electronic Industries Electronics Assembling and Retail Small/Micro Creative Businesses
‘State supervised’ ( political background capitalists) + Other Private Sectors
Other Private Sectors + Small Micro Businesses (SMEs)
Other Private Sectors + Small Micro Businesses (SMEs)
Shenzhen’s Marketisation and Industrial Upgrading in Relation to Labour
Figure from the 2013 Annual Economic Report published by the Shenzhen government, statistics showing the growing proportion of tertiary industry
Figure from the same report, showing the government increases the amount of urban Hukou granted to the migrant workers in recent years
Floating Shenzhenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s labour population is mainly formed by migrant workers from inland China. The six million of non-local workers working in the city with a temporary living permit made Shenzhen the largest migrant city in China. With continuous influx of migrants since the 80s, human-intensive manufacturing based secondary sector of industries had been the major contributor to Shenzhenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy.
Urban village and young migrant workers photographed by Zhiyou Zhang
Chapter 2.2: Industry, Labour and Social Mobility in Relation to Vocational Education
Shenzhen’s labouring population is mainly formed by migrant workers from inland China. The six million non-local workers working in the city with a temporary living permit made Shenzhen the largest migrant city in China. With a continuous influx of migrants since the 80s, the human-intensive manufacturing-based secondary sector of industries had been the major contributor to Shenzhen’s economy. The first generation of migrant workers who came from rural China were mostly lowly educated. Basic training was provided by state-owned enterprises on-job. Due to China’s market economy reform, the state-owned enterprises were transformed into share-holding companies and largely downsized during the 1990s. Great amounts of workers were laid off. The laid-off labour either found their new position in private enterprises or started their own micro businesses. Today, Shenzhen’s economy largely relies on these SMEs. Technological upgrading in these enterprises prompted fast growth in Shenzhen’s tertiary sector of industry. In 2012, tertiary industry contributed to 65.4% of the total production value, with major growth in IT industry and services.
My mother receiving on-job traning provided by the state-owned enterprise in the 1980s.
Together with the upgrading urban industry is the upgrading labour. Self-sponsored skill upgrading courses such as night schools and vocational training institutes were of great importance among the labouring population. Taking my mother’s family for example, the four siblings moved from rural Guangdong to the city in the early 80s, when my grandfather allocated to a state-owned company in Shenzhen as an engineer. Due to poverty, only one of them was allowed to finish higher education, while the others either dropped out or went to vocational institutions. Over the 90s, with some earnings from their jobs, they continued to go to part-time vocational course. The gained qualifications enabled a series of job changes and income increase. Within two decades, vocational training changes the lifestyle, housing assets, and education opportunities of their next generation greatly. To the migrant workers, the word ”floating” does not only mean working in the city and returning to their hometown during the new year, but also the fluidity between social class with the opportunities the city provides.
Some of the housing the family have lived in sinced the 80s, increased income change the lifestyle of the family: urban villages (80s, rent), Danwei housing (80s-90s, allocated by the enterprise), commercial housing (90s, purchased), high-end commercial housing and villas (00s-10s, purchased)
Labour Upgrading via Education in my mother’s Family No Education Primary and Secondary Vocational Higher Education
Wong’s Family
1953 Cantonese Land Reform
Lee’s Family
Children became poor peasants (Deprived of education right)
Yuenkam Wong (No Education)
1962 Great Famine 1963 Second Generation 1966 - 1976 Cultural Revolution
Linchi Lee (Drop out at primary)
ties
Married
Kwokkin Lee (Primary)
Children became poor peasants (Maintained education right)
Chichung Lee (University)
Kwokwah Lee (Primary)
1979 Economic Reform 1980 Move to Shenzhen
Factory Training (Factory Worker) (Assembly Line Manager)
1989 Third Generation
Shenzhen Open University (Night School) (Accountant) (Manager in a Private Business)
Shenzhen Secondary School
Shenzhen Institute of Techical Training (Electrician)
(Engineer)
1960
1970
Linyau Lee (Primary)
Shenzhen Fifth Secondary School
Private Training Institute
(Accountant)
Shenzhen Open University (Night (Manager in Trading School)
Doing Master Degree
2010 Shenzhen Normal Urbanization
1990
(Manager at Stock Exchange Company)
Shiyin Song Hokei Lee
Huazhong Sci &Tech University
1980
Shenzhen Polytechnics
Shenzhen University
Company)
Yating Song
1950
(Rich Peasant) Deprived of land, proper-
(Land Owner) Deprived of land, propertities killed
Shenzhen Polytechnics (Clerk)
Beijing University of Telecommunications
Shenzhen (Programmer) Open University (Night School) Hokah Lee (Accountant)
2000
Yeelam Lee Huike Yao
Yida Yao
2010
In China, the Hukou system forms the system of rights provision based on region. To the floating population, being marginalised from the urban Hukou means the loss of citizenship and the basic rights to the city. This includes public cultural services, where, within a Chinese context, the culture is top-down provided by the state. Migrant workers have to generate the financial ability to buy their access to basic services that are critical to their labour reproduction. In this sense vocational education is more than skill upgrading; it becomes become the entry ticket for basic civil rights in the city, including urban welfare. With this as a tacit rule, in the 90s Shenzhen had a policy in granting Shenzhen Hukou to people that have bought housing property in the city. This means migrant workers who have the finacial ability to purchase commercial housing in the city are granted rights towards the urban welfare. In 2007 this policy was cancelled. Instead, in 2011, a scoring system calculating the workerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s education level, contribution to social security, age and tax status and conditionally granting them urban Hukou was introduced, consequently shifting the standard to migrant workers who have reached the skill level are granted citizenship.
The policy in granting urban Hukou to people that have bought housing property in the city has been cancel in Shenzhen by 2007. But it is still valid in many cities in inner China. The image shows housing buyers going through procedures in a housing community newly sold in Wuhan.
But conflicts have risen in recent years when the labouring population transits from the first-generation to the second-generation of the floating labour. The second generation of the floating labour refers to migrant workers born from the 80s to the 90s, who are a bit higher in average education level. They have less experience in the rural area and a more of a sense of identity as urban people. The Foxconn suicide incidents and Zengcheng riots are protests towards the perception of floating labour as commodities. They demand not only earn money and get services, but also to construct a meaningful life. This means that though without a permanent residence permit, they still demand rights in the city. As discussed in the previous chapter, with Shenzhenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s normalised urbanization and industrial upgrading, a great amount of skilled workers are need. With the consideration both in terms of urban economy and social stability, the Shenzhen government has announced new policies focusing on the reform of vocational edu-
The scoring standard: (education level: Ph.D=100, master=90, university=80, vocational higher education=60, high school=0) (qualification: highly skilledr=70/40, middly skilled=40/20, lowly skilled=20), others include contribution to retirement insurance, tax, housing properties, residency duration, age and blood donation
cation. This includes the following: [6] 1. The Action Plan of Shenzhen’s Secondary Vocational and Technical Education Reform (2012-2015) was carried out, increasing financial and policy support in school construction, faculty resources, curriculum and qualification reform.
In 2010, 18 employees making iPhones and iPads at the Foxconn factory attempted suicide one after another, exchanging their ‘unmeaningful lives‘ for compensation money sent to their rural family by Foxconn.
2.Financial and policy support is given to enterprises that provide training to their employees. A new system of student management is proposed and under discussion. It will set up a scoring system of calculating students’ learning hour in not only the public educational institutions, but also private training institutions and job training. This will include setting up a new common qualification system between different organisations. Once utilised, the sharing of educational resources between the state, public schools, private training institutions, the enterprises and the industry will become possible. Throughout a longer term, it will promote lifelong learning. 3. A University of Applied Sciences is being strategised. Vocational education is to be expanded to include secondary education, higher education, master and Ph.D. levels.
In June 2011, a pregnant migrant woman was manhandled by security hired by the local government. More than a thousand migrant workers participated. Cars were smashed, ATMs were broken into. Police were attacked.
Vocational education was defined by the European Training Foundation in 1997 as education and training which aims to equip people with knowledge, know-how, skills and/or competences required in particular occupations or more broadly on the labour market. [7] Vocational education has the following three characteristics: first, it is practical, work related, where procedural knowledge is gained from practice; second, it is occupational, based on employment and deals with labour division; third, it is professional, involving the development of specific skills and groups of techniques.
[6] CPPCC, Hongyi Liu, The Problems and Strategies in Shenzhen’s Local Human Resources in Skilled Labour, <http://sso.sz.gov.cn/pub/ szzx2010/hdjl/hdjlwsyz/wsyzztyz/ztyzgdrc/201003/t20100329_1487445. htm> [accessed 15, June, 2015]
Having studied vocational education through case studies, following conclusions can be drawn:
[7] CEDEFOP, Terminology of European education and training policy-a selection of 100 key terms (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2008), p. 18.
1) The structural organisation of vocational-education architecture result from the conflicts and compromises between three stake-
holders in the labour market: the enterprise’s immediate need for specifically skilled labour, the individual’s need for knowledge to enter the labour market and improves their lives, and the state’s interest in improving the sustainable productive capacity of the city. 2) The organisational diagrams of vocational education institutes respond to the different demands in training a productive labour force under different the socio-economic environment. According to the historical ‘economic-based theory’, there is a linear relationship between the global market of manufacturing, the regional effect of its employment and the local support of services by the employees. Vocational education provides to the labour force the specialised skills demanded by both the manufacturing and services sectors. In this economic model, the labour force is a commodity produced in vocational education institutes. These schools are enclosed training camps dominated by state and enterprises interests. But in today’s economic model, services are increasingly sold across the different economic scales and have become strategic to manufacturing, with services including advice on technology, marketing and management. From product development to retail, an occupational labour force with specialised practical skills and techniques and procedural knowledge is needed. Hereby vocational education, sometimes referred to as entrepreneurial education, is expanded to include a wide range of training; from skilled factory workers to project developers in research and development (R&D) companies, which are co-established by private firms and universities. This has created a new form of vocational education that penetrates all levels of production and affects the different manufacturing processes. Thus, the demand for specialised labour forces with different skill levels in production and services created a new vocational-education model. The new manufacturing processes resulting from this vocational education is based on a series of ‘projects’ that deal with the manufacturing, assembly and packaging, marketing and the invention of new technologies and the development of these new technology into products. Consequently, an efficient manufacturing process requires a smooth
Lowly skilled labour working in the recycling and assemblying businesses of electronic products.
SMEs in Shenzhen dealing electronic products.
transition from one project to another. Many of these projects only last for the duration of the task. Workers with project-specific skill sets are the most important work force able to offer on projects for different clients. A network based on information sharing is operated on both entrepreneurial connection and individual relationships. Thus, the individuality of the students and the idea of education mobility become important features in the design of vocation-oriented education architectures. This will be further explained in the discussion of education mobility in Chapter 3.
rights, vocation education in today’s Shenzhen will also take a role in promoting social integration, both in the outcome and in the process. Vocational education will need to intermediate between the state’s aim to transform the floating labour into productive citizens, the migrant individual’s need for self-fulfilment through leading, entertaining, and social bonding, and the enterprises’ need for specified and flexible labour.
The role of vocational education in Shenzhen is varied. In terms of economy, manufacturing industries are transforming into higher-value added industries. For example, in the 2000s the manufacturer of imitation electronic product in the Huaqiang North Area of Shenzhen formed the largest electronic product trading market in China. The industry ran in several forms: manufacturing and trading electronic components, recycling electronic components and assembling them into new products. In 2012, 10% of the businesses were closed down due to the lack of microchip technology support in the upgrading of 2G phones into 3G phones, retail counters were left empty, and there was an on-going trend of difficulties increasing for the survival of the remaining businesses. At the same time, while recycling and assembling electronics, some business managed to learn from the technologies and created their own electronic products. Micro business owners and technical people (SME engineers, assemblers, etc.) keep upgrading their knowledge in the trade both on-job and by taking additional courses. Large amount of small creative businesses sprung out of this field. Their developing and manufacturing process consist of series of projects described above. The scale of the micro businesses (3–10 people) naturally forms a small group of flexible labour, learning and responding quickly to the market. Vocational education in this context is more of an information exchange than a knowledge delivery system. In terms of social context, in contrast with the long-dominant opinion of self-paid education being the entry ticket to basic city
Private night schools - where the SME owners and workers self-upgrade.
Chapter 2.3: Crisis of the Speculative Investment Mega-Plot/Block Planning Model â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Dualisation, Marginalization and the Right to the City
Chapter 2.3: Crisis of the Speculative Investment Mega-Plot/Block Planning Model â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Dualisation, Marginalization and the Right to the City
The planning logic of Shenzhen, as summarised in Great Leap Forward, is based on several elements: the linear infrastructure, zone, and blocks.[8] The linear plan of Shenzhen is laid out as an instrument for organising the flow of capital. It is intended as a compromise between planning and the market. The SEZ is a floworganising device that synthesises the network of infrastructures that forms interconnected corridors of development. Zones are simply the colour patches of functional zoning mainly based on efficiency. Blocks are large pieces of land parcelled by large-scale infrastructure based on land use, within which speculative developers can produce free-standing buildings served by minimuminvested basic infrastructure. This long-dominant mega-plot development model is valued in its efficiency in land transaction and planning, as the state only needs to construct the large-scale infrastructure parcelling the land and leaves the investment for infrastructure within the plot to developers. This usually resulted in speculative developers producing free-standing buildings with minimum-invested basic infrastructure within the blocks. This form of low-cost extensive expansion has created a sea of enclaves in the city, with each block given a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;themeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by the zoning plan and the developer.
Binhe Road of Shenzhen: the largely-scaled infrastructure parcelling the blocks.
However, the situation has been changing in the past decade in some parts of the city due to densification demand and intensification of commercial activities. On the one hand, marketization and privatization caused the downsizing of enterprises and consequentially led to a decreased scale in urban commercial and manufacturing activities. On the other hand, with the land cost rising at rocket speed in some areas, the extensive and low-density mega-plot producing a free-standing building inside is no longer economically feasible. Instead, development units are usually subdivided and traded to different developers in the market. This requires a public infrastructure that works at different scales to serve and maximise the mutual benefit of various stake-holders. Furthermore, the Shenzhen General Plan of the Reform of Land
One of the 90s housing blocks in Futian District, central Shenzhen: minimun-invested infrastructure within the block.
[8] Judy Chung Chuihua, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas and Sze Tsung Leong eds., Great leap forward (Cologne: Taschen, 2002), p. 123
BLOCK: “Within the zone, the block no longer denotes the conventions of its western counterpart: a kernel of urbanism, scale, neighbourhood, public, private, etc. Instead, a theme – a ”centre of commercial activities” – lies at the core of each block.” - Great Leap Forward (2001)
The Structure of Shenzhen is three parelleled strips: the industrial strip, the commercial strip and the residential strip
The 2010 - 2020 plan based on centres and new clusterings requires vertical bonding between blocks on the strips
Administration System, marking the third land reform in Shenzhen, was published in 2012, addressing that the confirmation of threedimensional land right (ground, underground, above ground) should be the first step in the reform. The envisioned development of three-dimensional cadastre further requires the infrastructure to work three-dimensionally and provide new types of densification and redevelopment in the urban area. At the same time, while Shenzhen continue to get reworked under the abuse of relentless mobile capital and short-term interestsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; though not in mega-plots but in smaller subdivided plots or single buildingsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;another force shaping the city emerged. A new class of consumers arises from the migrant workers, who have now taken on a major role in shaping the city landscape. Moreover, social mobility of mass labour has become a drastically strong force in creating an urban landscape that is highly dualised.
Study of the development of three-dimensional cadastre system in Shenzhen, by the Urban Planning and Design Institute of Shenzhen
On the one hand, social mobility accelerates the commodification of urban space and the creation of new centres. Through series of skill upgrading and income increase, the first generation of the migrant workers forms a strong consumer group in the urban. This prompts the formation of new centres. The first type of new centres is where the location is good in terms of accessibility and large commercial mega-plots are developed. This is usually in less expensive part in the city, not in the city centre, but with easy access from public transport. HOPSCA is a prevailing developing model in Chinese cities in recent years. Its name derives from the combined programmes including hotel, office, park, shopping mall, convention centre and apartments. It connects potential consumers from far away via efficient public transport like undergrounds and highways, but is usually isolated from the local community. In other words, it intends to cut its connection with the local community with: 1) specific landscape and architectural language copied from places with higher economic status 2) high consumption level 3) strict security control. The second type of new centre forms while welfare commodified due to the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s irresponsibility in providing it to the float-
HOPSCA: advertised as an integrated community, presented as an island
Parents looking for school district housing in the real estate agency. School district housing is a popular term to guarantee housing sale.
ing labour, and the new rich gravitate towards places with better welfare provision. Public welfare such as city parks, better schools, etc. was surrounded and privatised by housing developments sold in extremely high price. Meanwhile, with education being the main factor in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social mobility, new developments centring on high-quality education provision are becoming more and more popular. Trans-boundary schoolchildren and new housing developments in Hong Kong is one example; another is school district housing. School district housing is a popular term in the Chinese real estate market. Since enrolment of students of primary and secondary school in Shenzhen is based on the childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s registered living location, the areas around good public schools are dominated by high-end housing. In fact, a lot of families donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live in this housing. Instead, they buy them to get the address registered in their hukou record, rent the apartments to others, and drive their kids to school by car. In both cases the new centres, either the HOPSCAs or the ones formed by public schools, are not city centres in the traditional sense, as they are segregated from the local community and expels local users. However, there are examples of new consumption centres serving both the local and a larger population; for one, developments in recent years become more and more popular, continuing to create big mosaics in the city unquestioned and as a norm.
New town developments on the Shenzhen Hong Kong border to house trans-boundary families with children going to schools in Hong Kong. These projects usually include housing, schools and hospitals.
On the other hand, the majority of the migrant workers aggregated around the commercial centres struggling for opportunity cause the formation of a contrasting landscape. Working in labour-intensive electronic businesses or the service sector, in order to work longer hours, they need to live close to work. The workers thus crowd up in high-density housing in minimum living standard with minimum provision of social services. Drawn from the study by Fulong Wu and Chris Webster, although these spaces are associated with problems such as the crowded and chaotic landscape, disorganised land use, insecurity, unhealthy living environment, poor living condition, many social problems and potential social instability, they are, at least, spaces for marginal living. They provide ‘affordable’ spaces for the marginalised migrant workers who are indispensable to the urban manufacturing and service economy. [9]
grated in new industrial manufacturing and service activities. In this sense, they are not “marginalised” from the process of production or the mainstream urban and national economy. This is different from the conventional notion of “marginalization” as the falling out of the underclass in economic exchanges. But with regard to redistribution, migrant workers are not entitled to the benefits of being urban dwellers, and a deep-seated institutional exclusion persists. They have moved from the rural habitat where they were integrated with society through reciprocal integration. Working and living in the cities, they are “floaters” and not socially integrated with the urban society or with the urban polity. In this sense, they are marginalised. Studies highlight their deprivation as a result of this marginalised position and their occupation of “urban villages” – the threatened habitat of the marginalised population.’ [11]
Marginalization is defined in Marginalization in Urban China as follow: Marginalization refers to the process through which particular social groups obtain lower status and become peripheral in a society. The concept is related to poverty but marginalization emphasises the dynamics of a down-wards social trajectory rather than current living standards. The term also emphasises external and often structural forces (such as the changing labour market) that exert an influence on the social status of a group of people, while the poverty is an attribute more readily attached to a household. Thus, marginalization refers to broad social processes by which social groups are becoming more unequal. [10]
Marginalization in Shenzhen is similar to the description. It is less associated with income poverty but more to their segregation to the city through the deprivation of welfare and rights to the city in the absence of citizenship. Migrant neighbourhoods are substantially linked to the mainstream urban society through labour markets. Poverty is less the issue since the migrant workers’ average wage is usually much higher than the city’s unemployment insurance allowance. What segregates them is the massive struggle of the migrants living in these spaces to generate the financial ability to buy their access to basic services of the city that the state should have provided. In psychological terms, the word ‘marginal’ also describes the status of people at a lower or outer limit of social acceptability.
In the Chinese context, marginalization is associated with the broader processes of urbanization, economic restructuring and the reorganisation of social welfare and provision rather than just a process of changing socioeconomic status. The book criticised the concept of marginality as the irrelevant isolated poor in the Chinese context:
The workers usually work 10 to 16 hours per day, thus they have to find affordable living spaces close to their work in the highly prosperous commercial centres. This consequentially forms the contrasting landscape that, side-by-side with highly the invested developments, ‘urban patches’ self-generate in the leftover space in between commercial centres.
‘Urbanization has brought millions of rural migrant workers into the process of market exchange, through which they are inte-
In the book of Wu and Webster, such spaces in the form of urban villages are identified and researched. With a following case study
in the Huaqiang North Area in central Shenzhen, I propose to expand the range and categorise such spaces into three types: 1. Urban villages 2. Old Danwei blocks 3. Back streets with poorly constructed facilities (restaurants, pharmacies, etc.)
Marginal living in the urban village: single room: $32 -$64 / month one room and one living room: $64 - $112/ month two rooms and one living room: $80 - $130 / month three rooms and one living room: $112 - $160 / month one-third to one half of the price of typical apartments
[9] Fulong Wu and Chris Webster, Marginalization in Urban China (Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), p. 8 [10] Ibid, p. 1 [11] Ibid, p. 11
AREA A: Huaqiang North
electronics manufacturing and trading
B: Huaqiang South Residential manufacturing spraw
C: Lok Ma Chau Loop
higher education and hi-tech Industry
D: Shenzhen CBD
commercial and administrative centre
Shenzhen
(Hi-Tech Industry, Labour Force, Funding, etc.)
A D B
C
Hong Kong
(Technology, Education, Advanced Management Model, etc.)
The Commercial Centre
Before the study of the leftover spaces for marginal living, we need to know of the commercial area that attracted these migrant workers and how it is runned. The Huaqiang North Electronic Industrial Zone is a core manufacturing, trading and display zone for electronic components, digital devices and IT products, both in the PRD and in China. Most of the businesses within this area are micro-enterprises, and the labouring mainly consists of migrant workers from rural China. The 145,000m2 piece of land was developed by the Shenzhen Industrial Development Company as one piece in 1982. Factories were sold to four state-owned enterprises. With China’s marketoriented economic reform, state-owned economy based on large collective capital is transforming into a mixed economy; the capiinvestment, staff size, production scale and profit were downThe Huaqiang Northtal Electronic Commercial Area sized. This led to, spatially, the management right units get subdiThe area is a core manufacturing, trading, and displaying zone for electronic components, digital devices and IT products both in the Pearl Delta Hong Kong Region and in China. 98.5% of vided and sold to– private developers. the businesses within this area are micro-enterprises and SMEs. The laboring population is mainly consists of migrant workers from rural China, with 70% of whose average education level below secondary. The problem within this area is twofold. On the one hand, with China’s market-oriented economic reform, state-owned economy based on large collective capital is transforming into a mixed economy with 65% of Shenzhen’s GDP produced by micro-enterprises and SMEs. The capital investment, staff size, production scale, and profit are more and more subdivided. This led to spatially, the management right units, changed from the first 1.5 square kilometer piece of land, to separated large factory buildings, and then to the finally minimized 5 square meter retail counters. These low profit and small-scaled business operating at the terminal end in the distribution field are inflexible and fragile towards the risks within market demands. On the other hand, these micro-enterprises and SMEs run by lowly educated labour lack the knowledge foundation in technological innovation and cannot respond quickly to demand changes caused by industrial upgrading. In 2012, 10% of the businesses were closes down due to the lack of microchip technology support in the upgrading of 2G phones into 3G phones, retail counters are left empty and there was an on-going trend of difficulties increasing for the survival of the remained businesses. Questions can be raised: What’s the potential of introducing a new form of vocational education architecture based more on information sharing rather than knowledge transcending, to both upgrade the present labour force and generate a new form of collective between these homogenous, competing small businesses, to optimize the current structure within the industry, produce a different production model and thus drive the transformation of the urban space from secondary industry to tertiary industry?
Huaqiang North Industrial Block in 1982
Meanwhile, laid-off workers from the downsizing of the enterprises formed individual businesses on electronic components trading. The manufacturing of imitation electronic product in the 2000s caused a commercial boom in the area and made it the largest electronic product trading market in China. By 2011, the 145,000m2 piece of land contains 700 malls, 50,000 small and micro businesses (one-fifth of Shenzhen’s total), 130,000 workers and dwellers and a customer flow of 1,000,000 people per day. Developers kept buying factory buildings and converting them into new malls for these micro businesses since the 1990s. The management right of malls are divided into floors and sold to different property management companies; management companies further divide the space into three square meter retail counters and rent to small-scaled, low-profit electronic product assembling business. These three-to-ten-people businesses mainly recycle, assemble and deal electronic components.
In 1979, before the construction of the factories, the area is a piece of farm land.
Farmland
Land: State-owned and state usage rights
Huaqiang North Industrial Block in 2010s
Before Shenzhen Special Economic Zone established in 1980, the Huaqiang North area is the edge of the city. The first step of the development is to demolish the military structure on the city edge.
In 1982, the Shenzhen Industrial Development Company rent 120,000m2 land from the goverment and constructed the Shanbu Industrial Zone with a 3000,000 yuan loan. Factories are sold to National Department of Electronic Industry, Weaponry, Aviation and Guandong Bureau of Electronics.
Mid-1980s, State-owned enterprises tranformed into shareholding light industry companies. Companies keep constructing high rise buildings for offices. In 1985 the Shanbu Industrial Zone is formed and became the largest area for eletronic device production in China.
In 1988, the first trading market for electronic components was established, transformed from an ‘old‘ industrial building. In two years, the Shanbu Industrial zone became a mixed used zone for both industrial production and trading. The introduction of trading and marketization of the industry gave birth to a generation of millionares in Shenzhen.
In 1994, the first trading shopping mall was built, marking the beginning of the tranformation of the industrial zone. Theme shopping cities (electronic devices, houshold appliances, clothing) started setting up by adopting industrial buildings. 1999, the area reached a peak in commercialization, forming the Huaqiang North Commercial Circle.
Farmland
Industrial Zone
Industrial Zone
Industrial + Commercial Zone
Commercial + Industrial Zone
Commercial + Offices + Residential + Industrial
Industrial + Commercial + Offices + Residential
Land: State-owned and state usage rights
Land: (second Land Reform) separation of land ownership and uasge rights. lease land to developers through contracts. Large scale planning and renting out buildings.
Land:
Land: further subdivided, rent to enterprises to build offices
Land: transformation of usage
Land:
Land:
Land: (third Land Reform proposed)
Capital: Further into other private sectors. Non political background capitalists start to rise
Capital: Non political background capitalists, and the rise of private businesses
Capital: Larger proportion from private busimesses
Enterprises:
With short business cycles and large amount of customer flows of the area, the micro business made quick money. This model has been generating great amounts of profit to speculative real Enterprises: (Economic Reform) separation of ownership and management rights State-owned to ‘state supervised runned-by people’(people = management people from Enterprises: (factories, equipments, materials) goverment) State funding to Share-holding system State-owned
Enterprises: Share-holding system
In 2000s, second industry start moving out as rent keep rising, tertiary industry . Theme shopping cities (electronic devices, houshold appliances, clothing) started setting up by adopting industrial buildings. 1999, the area reached a peak in commercialization, forming the Huaqiang North Commercial Circle.
Image on the right:
In 2003, the production of emulational mobile phones became prevalent. Through recycling of mobile phone components and re-assembling, a new industry is arising. Till 2010, 16,000 private businesses were set up, with 500,000 people flowing in and out of the area per day. Rent rose to 50,000 dollar/m2. Apartment housing were extensively used as production space.
Post simulation manufacturing age: from 2010 - 2013, the production of emulational mobile phones started to lose its market as big companies like Nokia and Samsung started lauching low price product. In 2013, half of the retail counters were left empty. Remaining businesses are focusing on exporting to third world market and fake iphone assembling. At the same time, the labour that developed skills of production, intenational business management, basic knowledge of electronics from the industry was faced with unemployment.
Typical leftover spaces for marginal living (old Danwei block centres, urban villages) standing in contrast with the expensive high-rises.
Enterprises: Share-holding system
Enterprises: Share-holding system
Enterprises: Smaller private business
?
Clarification of usage rights in 3 dimension (ground, above ground, underground) Reduce administrative allocation of land by government, increase circulation of land in market
estate developers and continues to attract enormous investments until recently. In 2012, half of the retail counters were left empty as individual businesses are no longer able to afford the rising rent under the struck of technological upgrading in the trade. Meanwhile, more empty malls are still being built due to delay in the real estate market. Typical leftover spaces for the urban marginal filled all over the area. A common character of these spaces is that given where
it situated, these spaces are of colossally increasing value. These spaces are leftover in a sense that private speculative developments have difficulties in getting in. Thus alternatively, they emerged out of the sheer demand to house the mass floating labour struggling for opportunities in the Huaqiang North, who behind the scene support the whole prosperity. Overcrowding and cheap construction in these spaces seem the only reasonable outcome for these land to at least bridge the gap between the landâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s potential high value and the dwellersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; inability to afford high-rent housing.
Timeline of the Commercial Block
Before the construction of the factories, the area is a piece of farm land.
Before the SEZ established, the Huaqiang North area is on the edge of the city. The first step of the development is to demolish the military structure on the city edge.
The Shenzhen Industrial Development Company rent 120,000m2 land from the goverment and constructed the Shanbu Industrial Zone with a 3000,000 yuan loan. Factories are sold to National Department of Electronic Industry, Weaponry, Aviation and Guandong Bureau of Electronics.
State-owned enterprises tranformed into shareholding light industry companies. Companies keep constructing high rise buildings for offices. The Shanbu Industrial Zone is formed and became the largest area for eletronic device production in China.
1979
1980
1982
1985
Farmland
Farmland
Industrial Zone
Industrial Zone
Land: State-owned and state usage rights
Land: State-owned and state usage rights
Land: (Second Land Reform) Separation of land ownership and uasge rights. Lease land to developers through contracts. Large scale planning and renting out buildings.
Land:
Enterprises: State-owned (factories, equipments, materials)
Enterprises: (Economic Reform) Separation of ownership and management rights State-owned / â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;State-supervised-runned by-peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;(people = politicians) State funding to share-holding system
Capital: State
Capital: State / Political Background Capitalists
Labour: Local labour (manufacturing)
Labour: Migrant Rural Labour (manufacturing)
The first trading market for electronic components was established, transformed from an â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;oldâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; industrial building. In two years, the Shanbu Industrial zone became a mixed used zone for both industrial production and trading. The introduction of trading and marketization of the industry gave birth to a generation of millionares in Shenzhen.
The first trading shopping mall was built, marking the beginning of the tranformation of the industrial zone. Theme shopping cities (electronic devices, houshold appliances, clothing) started setting up by adopting industrial buildings. 1999, the area reached a peak in commercialization, forming the Huaqiang North Commercial Circle.
Second industry start moving out as rent keep rising, tertiary industry . Theme shopping cities (electronic devices, houshold appliances, clothing) started setting up by adopting industrial buildings. 1999, the area reached a peak in commercialization, forming the Huaqiang North Commercial Circle.
The production of emulational mobile phones became prevalent. Through recycling of mobile phone components and re-assembling, a new industry is arising. Till 2010, 16,000 private businesses were set up, with 500,000 people flowing in and out of the area per day. Rent rose to 50,000 dollar/m2. Apartment housing were extensively used as production space.
1988
1994
2000
2003
Industrial + Commercial
Industrial + Commercial
Commercial + Offices + Residen- Commercial + Offices + Residential + Industrial tial + Industrial
Land: Land: further subdivided, rent to enterprises to further subdivided, traded build offices
Land: further subdivided, transformation of usage
Land: further subdivided, transformation of usage
Enterprises: Share-holding system
Enterprises: Share-holding system
Enterprises: Share-holding system
Enterprises: Smaller private business
Capital: Further into other private sectors. Non political background capitalists start to rise
Capital: Capital: Non political background capitalists, and Larger proportion from private busimessthe rise of private businesses es
Labour: Migrant Rural Labour (manufacturing/ service) / Migrant Workers (with higer education)
Labour: Migrant Rural Labour (manufacturing/ service/retail) / Migrant Workers (with higer education)
Capital: Political background capitalists to other private sectors Labour: Migrant Rural Labour (manufacturing)
Labour: Migrant Rural Labour (manufacturing / service/retail) / Local labour (low education) / Migrant Workers (with higer education)
Commercial Activities in the Huaqiang North Industrial Block in 2010 - a mix of commercial activities of different trades horizontally and vertically, forming a condensed network of businesses
original statistics from the Urban Planning and Design Institute of Shenzhen
41% Retail
Commercial
34% Wholesale 14% Restaurant 4% Entertainment 7% Other
Electrommunication IT Products Electronic Components Digital Products Restaurant / Mall / Services Financial
Educational and Cultural Activities in the Huaqiang North Industrial Block in 2010 -usually taking up typical office space in higher floor levels
original statistics from the Urban Planning and Design Institute of Shenzhen
Eucational and Cultural
Training / Night School
Cultural Institutes
Knowledge Services
Residential Activities in the Huaqiang North Industrial Block in 2010 - a mix of types in housing usually tranformed into office use
original statistics from the Urban Planning and Design Institute of Shenzhen
Residential
59% Office 5% Office + Storage 10% Office + Living 22% Living 3% Living + Storage 1% Storage Type
32% Single Studio (30 - 40 m2) 29% Single Apartment (40 - 50 m2) 33% Two Bedrooms (45 - 65 m2) 3% Three Bedrooms (> 60 m2)
Marketizaton, Privatization and the Breaking Down of the Block
街区结构
相关规划解析
华强北商业街区
香港旺角商业街区
街区结构
交通组织 ●红荔路和华富路是主要交通性道路 公交和步行 ●依托多个地铁站，形成倡导公交和步行 公交和步行的 交通组织方式 地下车行环路 ●规划地下车行环路 地下车行环路并积极利用中心公园布 预留接口 置集中停车场，一单元应预留接口
交通系统
关注步行活动方式
轨道交通站点布局对步行导向的巨大吸引力 深圳C B D 街区 交通系统 对步行路线选择的显著影响力 轨道站点附近提供一定的公共开放空间 Generic grid and block in 1980s 电子、百货等主要人流源与轨道站点应具有最直接的步行路线联系 交通 小地块有利于提高步行渗透性和可达性
日本东京银座商业街区 华强北商业街区
公共空间 —— 行驶 o r 行走 ? Roads adjusted to buildings 2010
o r 交流 ?
步行活动空间
香港旺角商业街区
Planned new roads 2010s
机动车活动空间
相关规划解析 功能布局和结构 商务办公 商业配套 集中商 商务办公、商业配套 商业配套及集中商 ●功能布局：商务办公
业
●重点建设工发路（中航路）、青航路两条 商业街道 以人行为主的商业街道 商业街道，统一沿街底层商业 界面退线及形式；
公共开放空间 公共开放空间节点 ●依托现有绿地形成公共开放空间
深圳C B D 街区
●积极利用中心公园景观优势；积极利用华
Vehicle and pedestrian 强北路现有的商业氛围
功能组织
华新村商业界面
交通系统
paths adjusted to traffic flows and public transport system
功能混合是华强北现状空间功能组织的特征
日本东京银座商业街区
创造更多行人使用空间
集中地面停车以提供更多可供步行使用的积极空间 通过用途合并以取消或减少不必要的小汽车交通路径（合建地面停车库或打通地下停车库）
规划绿化街道
集中地面 停车区域
打通地下 停车空间
用途合并以减少机动车交通路径区域
》 《上步片区城市更新规划 上步片区城市更新规划》
Division of development rights
华强北现状土地利用情况
》 《华强北法定图则 华强北法定图则》
Relationship between public and private redefined
Neibourhood formed, scale redefined by programmes
Retail Counters The layered system of rent formed by the developer, property management companies, and real estate agencies have caused the high rent in theses counters, resulting in the high density of the retail activities.
Associated Leftover Spaces
The three types of leftover spaces for marginal living generated by the production and business model in Huaqiang North Area: urban villages, old Danwei block centres, and back streets of the commercial centre
Urban Village
In the urban village, high-density, “shoulder-touching housing” grew over the years, side-by-side with the developments in the Huaqiang North Commercial Centre. There used to be several large urban villages over the area, providing affordable housing for migrant workers working in these electronic businesses and the service sector. The ownership problem of the land prevented these spaces from being redeveloped like other lands. The Gangxia Village west to the Huaqiang North was torn down and redeveloped in 2008, after a 12-year negotiation between the government, the village collectives, and private developers with more than 10 transformation proposals. The residence population dropped from 68,000 people to 7,000 (with a maximum allowance of 10,000 set the new design) under the new planning. The remaining largest urban village is the Futian Village to the commercial centre’s south, with 60,000 residents. The government now has a relatively ambiguous attitude towards the redeveloping of the Futian Village, knowing the potential risk of the collapse of the industry in the Huaqiang North Area once the village is taken down. Problems associated with the living conditions in the urban villages are over-crowding, day lighting and ventilation, hygiene, security and other social problems. After the tearing down of the Gangxia Village, electronic businesses start to move into more Danwei blocks.
The “shoulder-touching housing” leaving minimal gaps between buildings for ventilation created these dark narrow alleys.
The Ganxia Village before its torm down
Old Danwel Block Centres
Planning logic of living/working commune (Danwei) were formed in the 1980s by highly efficient infrastructure and centraliszed public space. The Aihua, Zhongdian, Nanyuan and Futian Danwei housing blocks within the area were developed together with the industrial block in the 80s to house factory workers. Due to marketization, the initial residents either got laid-off in the 90s or moved to places with better living conditions. The current residents are mainly electronic micro business owners and workers.
90s, yet the Aihua Danwei block started construction of the gas pipe only early this year in 2015. Over the past 20 years, residents have to manually carry gas cans into their apartments. The old centre of collective living in the Danwei blocks become contradictory leftover spaces in the city where the migrants live and work.
Programmes have expanded from living to living, working, warehouse and commercial. Apartments rent to these business owners and workers are usually used as multi-functional space that combines living, manufacturing and packaging of electronic products and storage. Many of the apartments are rented as illegally operating food delivery businesses and grocery shops. Over the years, the state-owned company has continuously sold pieces of land on the periphery to private developers to build new electronic markets, apartments and offices. The inner part became difficult to sell, lacking commercial value without direct street access. Centrality of the Danwei block was lost as the collective residence from the same enterprise switched to individual business workers. Public facilities like the canteen and the bathhouse have been torn down and transformed into parking lots during the late 90s and early 2000s. Old public spaces include the chess and card plaza, the basketball court and the little gardens where residents harvest herbal tea. They were locked up by the property management company in recent years, after receiving complaints that these spaces become occupied by the electronic micro business people and been used as open air electronic markets. After the public space became fenced off, the streets became occupied as the new shared space for common activities like electronic trading and information exchange. Living conditions worsened as the streets filled and hygiene issues arises. Besides the streets and public spaces, infrastructural problems such as sewage and gas are also issues. For example, Shenzhen has been using gas pipe since the early
Pedestrian streets clogged with small retail businesses of electronic products, causing issues in hygene.
Case Study of the Transformation of the Danwei - the Aihua and Zhong Dian Danwei as typical examples Change in the plan
1980s, built as one Danwei as dormitory for one factory
2000s, market economy changing the living pattern and spatial quality within the Danwei
1990s, separate into two as company splited commercial developments built around the block
2010s, privatization further transform the Danwei
Plan and Context
Case Study of the Transformation of the Danwei - the Aihua and Zhong Dian Danwei as typical examples Programme: Programmes have expanded from living to living, working, warehouse and commercial. Apartments rent to these business owners and workers are usually used as multi-functional space that combines living, manufacturing and packaging of electronic products and storage. Many of the apartments are rented as illegally operating food delivery businesses and grocery shops.
1980s, programme within a Danwei
1990s, state-owned land near the roads leased for private commercial developements
2000s, densification and the decreasing scale of commercial activities - more restaurants and smaller shops
Housing
Canteen
Clinic
Sports
Shower
Market
2010s, manufacturing and warehousing taking up residential apartments
Shop / Supermarket
Programme
Office
Hotel
Manufacture
Warehouse
Case Study of the Transformation of the Danwei - the Aihua and Zhong Dian Danwei as typical examples Developments: Over the years, the state-owned company has continuously sold pieces of land on the periphery to private developers to build new electronic markets, apartments and offices. The inner part became difficult to sell, lacking commercial value without direct street access.
1980s, state manufacturing company own middle part of the parcel, the state keep the parts along the road for administrative allowcation
1990s, parcel splited as manufacturing company being marketized and devided, a road was built inbetween, the state leased the empty lands for private developments
2000s, manufacturing company sold street-side piece of land to private developer, the state lease the stateowned facility land to private
2010s, manufacturing company further selling streetside piece of land to private developers, inner part became difficult to sell lacking commercial value
Company 1
Company 2
State-owned Public Facility
Village-Owned
Development Right
Private Developers
Case Study of the Transformation of the Danwei - the Aihua and Zhong Dian Danwei as typical examples Public Space and Circulation: Centrality of the Danwei block was lost as the collective residence from the same enterprise switched to individual business workers. Old public spaces were locked up by the property management company in recent years. After the public space became fenced off, the streets became occupied as the new shared space for common activities like electronic trading and information exchange.
1980s, one main entrance to the Danwei block, circulation surround central public space and share facilities
2000s, further marketization cause company to downsize, people layed off and got other jobs moved out of the area, shared fascilities decrease, public space for neibours spreaded as spots around road corners
Public Open Space
1990s, Danwei block splited into two, one had one entrance the other had two, public space and share facilities in the centre
2010s, original residents further moved out, electronic business people moved in massively, public space generate along the road as commercial exchange spots
Public Building
Circulation
Public Space and Circulation
Danwei
Back Streets of the Commercial Centres
Within the Huaqiang North Electronics Components Trading Area, there are two major north-south roads and two major eastwest roads. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the front streets of commercial activities and where the majority of the customer flow comes in. The backs streets are links to back entrances of the electronic malls and become traffic routes for the business operations. Activities in these back streets include logistics of goods, packaging and shipping services, restaurants and food stalls for the workers, groceries, pharmacies and more. Since the roads and streets are state-owned, although these back streets holds a large flow and potentially have high commercial value, they are not invested in, planned and developed. They become over-crowed and unhygienic spaces for working and eating to the migrant workers. Conclusion: Urban tension can be identified from the contrasting landscapes. On the one hand, exploiting tiny profits from the huge amounts of small and micro business with a layered rent system, real estate developers and property management companies make huge profits and continue to grow. On the other hand, the migrant workers crowd up in high-density housing in minimum living standards with minimum provision of social services in return for the higher opportunities to move up socially in the city centre and work 24/7 to generate the financial ability to buy welfare in the city for both themselves and their offspring. The crisis in 2012 that left half of the retail counters empty while more empty malls are still being built is the reflection of this problematic model, and it can be predicted that it will not be just a single case. There have been ongoing difficulties in the survival of electronics SMEs due to technological upgrading in the trade. At the same time, the layered rent system has created economic bubbles in the retail counter renting market and has caused irrational rent rise. This has been causing further burdens for the micro businesses. An alternative has to be found.
Several plans are being developed in transforming the front street to attract more customers and investments, while as the backe streets become spaces for the marginal.
Chapter 2.4: Design Questions
As discussed previously, on the one hand, the self-upgrading labour forms a consumption that creates new centres as mosaics isolated from the neighbourhood. On the other hand, the majority of the migrant workers still struggle in the city centre, forming contrasting landscapes in the left-over spaces. Yet with the analysis of the vocational education in Shenzhen, conclusion can be made that the dualised landscapes, either the new centres or the overcrowded leftover spaces, are formed by the same market logic and belong to the same system. Marketization privileged some— mainly the more skilled and educated—and marginalised the others. In both cases, urban conflict lies in the state’s irresponsibility in providing welfare to the floating population, and education has become the entry ticket for city rights. It is under this context that I would argue that the potential of Shenzhen’s urbanization lies in the alternative urban development models that can be found out of this, whereas in a developed region like Hong Kong, this would be less possible. It can be summarised from the previous sub-chapter that the role of vocational education among the Shenzhen migrant workers has the following aspects: upgrades the labour for industrial transformation; generates a flexible work force, promotes cooperation and creates new forms of enterprises; and promotes social integration and transforms the migrant workers to Shenzhen citizens. This immediately makes the intervention of an educational architectural project an interesting topic. Economically, the project can change the earnings, social status and lifestyle of the workers within generations. New scales and new forms of business operations become possible. A new urban production model can be found. Socially, it triggers questions such as, ‘In what way can the urban marginal be integrated to the city by education?’, ‘What part of the labour governance system can be reinvented inserting vocational education?’ and ‘What would be the urban character created by a new relationship between different relationship between the state: the enterprises and the labour individual?’ Architecturally, it provides an opportunity to rethink what learning and cooperation mean in spatial terms in the knowledge economy. The
potential of educational architecture as the driver of Shenzhen’s transformation can be examined. Further discussion of rethinking the urban block in terms of public welfare and constructing an urban common in today’s neoliberal Shenzhen can be opened up. To further these topics, a research hypothesis of proposing a vocational education project in the leftover space can become the driver of Shenzhen’s transformation is raised. A speculated design is proposed in the Huaqiang North Area discussed above in the following chapter to further examine its potential.
Chapter 3: Research Hypothesis and Design Speculation
Chapter 3.1 Educational Infrastructure as the Instrumental Framework and Driver Organisational diagrams of vocational education institutions Educational infrastructure as driver of new cooperation with educational mobility In a Shenzhen context - a governances system
Chapter 3.2 Design Framework
Strategic phasing of the area Strategic framework in the transformation of the three types of leftover spaces Chapter 3.3 Design Brief and Typological Transformation
The public centre, the nodes and the plots Chapter 3.4 General Strategy and Conclusions
Chapter 3.1: Educational Infrastructure as the Instrumental Framework and Driver
Drawn from case studies from term 1 , the structural diagrams of vocational education architectures can be read as strategic plans made to provide different kinds of work force under different socio-economies: On the one hand, through different arrangement of workshops and classrooms, vocational schools act as a knowledge generator, equipping the work force with in-demand skills and knowledge under different socio-contexts. The learning-working diagram shows the pedagogical model adopted in each area. For example, classrooms and workshops were very efficiently distributed in the 1880s, after the industrial revolution, to produce efficient manual labour; in recent years, between classrooms and workshops are spaces like cafes and leisure rooms since the new economy demand a more flexible work force and socializing has become an important part in schooling. On the other hand, in the structural organisation of each case, by different disposition of the dominant space, technical school presents itself as the conflict and compromise between three interest forces: the enterprise’s immediate need for specifically skilled labour, the individual’s need for knowledge to enter the labour market and progress life-long, and the state’s interest in improving the sustainable productive capacity of the city. For example, the enterprise-sponsored school in the 1880s was dominated by a central workshop, representing the enterprise’s interest in producing skilled and specified labour for itself; education in the 1960 to consisted of homogenously distributed learning and social spaces, representing the state’s interest in promoting social inclusion and decrease unemployment and the individual’s interest in education equality. In this way, the structural diagram performs as an urban management tool, given the fact that with the bias towards a different stakeholder, it can sometimes be an instrument for labour enslavement and sometimes a means to provide welfare and promote equality by increasing social mobility. In both ways, the design of vocational education institutions are
materialised solutions of existing social concerns in the city. In return, its projection to the city is to generate different labour and different cooperation between the state, the enterprises and the individuals. In a further case study of the campus of the University Technology of Sydney (UTS) in term 2 , it is suggested that vocational education institutions (expanded to include entrepreneurial education and practical based research in today’s economy) in the form of soft and hard infrastructures perform as drivers of new cooperation by increasing educational mobility. In the master plan of the UTS campus, firstly, the individuality and proactivity of the students are strengthened since education is seen more of an enabling infrastructure for further individual development and business growth; secondly, the idea of public transport is used in the plan to increase educational mobility. The plan introduces an infrastructure, the Ultimo Pedestrian Network, which acts as a supplementary layer of interaction between the city and the architecture. The Ultimo Pedestrian Network connects different institutions that are major stake-holders in cultural industry in the region. Rather than providing entrepreneurial education in enclosed buildings, what the UTS does is to set up an enabling framework for business cooperation where knowledge bodies are flexible to flow from one to another. Potential projects are triggered via direct contacts and human encounters. It further transformed the old city fabric of clustering based on concentrated labour, materials and interflow of goods to one that based on the sharing of resources including information, suppliers, and human resources. It shows the potential of educational infrastructure as both an economic and a spatial driver in urban transformation by generating a new cooperation model.
Image on the right: Organisation diagrams of 5 case studies of vocational education institutes in the UK, drawn out from different socio-economy contexts
PLAN
City and Guilds of London Central Technical Institute
Huddersfield Technical School and Mechanics’ Institute
St Alban’s College of Further Education
1884
1884
MAJOR FUNDING
City and Guilds of London Institute & Liver Companies
Clothworkers’ Company & Local Charity
Local Authority
Local Authority
Johnson Matthey Fuel Cells Company
SOCIO-ECONOMICAL GOAL
Provide higher technical instructions, produce high levelled craftspeople
Provide suitable labour for local industry, encourage people to stay in the town
Answer social need for qualified engineers, skilled craftspeople and better managers
Produce trade-base labour for local industry, provide equal educational opportunity
Provide special trained labour for the company, attract investment
Juxtaposed Classroom and Workshops
Central Workshop
Devided Trades
Communal Void
Open and Exhibiting Void
Linear
Centred
Network
Central Public Space
Outward Open Space
High standard, systematic, theoretical and practical instructions
Skill for certain industry production
Trade based knowledge and skill
General knowledge and trade based skill
Skill for certain industry innovation, general knowledge
Attach / Linked by Corridor
Linked by Corridor
Combined / Linked by Corridor / Linked by Open Space
Linked by Corridor / Linked by Open Space
Combined / Linked by Open Space / Linked by Activity Room
CIRCULATION FORMED
PEDAGOGICAL FOCUS
WORKSHOP - CLASSROOM RELATIONSHIP
ORGANISATIONAL DIAGRAMS
1960
Swindon University Technical College
YEAR
DOMINANT SPACE
1958
Redditch College of Further Education
2014
3
Educational Infrastructure: Building on extensive literatures in science and technology studMOVEMENT ies, P.N. Edwards et al defined knowledge infrastructures as ‘ro- The design of the UPN should promote porosity, bust networks of people, artefacts, and institutions thatconnectivity generate, and openness of movement across (E/W) and share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natalong the UPN (N/S). ural worlds’. Under his definition, knowledge infrastructures include individuals, organizations, routines, shared norms and practices. The key to the infrastructure perspective is their modular, multi-layered, rough-cut character. Infrastructures are complex Movement and Entrances adaptive systems. They consist of numerous systems, each with IDENTITYby means unique origins and goals, which are made to interoperate of standards, socket layers, social practices, norms, individual - The and UPN should be designed with a single idea for the [12]whole site which behaviours that smooth out the connections among them. ties together the various stages and
2
with adjacent conditions into one clearly articulated public space whilst allowing definition focuses on the functional aspect of the moments of individual expression by stakeholders and community through infrastructure, the case study of theoverlay Ultimo Pedestrian and programming.
ULTIMO PEDESTRIAN NETWORK (UPN) STAGE 2
While this knowledge Network within the UTS’ master plan, for example, suggested - The UPN should be anchored by that knowledge could also take form of a physical structure. a primary movement The spine with a sequence of experiences along its Ultimo Pedestrian Network acts as a supplementary layer of inlength which can operate as a series Identity - Representation of different stakeholders teraction between the city and the architecture.ofIt‘event alsoplatforms’. sets up an enabling framework for business cooperation -where knowledge There should be a spatial richness, a range of experiences bodies are flexible to flow from one to anotherand and trigger poten- along the length of the UPN. ‘EVENT PLATFORMS’ tial projects via direct contacts. It shows the potential of knowlULTIMO PEDESTRIAN NETWORK - The design of the UPN (UPN) STAGE 2 edge infrastructure as both an economic and spatial driver ur- possible, should, in wherever promote opportunities for ban transformation. participation, co-curation
4
with
of events, engagement with adjacent communities, and new technology to widen its potential reach.
Education mobility is basically what knowledge infrastructures are set out to increase. The Oxford English Dictionary defines - The UPN should be a ‘mobility” as the ‘ability to move or to be moved freely and public easily’. space with flexibility of use to enable the easy [13] In the context of transportation planning, mobilityimplementation has beenof events and Event Platforms - Additional Interfaces programmed cultural overlays. defined as the potential for movement—the ability to get from - The design should not be one place to another. [14] too prescriptive and should
promote opportunities [12] for P. N. Edwards, S. J. Jackson, M. K. Chalmers, G. C. Bowker, C. L. change and surprise. Borgman, D. Ribes, M. Burton, & S. Calvert, Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellec-
Educational mobility was an idea explored by Cedric Price in his several projects such as the Potteries Thinkbelt and the Fun Palace. It describes the facility of movement of education and knowledge between different systems within the knowledge infrastructure network. with
ULTIMO PEDESTRIAN NETWORK tual Frameworks and Research Challenges (Ann Arbor: Deep Blue, 2013), p. 13. (UPN) STAGE 2
[13] Mobility, Online Compact Oxford English Dictionary, <http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/mobility> [accessed July 3, 2014] [14] W.G. Hansen, ‘How Accessibility Shapes Land Use’, Journal of the American Planning Institute, 1959 Vol. 25, pp. 73-76.
In 1966, Price published his plan for a new regional educational network called Potteries Thinkbelt: a proposal that does not consist of single buildings, but a network of mobile classrooms and laboratories placed on the existing rail lines to move from one place to another. It includes modular housing, administrative units, a library to an on-site factory and a computer centre. This movement allowed for many variations within the system by permitting present and future configurations to be arranged and reassembled as needs changed. By taking advantage of the compartmentalization of rail cars, classrooms and laboratories could be linked to form larger units, with the largest lecture spanning across the three parallel rails joined by inflatable walls and portable decking. [17] The Potteries Thinkbelt
This project explored how labour could be enabled by specific architectural spaces that have anticipated new modes of production, wherein flows of knowledge, human resources, and information play a fundamental role in producing economic value and generating urban space. In 1973, Priceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idea of educational mobility also came to life in the form of the Polyark Bus, organised by Peter Murray, which travelled from the AA to schools across the UK for a month. The original group would collect students from the other schools and drop them off at the next stop, to improve collaboration between schools and students. [16]
Conclusion The Polyark Bus [15] Sara Graham, Cedric Priceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Potteries Thinkbelt, <http:// citymovement.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/cedric-prices-potteriesthinkbelt/>[accessed July 3, 2014]â&#x20AC;¨ [16] Ishbel Mull, From Polyark to Polyport: putting collaboration at the heart of architectural education <http://www.bdonline.co.uk/frompolyark-to-polyport-putting-collaboration-at-the-heart-of-architecturaleducation/5045014.article >[accessed July 3, 2014]
In the proposed project, educational infrastructure will be used as the device to increase education mobility and improve cooperation between different bodies. But in the Shenzhen context, a set of framework ensuring the operation of the infrastructure need to strategically set up first. This will include a plan that clarifies how it will be built and a system explaining how it should be managed.
Governance Framework
In the current model of the Huaqiang North, the commercial system runs on the monopoly of real estate and property management companies with a layered rent system. They accumulated an enormous amount of wealth by exploiting tiny profits out of the huge amounts of SMEs. At the same time, micro businesses are facing survival difficulties from both technological upgrading in the trade and rising rent caused by the trading of counter by real estate agents. An important part of the project is to first set up framework that intermediate the interest between the real estate, the property management companies and the individual businesses. Non-profit-making institutions will be introduced into the system. An education infrastructure will become the driver in terms of the cooperation. Firstly, the intervention of the state will provide the base. Funding will be drawn from government budgets such as the increasing budget in vocational education institution construction and budgets in the renewal projects of the Huaqiang North Area. This will be used for the planning, construction and property management of the basic shared educational infrastructures in the community. Construction of the other commercial parts will be contracted to private developers. Property management will be, with the intervention of the state, divided into parts. The public educational infrastructures will be managed and maintained by the state. A joint body of the Huaqiang North Chamber of Commerce and the Huaqiang North Sub-District Federation of Trade Unions will manage the semipublic and profitable educational infrastructures. Profits gained will be used in the management and incubating creative projects of the SMEs. The other commercial parts will be managed by either private property managements associated with the private developers or joint-bodies formed by private property management and the chamber of commerce depending on the planned programmes. The Huaqiang North Chamber of Commerce was formed in 2000 voluntarily by the businesses, property owner, social bodies and individuals in the Huaqiang North Area. The chamber of com-
merce emerged to form cooperation between individuals business and to ease the competition between the homogenous businesses. It has a major role in intervening in problems associated with the survival of the businesses including rent, taxes and parking fees. The project proposes to strengthen the role of this body and form cooperation between the chamber of commerce and the state via the Governmental Institution of Federations of Trade Unions. The Huaqiang North Sub-District Federation of Trade Unions is a community-level subsidiary of the Shenzhen Futian Federations of Trade Unions. It is in charge of issues associated with labour rights. In the making of the new governing system, the joint body will be in charge of managing the educational infrastructures that serve the workers from the SMEs. Subsidiary departments in charge of property management, funding support to the creative R&D projects of the SMEs, negotiating rent with private property managements, education (cooperating with state sponsor courses or contracting to private institutions), information exchange and more will be founded. This system will ensure the running of the educational and commercial activities. As discussed in the previous chapter, the second generation of the floating labour that aims at generating meanings, social values, political attitudes and class-consciousness starts to become the main labour force. They demand to not only earning money and getting services but also basic rights in the city, including self-development. In a Western context, the rights of the workers are achieved by social bodies (to organise, go on strikes, negotiate), while in China is it protected by top-down decisions on labour laws. The construction of the joint-body of the non-governmental and the governmental trade unions means to strengthen the feedback system on labour rights. The design project will thus base on proposing a new organisational diagram with this new system incorporating the state, the chamber of commerce, educational institutions, private developers, enterprises and the labouring individuals. A set of educational infrastructure of different scales will be proposed to increase education mobility and promote social integration.
Chapter 3.2: Strategic Framework and Brief Overall Phasing
According to new policies published on the reform vocational education in Chapter 1.2, a University of Applied Sciences of Shenzhen is being strategized. Vocational education is to be expanded to higher education, master and Ph.D levels. The new university will be practical research-based, with a focus on promoting cooperation between the state, the educational institution, enterprises and industries. This could be the potential location of the campus, considering the long history of this area being the commercial core for high-tech products and the breeding ground for a number of competitive enterprises. The new proposed Lok Ma Chau Loop to its south on the boundary between Shenzhen and Hong Kong is a co-development project that aims to take on the advantage of the area over the long term. The project consists of higher education institutions (mainly R&D departments) supported by Hong Kong and cultural and creative industry companies from Shenzhen. As a joint project of the Hong Kong Government and Shenzhen Government, the Loopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development shall meet the future development needs of both cities and consolidate the strategic position of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Metropolis in the Pan-Pearl River Delta region. The project aims to, in a 30-to-40 year span, upgrade the labour of the area and transform the migrant workers into Shenzhen citizens. This will be achieved by providing education to help them pass the scoring evaluation for the urban Hukou. Additionally, it will promote social integration by strengthening the bonds between individual workers in the same trade. As a proposal focusing on providing labour, together with the Huaqiang North to provide the entrepreneurial base and the Lok Ma Chau Loop to provide the research and development base, it is to project a longterm effect in transforming the whole area. The proposed campus will be a technical university different from the traditional kind in China that are usually developed in megaplots in phasing, usually not exceeding five years. It consist of the following phasing: Phase 1 (5-15 years):
1. Set up the common framework and develop strategies for transforming the three types of leftover spaces for the migrant workers. 2. Construct community-level shared educational infrastructures co-managed by the state and the chamber of commerce. 3. Form an education system consists of general education, technical skill upgrading, professional based vocational training, R&D labs and shared information platform for exchanging new techniques in the trade. The education system run both by the state and contracted to private educational institutions will by cooperated by the joint-body of the chamber of commerce and the federation of trade unions. It will be set upon the new student management system the state is proposing as discussed in chapter 1: a common system in calculating studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; learning hour in not only the public educational institutions, but also private training institutions and on job training; and a new common qualification system between different organizations. 4. Form urban spaces with a new learning, working and living relationships. Phase 2 (10-20 years): 1. Plan and begin partial construction of a University for Applied Sciences. Public facilities and departments of relevant trades in the area (IT, business, etc.) will be prioritised. During the first phase, living activities in this area will decrease with the labour upgrading. The earnings of the workers will be raised and their working hour will shorten. Some of the workers will move out. During the first 5 to 10 years, the government will negotiate with property owners within the area and buy out some of the land. These will most potentially be the other old Danwei blocks and urban villages that are not transformed in the first phase, and housing or commercial lands whose property rights are
due. The achieved land will be used to plan and construct some of the facilities and departments of the new university. The establishment of the university will also be planned in the first phase in terms of licensing, funding, human resources, public promotion, etc. 2. Improve public transport connecting the community level educational infrastructure, public facilities of the new university and the constructing Lok Ma Chau Loop. With the 7th line of the Shenzhen subway finished in 2016, the public transport system in the site will be quite dense. Bus routes will be planned with the campus proposed. The locating of different parts of the campus will take public transport into consideration. Phase 3 (20-40 years): 1. Continuous construction of the campus. Departments will be subdivided, expanded and increased with the new commercial network formed. 2. The property right limit of commercial land is 40 years and housing for 70 years. Land for public buildings are permanently owned by the state. Most housing in this areas are contracted to developers in the 80s. Thus over a 40-year timespan, most of the property right of the lands within the area will expire, apart from the lands used for the campus, the other will be open to private developers to trade, transform or reconstruct.
Overall Phasing in Relation to Industry Sectors
Current: different sites at different stages
Phase 1: gradual de-industrialisation and towards higher value-added
12 min
20 min 6 min
Phase 2: towards tertiary
Phase 3: tertiary and quaternary
Larger Master Plan of Phase 1
Daily Route of Micro-Business Owners, Workers, and Customers
6:00 - 8:00 Out for Packaging and Shipping
PLANS O 8:00 - 18:00 Sales counters Offices
18:00 - 20:00 Out for Packaging and Shipping
PLANS OF EXISTING INDUS
Warehouse Go to training Instutions PLANS OF EXISTING INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS or eat and Rest
20:00 - midnight Work at Home workers customers management people
PLANS OF EXISTING INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS
Strategic Framework of Transforming the Leftover Spaces
Site: As identified in the previous chapter, leftover spaces for the migrant workers can be categorised into three types: 1. urban villages 2. old Danwei blocks centres 3. back streets in the commercial area with poorly constructed facilities. Each of these spaces has a different spatial character and is associated with different problems in being redeveloped. But they share the same user groups and common problems such as over-crowding and poor multi-function and spatial conditions. The design first takes the Danwei block centres as an experimental site, since compared to the other two, it has more complexity in terms of programs and stake-holders. And at the same, it also encounters more difficulties in its spatial renovation. With a speculated design in the block centres, the design attempts to draw out a general strategic framework that can be copied to other Danwei blocks and the other two types of leftover spaces. New communities or new streets embedded with a new learning/working/living relationships will become the initiators for the campus project. In this way, the research hypothesis of using educational infrastructure as the instrumental framework and driver in the leftover urban space to transform the urban is investigated. The site is thus set in the case study Danwei block of the Zhongdian housing block. The Zhongdian housing block is a typical Danwei block in this area which becomes hard to redeveloped as the periphery of the block are sold to private developers. A general strategy of proposing public centre within the block and introduce circulation into it is set up to unlock the value of the leftover space within the block.
Block 1 (Site 1)
1980s
1990s
Shared space defined by the working Danwei, central public open space and building
2000s
Shared space defined by groups of neibours, small public open spaces around road crossings
Public Space and Activity Groups
2010s
Shared space defined by people of related businesses, small public spaces along the streets
Strategic Framework With the governance and financing system set up in the previous sub-chapter, the other part missing in the strategic framework is how to use vocational education activities to promote social integration and form new forms of enterprises. This leads to the question, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;What new spatiality will be required?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; To clarify this part, we will need to first look at the current operation and networking of the micro businesses.
Shared space defined by shared education institutes formed by people with business relations
Existing Circulation
Existing and Further Growth of Public Business Space
Proposed Education/Commercial Centre
Proposed Corridor (Above/Underground)
Potential Growth of the Corridor in 5 years
Interiorization of the Urban Block and the Increase of Commercial Value
Networking In terms of networking, the current network of these 3-to-10-people businesses are based on personal acquaintances. Partnerships in the formation of firms; partnerships between the suppliers, designers, engineers and the manufacturer; partnerships between the funding and the developing: these are all largely based on personal acquaintance and trust. This trust is built upon the fellow-townsmenship of the rural workers. Networking of the migrant workers from the same village depends on aperiodic gatherings or personal references.
3-to-9 people businesses, based on acquaintances
10-to-20 people businesses, based on acqaintances
Business Operation In terms of operation, these businesses mostly run in parallel. Each of them has their own associated supplier, engineer, designer, manufacturing and packaging chain. Competition increases the fragility of these homogenous micro businesses.
Business Procedures and the SMEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Individual Supplier Chains
Rivalry Products
Parallel / Related
Small Businesses: Rivalry and Parallel
New Forms of Business Operations With increasing difficulties in survival and gradual upgrading in the trade, alternative models already start to occur. The Incubator lab is an example: electronic product designers, component engineers and the assembling team work in the lab together to make new products and test them out in very short cycles. The lab is not only a new form of design and production, but also a form of flexible vocational learning, as up-to-date knowledge will be exchanged in the design process. The change in demand and technology in each of the section will prompt corresponding upgrading in the other sections.
Rivalry Products
Related Products
Icubator Labs Mixing Different Types of Workers as Cooperation and Skill Upgrading Base for Small Businesses
Form of Business Cooperation - A Different Scale
The incubator lab forms a cooperative business of a larger scale consisting of a number of flexible smaller team. This cooperation also reduce the fragility of these homogenous micro businesses. Promoting social integration in this sense has two aspects and requires two major approaches: Firstly, it is needed to strengthen the psychological acknowledgement of citizenship among migrant workers. As concluded from the analysis of the floating population, the second generation does demand to generate not only economic value, but also social value, which means self-fulfilment through learning, entertaining and social bonding. The current human network merely based on townsmenship and personal acquaintance psychologically attaches them to their hometowns and isolates them from the city theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re living in. This means the project will need to create opportunities for social encounters in activities not limited to education, such as eating and sports. Additionally, the project aims to strengthen the acknowledgement of a collective among these workers in the same trade. This requires using formal and informal educational activities arranged by the chamber of commerce and federation of trade unions to strengthen trust and form potential network between people. Share education opportunities will increase interaction between these paralleled groups of workers. This will be proposed based on a rethinking of the working, living and learning relationships of these different labour groups.
Electronic component engineers in Huaqiang North has their own assembling team and suppliers in a micro business and can produce customised product in a short time.
The two approaches in architectural terms are thus: on the one hand, a problem of scale and on the other, a problem of type. The scale problem concerns how to create social encounter in different scales, and how, with education changing the forms of business operations and the residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lifestyle, changing scales of commercial and residential activities can be brought together in one flexible architectural system. Each type of problem concerns how to define a collective in the whole site and within a smaller group with architecture and what the architectural form to incorporate individual commercial activities and the sharing of knowledge is.
HAXLR8R Business Incubator: The incubator forms cooperation between electronic product designers with different component engineers, so the products can be made and tested in very short cycles.
Chapter 3.3: Design Brief and Typological Transformation
Roof-top Park Connecting to Underground Plaza
Central Library, Exhibition Atrium and Classroom
Commercial Floors, Streets and Educational / Commercial Nodes
Residentian Floors, Streets, and Educational / Commercial Nodes
Infill Building Blocks
Chapter 3.3: Detailed Design Brief and Typological Transformation Scaled Programme Brief and Typological Transformation
City Scale
Block Scale
Building Scale
Existing Block
Chapter 3.3: Detailed Design Brief and Typological Transformation
1. City Scale – Linear library, Atrium From the investigation and statistics collected by Yihan Xiong, [17] not being capable of arranging their free time is the biggest reason migrant workers feel left out in the city. This, gauging from analysis in the previous chapter, is caused by the pressure of having to generate economic ability in order to buy their welfare. It is less the problem of giving them public space and introducing activities in their free time — in fact, they have very little free time. It could only be solved by the vocational education system that helps them upgrade and gives them more freedom in their jobs. Thus in the setting up of the brief, the city scaled central public programmes can be relatively flexible. Over a longer term, the function can change. It only needs to be a generous public space that everyone is free to use. It can be a park, a large sports field or a library, as long as it provides the space for individuals to bond with others. In a way, it’s a remedy of their deprived rights towards culture of a broader sense.
The design of the linear neighbourhood library and public education atrium transform from previous vocational and entrepreneurial education case studies (atrium and linear type as central structural element). The atrium represents mass education and the linear structure promotes information exchange. Together with the nodes and the streets, the linear structure is set up to increase education mobility by creating a circulation for knowledge flow and increase the interfaces.
[17] Yihan Xiong, ‘The New Generation of Migrant Workers and the Rise of Politics of Civil Rights’, Opening Times, 11 (2012), 90-104 (p. 97) [18] Ibid., p. 98
Nevertheless, effective activities that increases the migrant workers’ sense of belonging in the city are: [18] Movies and Performances
Education
Culture and Sports
52.8%
47.1%
29.5%
Reading 27.1%
To include most of these in this scheme the programmes are decided to be: 1. A community library (reading, exhibition, leisure) 2. An atrium (movies and performance, public lectures, gathering, etc.) 3. An education plaza that can be used as informal classrooms and exhibition (performance, weekend markets, calligraphy, etc.) 4. A roof connected to the underground as a city park
Community Service
Outing
24.8%
40.9%
Others
3.1%
Provide suitable labour for local industry, encourage people to stay in the town
Produce trade-base labour for local industry, provide equal educational opportunity
Provide high quality workers, as a driver for local industry and economy
Central Workshop
Communal Void
Devided Trades
Centred
Central Public Space
Network
Skill for certain industry production
Atrium / Central Workshop Mass Training Model
General knowledge and trade based skill
Atrium / Central Public Mass Education Model
Innovative ability, entrepreneurial knowledge
Street Information exchange
Floor Plans
University of Technology Sydney Australian Broadcating Company
SICEEP Conference Centre
TAFE
Powerhouse Museum
Transgrid
Citigate
Plans and Stakeholders
Typological Transformation of the Library and the Atrium
2. Community Scale (Nodes) In the community scale social encounter will be increase by the nodes. As the diagrams show, current interaction spaces include canteens, teahouses, and exhibition spaces. Co-working spaces and cooperative labs will also be introduced in the nodes to establish social interaction points for the small homogeneous businesses to establish cooperative forms of new businesses. They are the informal and flexible vocational education spaces. They work as overlapping points of different groups of labour, proposed based on the study of each groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work pattern, daily schedule and spatial patterns. The nodes attempt to change the rivalry relationship between the micro businesses to a cooperative one, and thus initiate the change in the form and scale of the business operation. High-rise developments will further sit on top as outgrowth of the new form of enterprises. The nodes are transformed from the podium type. It is different in the way that it is connected to the commercial streets and living streets in every floor. It is open publicly 24 hours a day. Languages such as single linear circulation and skylight courtyard that are used in traditional southern China are used in the design of the node to increase spatial hierarchy in order to define a more private group from the public library.
Podium type from case studies in the area
Micro Business Clerks Micro Business Engineers
Rural Migrants
Creative Business Workers
Micro Business Owners
Some of the occupantion changes via self-upgrading within the production network
Ground Floors Plan of the Typical Retail Malls in Huaqiang North Commercial Area
Podium
High-rise
Converted Factory
Converted Factory
Converted Factory
800 counters / shops
14 offices
70 shops
20 shops
450 counters / shops
2000 people per floor
70 people per floor
300 people per floor
100 people per floor
1200 people per floor
New Built Retail and Manufacturing
New Built Office
Converted Retail and Manufacturing
Converted Office
Converted Retail and Manufacturing
Huaqiang Square Electronics Market
Huaqiang Square Mansion
Hualelou Electronics Market
Jinghua Electronics Company
New Asia Electronics Market
Typical Plans of Types of Working and Retail Spaces in Huaqiang North Commercial Area
Podium-Tower Type
. Micro businesses . Subdivision of large space . Relatively cheap sale space with street access . Layered rent management system
Scale
Contract Duration
Developer
Building
40 years
Property Management
Building
>5 Years
Property Management
Floor
>5 Years
(â&#x2030;&#x2C6; 100 counters)
Real Estate Agents
> 10 Counters
1-2 years
Business Owners
Counter
1/2 - 1 years
Factory Workers SME Clerks Micro Business Owners SME Engineers/ Technicians IT/Creative Business Worker
5:30
Working Day Schedule
0:00
2:00
4:00
7:30
6:00
Eat
Work
9:00 8:00
13:00 13:30 10:00
Learn
12:00
Entertain
Typical Daily Schedule
14:00
Commute
17:30 16:00
18:00
Sleep
19:00
21:00 20:00
23:00 22:00
0:00
Living
Eating
Working
After Work Hours
Tea House
Electronics Market
Nigh School
Tea House
Small Office
Nigh School
Tea House
Co-working Space / Lab
Cafe
SME Workers / Owners
Subdivided Urban Village Apartment Room SME Engineers / Technicians
Commercial Housing IT / Creative Business Workers
Single Apartment
Spaces for Daily Activities of Different Groups of Labour
Living
Eating
Working
After Work Hours
Tea House
Electronics Market
Nigh School
80 people / shop
1500 people / floor
56 people / classroom
Tea House
Small Office
Nigh School
80 people / shop
6-10 people / office
30-50 people / classroom
Tea House
Co-working Space / Lab
Cafe
30-50 people / shop
15-30 people / office (lab)
20-30 people / shop
SME Workers / Owners
Subdivided Urban Village Apartmen 6-8 people / flat SME Engineers / Technicians
Commercial Housing 3-4 people / flat IT / Creative Business Workers
Single Apartment 1-2 people / flat
Spaces for Daily Activities of Different Groups of Labour
Exhibition
Co-working Space Exhibition & Labs
Theatre & Cafe
Restaurant
Gym
Co-working Space, Labs & Classroom
Park
Typological Transformation - variations in the form due to differently scaled programmes
High-rise Core
Node
3. Between Community and Architecture Scale - Commercial streets, living streets and 12x12m plots Commercial streets and living streets are transformed from the southern Chinese shop-lot type, providing minimum individual spaces for business operation and living activities while maximising their public interfaces. The shop-lot type is a model of corporation between private and shared interest from the 1920s in southern China, when land was still in private ownership. The shop-lot, by regulation, has to sacrifice some commercial area and leave empty a certain size of space to form a frontal arcade. The arcade becomes a public street and provides shelter for people in the rainy days; in this way, it attracts more customers and benefits the individual businesses. Each of the shop-houses has access from the front street for commercial activities and another on the back street for living activities. The proposal transforms this type. In the design within 12x12m, there are four shop houses. Each shop house is a two-storey unit. One storey is the shop, and the front is a commercial street of 3 meters wide. The other is the apartment, and the back is a living street of 6 meters wide that has shared programmes such as cafes and reading rooms. The streets are formed within the plot by means of regulation in the development of the plot.
Nodes Connecting to Streets Nodes - Interaction Between Different Work Types Commercial / Living Streets - Interaction Between Similar Activities Cores - Connecting Highrises
Nodes
Commercial Streets
Living Streets
Cores
Educational infrastructure for social encounters and interactions
4. Architecture Scale â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 12x12m Plots and High-rises The 12x12m plots and high-rises are the generic working and living spaces. The structure is generic grids. Over years, they can provide living and working spaces of different scales. Projects such as the Incubator labs in the nodes will generate enterprises of a larger scale. The 12x12m will be flexible in hosting businesses from three-men companies to 30-people small busi-
nesses. The high-rises will be able to provide spaces for larger firms. In the beginning, the 12x12m individual blocks provides development framework for the streets and holds basic programs like shop/living units, warehouses, labs, restaurants, pharmacies, vocational training institutes, etc. The 12x12m derive from the study of the urban village building type in terms of scale and flexibility in functions including living, warehouses, offices and shops.
Flexibility of Changing Scales within the Grid
Working Spaces
12 x 12 m Plots
High-rises
Commercial Streets Generic working spaces
Living Streets
Cores
12 x 12 m Plots The scale of the 12 x 12 meters plots is based on the study of the scale of urban village buildings. Usually 6 to 8 m wide, 10 to 12 m deep, the urban village are flexible in hosting many programmes including retail, warehousing, restaurants, etc. The 12 x 12 m is to leave a space for the front or back street of 3m, to both create public paths between buildings and improve ventilation.
* Figures below are from the study of Stefan Al and Hong Kong University: Stefan Al (ed.), Villages in the City, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014)
Basic Structure and Variations in Inner Partitions for Different Programmes
* Figure below is from the study of Stefan Al and Hong Kong University: Stefan Al (ed.), Villages in the City, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014)
Commercial and Living Streets The commercial and living streets are transformed from the 1920s shop-lot type, in the way that parts of the commercial area are leave empty a 3-meter-deep space to form a front street or back street. It is done by setting up regulation in the development of the plot. The 3 meter commercial street on one floor is a public passage for commercial activities and the living street; the 6 meter living street on another floor is a space for shared residential activities and has programmes like reading rooms, chess and cards rooms, cafes and etc.. Each of the two storeyed unit - either or shop house or a lab or an shop - has both access. * Figure below on the right is from the study of Yuan Zhan, Roy Yu-Ta Lin and Dingliang Yang in Christopher C.M. Lee (ed.), Xiamen The Megaplot, (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2013), p. 70
Southern Chinese Shop-lot Type
unit 45m2
unit 90m2
Ground / Front
Front/Commercial
First Floor / Back
Back/Living
Front/Back, Commercial/Living Streets and 2-Storey Units
Second Floor / Back
The Plots
The Plots - in Variation of Shop-lots, Dormitories, Single Apartments, Offices and Labs
3rd Floor Plan
Ground Floor Plan
1st Floor Plan and the Living Streets
2nd Floor Plan and the Commercial Streets
Atrium
Node
Plots
High-rises
Governance Structure
As set up above, the organisational diagram incorporates interests of the state, the chamber of commerce, educational institutions, private developers, enterprises and the labouring individuals. The planning of the project will be funded by the state. The state will also be responsible of the detailed design, construction and property management of the library, the atrium and the educational plaza. The detailed design of the plots and high-rises will be contracted to private developers, following restrictions set up in the planning. It is by contract that the management right of the node will be handed back to the state after construction, but the developer can form their own property management to profit from the high-rise. Construction quality can be ensured, as the node is the entrance interface for the high-rise, and the developers can take advantage when constructing the node. The interconnected system of the node, the library and the commercial and living streets increase the commercial value of the offices and apartments above. It is a similar model to the shop-lot model in the 1920s in terms of sacrificing part of commercial area for shared interest. The state will then hand the management right and maintenance of the nodes to the joint body of the Huaqiang North Chamber of Commerce and the Huaqiang North Sub-District Federation of Trade Unions. The joint body will arrange education activities either provided by the state or contracted to private educational institutions. Profits gained from the rent will be used in their own management and setting up an incubating fund for R&D projects of the SMEs. Funding will be drawn from government budgets such as the increasing budget in vocational education institution construction and budgets in the renewal projects of the Huaqiang North Area. This will be used for the planning, construction and property management of the basic shared educational infrastructures in the community. Construction of the other commercial parts will be contracted to private developers. Property management will be, with the intervention of the state, divided into parts. The public educational infrastructures will be managed and maintained by the state.
A joint body of the Huaqiang North Chamber of Commerce and the Huaqiang North Sub-district Federation of Trade Unions will manage the semi-public and profitable educational infrastructures. Profits gained will be used in the management and incubating creative projects of the SMEs. The other commercial parts will be managed by either private property managements associated with the private developers or joint-bodies formed by private property management and the chamber of commerce, depending on the planned programmes. The 12x12m plots will also be contracted to private developers. In this design, most likely in the first phase, the plots will be contracted to one developer. Over the longer term, it will be divided and traded for redevelopment.
City Scale Construction: State, Property Management: State: Underground Connection, Public Library, City Park on the Roof, Construction: State, Property Management: Joint Body: Atrium, Education Plaza
Community Scale Construction: Private Developers, Property Management: Joint Body: Nodes, Commercial and Living Streets
Building Scale Construction: Private Developers, Property Management: Private Developers: Plots, High-rises
Structuring - A General Strategy
General strategy can be drawn from the design to transform the other two types of leftover urban space. In the following design exercise, a back street of the Huaqiang North Commercial Area is chosen. Following the framework, the state will take the responsibility in setting up a public educational infrastructure within the 30-meter wide back street. In this design, a pedestrian bridge that contains restaurant, convenience shops, exhibition space and educational institutions is proposed. The bridge links to the back entrances of the malls of electronic components and provides the daily working route for the SME workers. The aim of the bridge is to provide social interaction space for different groups workers identified in the Huaqiang North. With primary functions like restaurants to increase human flow, the basic programming of the bridge is to provide exhibition spaces that the SMEs are free to rent with a relatively low price. Activities such as the advertisement of new products and newly developed technologies can be held in these additional spaces since the current retail counters are hardly big enough to move. This will encourage potential cooperation between micro businesses by giving them the opportunities to advertises and communicate. Similar to the interiorised block, the public infrastructure will be designed and constructed by the state, the profitable parts will be managed by the joint body of the federals of trade unions and the chamber of commerce. Public cultural events such as lectures and free courses can be arranged by the joint body from the rent earned from the restaurants and shops. In the design linear schools are used as case studies as they provides how knowledge and information is circulated with the structure. This will potentially encourage the malls to improve the back entrance as it provides a second interface that is more associated with advanced technologies within the trades. Similar strategy can also be used in the urban village.
Case Studies of Linear Education Institutions
CASE STUDIES
Case Studies of Linear Education Institutions
Chapter 3: Further Discussion and Conclusions
Post-Industrialization PRD Cities Speculative investments and the block, post mega-plot development Leftover space and mass labour as driver of city transformation: general strategies Labour, Social Mobility, Welfare (Education) reconsidered in the city-making of PRD Cities New spatiality: Social integration, the creation of new urban common against segregated enclaves
The City of Exacerbated Difference - is based on the greatest possible difference between its parts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; complementary or competitive. In a climate of permanent strategic panic, what counts in this city is not the methodical creation of the ideal, but the opportunistic exploitation of flukes, accidents and imperfections. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the Great Leap Forward
The Developmental City ... This structure takes the view that the city is an apparatus for development as well as a demonstration of the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to deliver tangible improvement to the lives of its citizens. A city conceived through this ideology is always in a state of becoming; continually remolded according to a political agenda, the city is made suitable and adaptive for capital accumulation following the economic logic of neoliberalism. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Common Frameworks, Rethinking the Developmental City in China
Shenzhen Futian District Huaqiang North Commercial Area, urban villages, and old Danwei Blocks Industry: Retail and production of IT products and electronic components
Guangzhou Donghungjie Town Tianan Technological Park and urban villages Industry: Video game machine desisgn and production
Dongguan Huangjiang Town FAO Technological Park and urban villages Industry: Electronic Devices design and production
Foshan Shiwan Town Ceramic factories, and urban villages Industry: Retail and production of artistic ceramics
Since China’s Opening-Up, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) has been one of most economically dynamic regions of the China. Since 1978, almost 30% of all foreign investment in China was in the PRD. By 2001, although it encompasses only 0.4% of the land area and only 3.2% of the population of Mainland China, the PRD accounted for 8.7% of GDP, 35.8 % of total trade, and 29.2% of utilised foreign capital in China. [1] The economy of the PRD is largely based on manufacturing based industries such as garments, plastic products and electronic products. Although many of its cities are shifting into tertiary industries after 2000, alongside with private-owned enterprises playing a growing role in the region’s economy, the Pearl River Delta has gained the title “Factory of the World” due to the enormous amount of factories built in the region from foreign investments. In this sense, the PRD cities are often viewed as gigantic money machines rather than liveable dwelling places.
Beijing
Shanghai
Hong Kong
Guangzhou
GDP: $ 313 billion
GDP: $ 347 billion
GDP: $ 263 billion
GDP: $ 217 billion
$ 19 / km2
$ 60 / km2
$ 238 / km2
$ 30 / km2
$ 15216 per capita
$ 14652 per capita
$ 38071 per capita
$ 19393 per capita
Shenzhen
Chongqing
Wuhan
GDP: $ 208 billion GDP: $ 184 billion GDP: $ 128 billion
$ 102 / km2
$ 22198 per capita
$ 2 / km2
$ 6939 per capita
$ 15 / km2
$ 14359 per capita
Speculative investments thus have been the strongest force in the creation of the PRD cities’ urban landscapes since their start of urbanisation in the 1980s. Using “exacerbated differences”, Koolhaas in Great Leap Forward characterise the PRD cities to be based on the exploitation of chances, contingent events and imperfections of the process. He further claimed the Shenzhen SEZ to be the model, the “correct” metropolis whose role is to replicate and to transform the PRD into a system of enclaves simultaneously based on coexistence, juxtaposition, and maximum difference. [2] With the term ‘Market Realism’, Koolhaas relishes speculated real estate development as ‘a brilliant formula for desire simultaneously deferred and consummated’ based on ‘the present interval between market promise and market delivery’. With examples such as high-rises in Shenzhen sprung out of this gap real estate designed less for occupation than for investment, Koolhaas suggested the demise of the role of planning and design, claiming that under the pressure of the market, the only strategy left is capitulation. [3] Zoning and mega-plots wherein the state constructs the largescale infrastructure parcelling the land and leaves anything within the plot to be designed by developers, are the base for these forms of speculative extensive developments. Within this model, the state minimise its responsibility in building infrastructures as it only needs to construct the roads parcelling the land and leave the investment for infrastructure within the plot to developers. However, speculative developers usually produce freestanding buildings served by minimum-invested basic infrastructure, as the theme is the core element in the design of the blocks. The theme, which gives the block a centre of commercial activities, is crucial in increasing consumption and maximising profit. Over the past decade, the mega-plot model has been receiving more and more criticisms in the sense that it creates a sea of repetitive enclaves in the city, or in the sense that it develops the city more out of economical profit than for the coexistences of its residents. For example, in Xiamen the Megaplot, Christopher Lee attributes the dissolution of the Chinese cities as legible artifacts where civil dimension and public sphere play no part to the exten-
sive development of mega-plots. The sea of speculative enclaves does not constitute any idea of the city, either in the European tradition as a space of coexistence, or in the Chinese sense as an administrative framework. [4] Projects in the study provide alternative thinking to the mega-plots under the current context. But except a space of coexistence, the Chinese cities, especially after its Opening-Up in the 80s, are also sites for vigorous class conflicts and struggles. Taking the Huaqiang North Area in central Shenzhen again for example, because of the high land price, and high-density, mega-plot is no longer the feasible development model, given that the earned profit will be hard to make up for the expense to negotiate and buy out a whole block. But this does not prevent private developers from making profits from speculative developments in a smaller plot. In a smaller scale, developers continue to put high investments in building new malls, each still with a theme to attract businesses and maximise consumption. The malls are divided to floors and rent to different property management companies, and management companies further divide the space into small retail counters to rent to micro businesses. From exploiting profits out of the micro businesses with this layered rent system, the developers and property management companies generate huge profits. There are also real-estate agents that take control of and trade some of the counters when the demand is high. The economic bubble created in this process lead to the rent rising to an extent that some of the businesses can no longer afford them. After business hours, the businesses owners and workers - mostly migrant workers - from the micro businesses have to live, eat and work overtime in cheap and overcrowded spaces adjacent to these expensive malls, ie. urban villages and old Danwei blocks. The urban landscape id dualised. Even without a gated community, the migrants are isolated from the city living in the poor men enclaves with minimal provision of social services. Here we cannot stop from asking the question that the city becoming a sea of enclave, is it really the mega-plot to blame? Lying in the heart of the problem is not the mega-plot, but rather, the nature of privatization, as enclosure is used in privatization as protection of private ownership. In the high-end developments, either
the mega-plots or the malls, it’s just the richer ones gets more protected after all. Thus an alternative thinking to the current model cannot be provided by just rethinking the mega-plot, essentially it requires to rethink that whether the rich, the powered, are really that distinctly isolated from the poor, the unprivileged as in the current development model? Or do they in fact share a common interest? The problem lies in that under neoliberalism and privatisation is there still a common between different social groups? If there is, what is its form and how should it be managed. In the PRD, the wealth of the cities is largely accumulated through the exploitation of cheap labour formed by the migrant workers. They do not have citizenship in the cities and thus are not protected by the cities in terms of basic rights in the city such as welfare. They’re excluded in the common of the cities. But today, when the cities are undergoing industrial transformation and skilled labour is under great shortage, they become urgently needed. This is because the amount middle-levelled skilled labour in short cannot be matched by the amount that can be introduced into the city. The only solution is to upgrade they with vocational and general education. The cities needs them for the cities own urbanisation and all in the sudden they’re accepted by the city conditionally basing on whether they can reach the skill standard. In previous examples studying the social mobility within the different social groups, it can be concluded that in the PRD cities, the rich and the poor, the skilled and the uneducated, are in fact not distinctly separated groups in the urban economy. In fact, they’re created by the same system and while marketization privileged some and marginalised the other. Social class can be changed within one or two generations and new form of enterprises can be formed within cooperation of different level of labour. In the old management model of the city, there was a common and it was defined by the unit of the state-owned enterprise. Commonality is formed when the workers from the same enterprise live in a shared housing Danwei, were the canteen, bathhouse, medical facility, sports court and spaces for leisure activities are commonly shared. As in the case study of the Danwei discussed above, the commonality of the Danwei was lost in the beginning of China’s
A Production Danwei
A Living Danwei
market reform. If there still being a common in today’s economy, it lies more in the shared interest between different private groups within the same trade.
of state implementation and private cooperation shows a different spatiality that can potentially be created. (Word count: 14723)
This is why the shop-lot type becomes an important case study. The common - a frontal public arcade - forms out of the sacrifice of commercial spaces of the individual businesses to gain a shared interest. By providing safe pedestrian passage from the vehicle road and shelter for people in the rainy days, it attracts more customers and benefits the individual businesses. The steady customer flow the arcade brings in everyday, changing the individual shops into a shopping street, decrease the vulnerability of the small individual businesses. Similarly in the design strategy, the nodes are set up as the scarified commercial area of the high-rises. Following restrictions set up in the planning by the state, private developers are responsible in the detailed design of nodes and high-rises. The nodes are as the new type of podium that connects to the commercial streets in the 12x12 m plots. By contract the management right of node will be handed back to the state but the developer can take advantage from constructing the node as the interconnected system of the node, the library and the commercial and living streets increase the commercial value of the offices and apartments above. In Rebel Cities, Harvey highlighted that the thinking about the commons has too often itself become enclosed within far too narrow a set of presumptions and has often polarized between private property solutions and authoritarian state intervention. Drawing from Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons, Harvey concluded that her case studies “shatter the convictions of many policy ana¬lysts that the only way to solve CPR (common pool resources) problems is for external authorities to impose full private property rights or centralized regulation:’ Instead, they demonstrate “rich mixtures of public and private instrumentalities’. This immediately prompt us to think what this means in spatial terms, especially in the cities of speculative investments getting reworked under the abuse of relentless mobile capital and shortterm interests. The speculated design setting up a shared system
[1] Clement Miu, A Stronger Pearl River Delta Government Initiatives, 10 Jun 2005 <http://accci.com.au/clement%20miu.pdf> [Accessed Date: 17 June 2015 ] [2] Judy Chung Chuihua, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas and Sze Tsung Leong eds., Great Leap Forward (Cologne: Taschen, 2002), p. 149. [3] Ibid., p. 145. [4] Christopher C.M. Lee (ed.), Xiamen The Megaplot, (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2013), p. 8 [5] David Harvey, ‘Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2012), p. 68.
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