This book is an interdisciplinary examination of China's new urban development model and the challenges Chinese cities face in the 21st century. China is in the midst of a historic developmental inflection point, grappling with a significantly slowing economy, rapidly rising inequality, massive migration, skyrocketing housing prices, alarming environmental problems, and strong pushback from the West. In this volume, Western and Chinese scholars in different disciplines offer the clearest look yet at some of the main challenges China faces, including domestic and international contexts, the new urban development model, inclusion and well-being of migrants and their families, and urban sustainability. This book sheds light on China’s ongoing development and future directions, and has strong policy implications for anyone interested in the future of China.

This book is an interdisciplinary examination of China's new urban development model and the challenges Chinese cities face in the 21st century. China is in the midst of a historic developmental inflection point, grappling with a significantly slowing economy, rapidly rising inequality, massive migration, skyrocketing housing prices, alarming environmental problems, and strong pushback from the West. In this volume, Western and Chinese scholars in different disciplines offer the clearest look yet at some of the main challenges China faces, including domestic and international contexts, the new urban development model, inclusion and well-being of migrants and their families, and urban sustainability. This book sheds light on China’s ongoing development and future directions, and has strong policy implications for anyone interested in the future of China.

This book explores the process of urbanization and the profound challenges to China’s urban governance. Economic productivity continues to rise, with increasingly uneven distribution of prosperity and accumulation of wealth. The emergence of individual autonomy including demands for more freedom and participation in the governing process has asked for a change of the traditional top-down control system. The vertical devolution between the central and local states and horizontal competition among local governments produced an uneasy political dynamics in Chinese cities. Many existing publications analyze the urban transformation in China but few focuses on the governance challenges. It is critical to investigate China’s urbanization, paying special attention to its challenges to urban governance. This edited volume fills this gap by organizing ten chapters of distinctive urban development and governance issues.

This book teaches us to read the contemporary Chinese city. Li Shiqiao deftly crafts a new theory of the Chinese city and the dynamics of urbanization by: exploring the rise of stories of labour, finance and their hierarchies examining how the Chinese city has been shaped by the figuration of the writing system analyzing the continuing importance of the family and its barriers of protection against real and imagined dangers demonstrating how actual structures bring into visual being the networks of safety in personal and family networks. Understanding the Chinese City elegantly traces a thread between ancient Chinese city formations and current urban organizations, revealing hidden continuities that show how instrumental the past has been in forming the present. Rather than becoming obstacles to change, ancient practices have become effective strategies of adaptation under radically new terms.

With urbanism becoming the key driver of socio-economic change in China, this book provides much needed up-to-date material on Chinese urban development. Demonstrating how it transcends the centrally-planned model of economic growth, and assessing the extent to which it has gone beyond the common wisdom of Chinese ‘gradualism’, the book covers a wide range of important topics, including: local land development the local state private-public partnership foreign investment urbanization ageing home ownership. Providing a clear appraisal of recent trends in Chinese urbanism, this book puts forward important new conceptual resources to fill the gap between the outdated model of the ‘Third World’ city and the globalizing cities of the West.

This book analyzes the recent growth of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Hong Kong, seven major Chinese coastal cities. The authors detail theoretical mechanisms, spatial and non-spatial models of development, all while exploring possible directions to sustainability. They also look at how these cities have developed over the last 30 years, from the late 1970s to the 21st century. Each has its own unique background, regional and national positions, advantages, and functions. Using diversified approaches and measurements for each city, the authors argue that structural changes are necessary to achieve much needed sustainable development. The book covers developmental issues such as the regaining of central city and global city statuses, the role of governments in steering development, and achieving goals through mega projects, urban competitiveness, positioning, and branding. Including varied assessment and intense suggestions for structural changes, this book addresses core concerns for the sustainable growth of these metropolises. A valuable book for students, researchers and policy makers.

A startling, eye-opening account of a fascinating and decisive moment in Chinese history, packed with evocative stories. Jasper Becker tells the story of why and how China's leaders set about to destroy and rebuild one of the world's greatest cities and how many of the residents tried to stop it and protect their great architectural legacy.

Featuring everything from sports stadiums to shopping malls, hundreds of new cities in China stand empty, with hundreds more set to be built by 2030. Between now and then, the country's urban population will leap to over one billion, as the central government kicks its urbanization initiative into overdrive. In the process, traditional social structures are being torn apart, and a rootless, semi-displaced, consumption orientated culture rapidly taking their place. Ghost Cities of China is an enthralling dialogue driven, on-location search for an understanding of China's new cities and the reasons why many currently stand empty.

In 1915 Robert Park penned his seminal paper “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment”. This essay provided an agenda for the Chicago School of Urban Sociology, which formed the basis of urban research for decades. Given that China’s urban centres now occupy the spotlight that once belonged to American cities, Park’s essay is a platform and point of departure for this volume, which gathers together reflections from a broad range of urban China specialists to consider Park’s (ir)relevance today – for cities in China, for questions about the social life of the city and for urban research more generally. Essential for a broad range of urban studies scholars, this book is an invaluable teaching resource and a useful tool for policy-makers and planners.

The authors discuss the role of local institutions in coordinating business activities and unleashing entrepreneurship, arguing that the sudden growth of new firms and industries is facilitated by changes in business behaviour and institutions. Initial private exchange and investment in an environment of ill-functioning markets are shown to depend on local networks and local business culture which, in turn, rely on local tax regimes setting incentives for inherited bureaucracies to engage in economic transformation. Finally, the book establishes local institutions and local governance as crucial dimensions of China¿s emerging business system.