1st Edition

Chinese Urbanism Critical Perspectives

Edited By Mark Jayne Copyright 2018
    280 Pages 48 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    280 Pages 48 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book provides a definitive overview of contemporary developments in our understanding of urban life in China. Multidisciplinary perspectives outline the most significant critical, theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in our appreciation of Chinese cities in the context of an increasingly globalized world. Each chapter includes reviews and appraisals of past and current theoretical development and embarks on innovative theoretical directions relating to Marxist, feminist, post-structural, post-colonial and ‘more-than-representational’ thinking. The book provides an in-depth insight into urban change and considers in what ways theoretical engagement with Chinese cities contributes to our understanding of ‘global urbanism’. Chapters explore how new critical perspectives on economic, political, social, spatial, emotional, embodied and affective practices add value to our understanding of urban life in, and beyond, China.

    Chinese Urbanism offers valuable insights which will be of interest to students and scholars alike working in geography, urban studies, Asian studies, economics, political studies and beyond.

    1: An introduction to critical perspectives on Chinese urbanism (Mark Jayne) Part one: Space and place 2: Towards critical urbanism: urban public space in modern China (Junxi Qian) 3: Urbanism as a state project: lessons from Beijing's Green Belt (Hyun Bang Shin and Yimin Zhao) 4: Nature, housing and everyday life in Chinese cities (Junfang Xie) Part two: Identity, lifestyle and forms of sociability 5: Encountering strangers: prostitution and urban life in Dongguan, China (Xiaomei Cai and Xiaobo Su) 6: Greening the Chinese city: young people, environmental activism and ChinaNet (Alison Hulme) 7: Interstitial spaces of caring and community: commodification, modernisation and the dislocations of everyday practice within Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods (Melissa Y. Rock) Part three: Consumption and urban cultures 8: Tasting, savouring, signalling: articulating the luxury brand experience in Chinese cities (Annamma Joy, John F. Sherry, Jr. and Jeff Jianfeng Wang) 9: Food, alcohol and the ‘ideal’ home in urban China Chen Liu 10: Pop-up urbanism: selling old Beijing to the creative class (Amy Yueming Zhang) Part four: (Im)mobilities and materialities 11: Urban cross-border mobilities: geopolitical encounters and bordering practices of ‘Taiwanese compatriots’ in China (J. J. Zhang) 12: Contested (im)mobilities and rhythms of Chinese cities: urban transformations and ‘slow life’ in Sanya (Jingfu Chen) 13: Chinese urban informality and migrant workers negotiation of work/life balance (Gengzhi Huang, Tao Lin and Desheng Xue) Part five: Bodies, emotions and atmospheres 14: Embodying Chinese urbanism (Mark Jayne and Ho Hon Leung) 15: Noisy cities (Jie Zhang) 16: Creativity and Chinese urbanism: the moral atmosphere of Lishui Barbizon (Jun Wang and Yan Li) 17: Afterword: critical Chinese urbanism for the twenty-first century (Mark Jayne)

     

    Biography

    Mark Jayne is Professor of Human Geography at Cardiff University, UK. He is a social and cultural geographer whose research interests include consumption, the urban order, city cultures and cultural economy and has published over 80 journal articles, book chapters and official reports. Mark is author of Cities and Consumption (Routledge, 2005), co-author of Alcohol, Drinking, Drunkenness: (Dis)Orderly Spaces (Ashgate, 2011) and Childhood, Family, Alcohol (Ashgate, 2015). Mark is also co-editor of City of Quarters: Urban Villages in the Contemporary City (Ashgate, 2004), Small Cities: Urban Experience Beyond the Metropolis (Routledge, 2006), Urban Theory Beyond the West: A World of Cities (Routledge, 2012) and Urban Theory: New Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2017).