Moral Order in the Post-Socialist Chinese City

The seminal works by Park and the Chicago school of sociology are of great value for studying a rapidly urbanising China characterised by the decline of the formerly socialist structure and the increasing commodification of services and housing. Their assertion that the industrial organisation of cities has substituted primary and neighbourhood relations with secondary relations characterised by anonymity and utilitarianism also resonates with the rising middle-class population in China. However, our chapter contends that certain population groups have not followed the trajectory of change described by Park but instead continue to rely on primary and local social relations due to interventions of the Chinese state. Our argument is supported by a discussion on the varying social relations in Chinese urban neighbourhoods and specifically on the social life of rural migrants in the urban Chinese society.

The Anxious Middle Class of Urban China

One of the most notable features of urbanization in China in the past two decades is the rise of an urban middle class. From the proliferation of nightlife entertainment in urban hot spots to the consumption of luxurious items and/or foreign brands, the drastic increase in car ownership to the growth of gated communities, cityscape in contemporary China has undergone drastic changes in the course of urbanization and socio-economic re-stratification. The rise of a newly formed middle class in the major cities is both an agent in shaping the changing cityscape and an outcome of current urban development. This chapter, drawing upon the authors’ observations conducted in a suburban middle-classcommunity in Beijing in 2007-2017 and the study of the middle class in Shanghai since the mid-1990s, reports on the emergence and formation of an urban middle class in contemporary Chinese cities. It is argued that this middle class came into existence when China’s economy was marketized and the social structure had undergone a major transformation as a result of such economic changes. Within a period of 20-25 years, there witnessed the birth of a middle class in the context of the transition to a post-socialist economy, the formation of new class identities and lifestyles, and growing class-related anxieties. Our discussion covers the formation of this urban middle class, its social and cultural outlooks, and an analysis of how their class interests shape the social landscape of the Chinese cities.

Beijing Ring Roads and the Poetics of Excess and Ordinariness

“The city,” so does Park argue, “shows the good and evil in human nature in excess.” Which inspires him to read the city as a laboratory to study human behaviour. In my chapter I connect the notion of excess to the significance of the ring roads in Beijing. Beijing is an excessive city par excellence, too big, too polluted, too crowded, too ugly, and changing too fast, making one lose his way time and again. The ring roads function as a symbolic device to keep a sense of control over this excess; they help to locate people and places, they function as the highway in the centre, and they create the mental map of the city. How do Beijing citizens relate to the ring roads? And how do art and popular culture help reimagine the ringroads and contain or parody the excessiveness of Beijing?

Learning from Chicago (and LA)?

This chapter questions the contemporary relevance of Western urban theory for China. It argues that urban theory generally prioritises time over space, stressing the universal character of urban transformation in different places. Meanwhile Western cities are presented as prototypes of this transformation. Human ecology, for instance presented Chicago as model of modern urbanism, while the L.A. School of urbanism sees Los Angeles as the epitome of the post-modern period. Debunking the underlying assumption of singular urban logics and development trajectories, the chapter then takes inspiration from modes of theorising that focus on the localisation of global developments in specific cities and develop related localised conceptualisations. It employs this perspective to reflect on the urban China literature. Acknowledging that this literature has come a long way in a short time, it suggests that urban China research borrows concepts from the Western urban studies literature with ease, but that comparisons at the same time are short-circuited with reference to Chinese ‘exceptionalism’. This is mirrored in a remarkable underrepresentation of Chinese urban scholars in the comparative urbanism discussion. Research into Chinese ‘gated communities’ is then presented as illustration. The chapter concludes that there is considerable scope for conceptual renewal, which would benefit both urban China research and the urban studies literature in general.

Conclusion

Given the confluence of a vast body of research about urban China and the heated debates about urban theory, revisiting Park seems at first glance like an untimely, limiting tactic for setting a research agenda. Taking Park as a starting point does not, however, dictate rules about speaking in his terms, nor does it require a re-treading of the Los Angeles School critiques of his work. Rather, it can be a valuable way to review the research on urban China in order to situate this work within greater theoretical issues. This concluding chapter reflects on the general issues of exceptionalism and methodology haunting the research on urban China. It suggests that rather than a research agenda like the one Park outlines in his essay on “The City,” perhaps the future of research demands a reconsideration of approach.

A Study of Socio-spatial Segregation of Rural Migrants in Shenzhen

To decode cities, Robert Park brought two issues into consideration, segregation and migration, which are also key to understanding the Global South cities today, such as Shenzhen, the laboratory of post-reform China. Similar to Chicago, Shenzhen is a well-known prospering ‘migrant city’, where we identified marked sociospatial segregation of rural migrants. Unlike Chicago, however, the segregation of migrants in Shenzhen is largely determined by some institutional factors such as hukou system, the urban and rural dualism, and its ‘world factory’ regime. Moreover, through the examination of Shenzhen’s Foxconn complex, we identified some difficulties encountered by migrants in integrating into Shenzhen or returning to their hometowns, that is, becoming either urbanities or returnees. Rural migrants have been stuck in a specific status of in- between urban and rural. This supports the argument of Park who stated that the city is a ‘psychophysical mechanism’, in which physical space and human sentiments interact. From Chicago in 1916 to Shenzhen in 2016, the segregation of migrants is still a major challenge for cities to address.

The Handshake 302 Village Hack Residency

Through a comparison of how assimilation and shying (adaptation) have functioned as values in Chicago and Shenzhen, respectively this paper explores what it has meant for these two cities to self-identify as destination cities that owe their morphology and ethos to immigrants and migrants. The argument is developed through a case study of the Handshake 302 Village Hack Residency. Located in one of Shenzhen’s most iconic urban villages, the Handshake 302 project aims to draw attention to ongoing demolition and redevelopment of these arrival spaces.

Urbanization and Economic Development

This essay uses Robert Park’s The City as an inspiration for a comparison of urban America around 1915 with urban China a hundred years later. The focus is not so much on the social fabric of the city but rather on a comparison of the process of urbanization in relation to economic development in the US and China in their respective historical contexts. It is suggested that both American writings in urban studies in the early 20th century and Chinese writings in the early 21st century are decidedly inward-looking. In both instances, there was a strong correlation between urbanization and industrialization, but the paths start to diverge in terms of the effects of deindustrialization and the timing of the emergence of the digital economy. Demographically, too, there are important differences that suggest further divergence in the urban experience of China and the United States in the years ahead.

Pathways to Urban Residency and Subjective Well-Being in Beijing

Size of population, sources of population, and distribution of population within the city, according to Park, are the first things we should establish when studying a city. During the past 30 years, the composition of China’s urban population has changed considerably. While studies have focused intensively on migrants who leave rural areas to work in urban centres, this chapter draws attention to a number of other modes of migration also occurring on a major scale in China, including those of urban-to-urban migrants from townships and small cities to large metropolises and in-situ urbanized rural residents who became urbanites because their land was reclassified as urban. Based on two waves of a household survey undertaken in Beijing in 2013 and 2015, our study highlights the effects of the divergent pathways to urban residency on individuals’ subjective well-being.

“Bewitched by the History Behind the Walls”

This chapter examines how urban sociology in and of China is interconnected in historical and disciplinary terms with Robert Park and the Chicago School. It analyses four dimensions thereof: 1) personal relations between Robert Park and Chinese students and colleagues who enabled his visit to China, namely Xu Shilian, Wu Jingchao and Wu Wenzao; 2) institutional embeddedness of the sociology departments at both the University of Chicago and Yanjing University within the funding structures and strategies of the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1920s and 1930s and amongst competing approaches to research in (urban) sociology; 3) empirical fieldwork and comparative community studies in the form of Fei Xiaotong’s research on small towns in China (early 1980s) and his conceptualization of rural urbanization which built on his earlier classic rural community study and influenced official Chinese urbanization strategies until the recent National Plan on New Urbanization (2014-2020); and 4) theorizing China’s “villages in the city” (城中村‎) in light of previous debates inspired by the Chicago School on “cities within cities” (Park 2015), the “slum” and “urban villages”. Based on these four perspectives the chapter addresses questions of legacy, creative impetus and possible limitations arising from Park’s program vis-à-vis urban sociology in China today.