The City in China : New Perspectives on Contemporary Urbanism

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. In 2015, one hundred years passed since Robert Park penned his seminal article "The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment" in the American Journal of Sociology. It provided an agenda for the Chicago school of urban sociology, which came to shape urban research for decades to come. Since 1915 much has changed, both in the urban world itself and in the urban research that reflects on those transformations. In today's world of global cities, cities around the world have undergone dramatic development, and nowhere as dramatic as in China. In the world of urban research, Park's human ecology approach has lost the appeal that it once had. Against this background, in this book specialists on urban China reflect on the relevance of Park's article on "The City" - for cities in China, for urban research, and for questions about studying the social life of the city. The aim of the book is to take Park's article as a point of departure for critical reflection on both the research on urban China and on the issues that Chinese cities face. The book offers readers a timely respite from the eruption of urban China research, to reflect on what the city in China contributes to urban studies more generally. Despite the shared starting point, the contributors represent a range of perspectives that would disrupt any notion of monolithic "Chinese school" while also pointing the way towards recurrent challenges, topics and approaches relevant for a contemporary urbanism Front cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments Preface 1. Robert Park in China: From the Chicago School to Urban China Studies 2. “Bewitched by the History Behind the Walls”: Robert Park and the Arc of Urban Sociology from Chicago to China 3. Moral Order in the Post-Socialist Chinese City: Generating a Dialogue with Robert E. Park’s “The City” 4. Learning from Chicago (and LA)? The Contemporary Relevance of Western Urban Theory for China 5. From Chicago to Shenzhen, via Birmingham: Zones of Transition and Dreams of Homeownership 6. Urbanization and Economic Development: Comparing the Trajectories of China and the United States 7. The Handshake 302 Village Hack Residency: Chicago, Shenzhen, and the Experience of Assimilation 8. Beijing Ring Roads and the Poetics of Excess and Ordinariness 9. Pathways to Urban Residency and Subjective Well-Being in Beijing 10. A Study of Socio-spatial Segregation of Rural Migrants in Shenzhen: A Case of Foxconn 11. The Anxious Middle Class of Urban China: Its Emergence and Formation 12. Conclusion: Everyday Cities, Exceptional Cases Index Back cover 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 text is an invaluable teaching resource and a useful tool for policy-makers and planners This book gathers together reflections from a broad range of urban China specialists to actively engage with the challenge of conceptualising urban China and ask important questions about the development of contemporary global cities.