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Module Content

The creation of the urban in China constitutes both a domestic revolution and a world-historical event because it represents the largest construction project in the planet鈥檚 history. Since the 1980s, China has built hundreds of new cities, making urban change unprecedented in size, scale, and scope. Urbanization, and the role of the state in planning modernization through the development of 鈥榖eautiful and happy鈥� cities, are inseparable from China鈥檚 economic growth. Urbanization also entailed a major project of 鈥榬ural-to-urban鈥� citizenship education, with the declared aim of improving the quality of life of the citizens.

This raises important questions for our understanding of prosperity 鈥攖aking into consideration both the complexities of China鈥檚 urban systems and the outbound investment of Chinese construction companies. By 2030, one billion Chinese will be living in cities, with more than 221 Chinese cities having a population of over one million. For China鈥檚 central planners, urbanization has been a key economic driver in their search for national prosperity, with the overall urban composition of China鈥檚 population expected to rise from 54% in 2014 to 70% by 2030 (as indicated by household registration or hukou). How China achieves such a rapid and large-scale change without locking in high-carbon patterns of growth is a crucial question both for national and global prosperity. The need for innovation and solutions at multiple levels in China mirrors wider global-national-local challenges associated with the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, including no. 11 鈥� 鈥淢ake cities and Human Settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable鈥�.

This module focuses on China鈥檚 urban transformation: case studies are drawn from empirical work on major cities as well as cities on the margins, with the aim of understanding the Chinese state鈥檚 vision of a prosperous, modern, and urbanised China while also investigating broader questions of citizenship formation, 鈥榬ight to the city鈥�, and 鈥榪uality of life鈥� among different socio-economic and cultural groups.

The aim is to encourage students to critically reflect upon the key question of how to make cities better spaces for living for all residents. Therefore, understanding the processes and dynamics of urban transformation is a pre-requisite to critically reflect upon the ways in which the changes have affected quotidian experiences.

While exploring the pathways to create modern Chinese cities developed by urban planners and policymakers, we will also try to understand the aspirations and the imaginations of citizens and communities, so that we will be able to explore the possible challenges in rethinking urban prosperity from below in the present and the future. On this basis, the module invites the students to rethink the urban in China through the lens of socio-spatial and socio-ecological value, exploring innovative circuits of knowledge production and transformative powers both on the quality of the place and the wellbeing of the community.

The module is an optional component of the curriculum for the MSc Global Prosperity, the MSc Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the MSc in Prosperity, Place, and Planet. We welcome other 麻豆传媒视频网站 graduate students who wish to take this module.

Illustrative module outline

1. What is the Urban? Socio-spatial transformation and prosperity
2. Focus on Beijing: The city as a spectacle and the impact on the residents鈥� livelihood
3. Focus on Shanghai: The production of the global(-sing) city and the question of socio-ecological prosperity
4. Focus on Tianjin: Transcultural production of space and the Challenges for cultural heritage preservation
5. Focus on Shenzhen: From Special Economic Zone to model city
6. Villages in the City: Rural migrants and the 鈥榬ight to the city鈥� in China
7. The Informal City: Street markets and the knowledge politics of waste, labour, and survival in the city
8. Global China鈥檚 urbanising dynamics: Processes and Impact of Urban Entrepreneurialism with Chinese characteristics
9. Mapping the Urban in the Border Regions: From Kashgar to Hong Kong
10. Summary and conclusion: Urban Space, Society and Quality of Life.

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