Chinese city planning and social engineering

Bird's-eye view of the Forbidden City :: Beijing (Oct. 2013) :: © Dimitry B.

Have you ever wondered why Chinese city planning is so highly structured and concise but also anarchic, informal, megalomaniac or just damned weird at the same time?

Over the years, I've been mystified and trying hard to get a deeper understanding of the links between ancient and modern urban planning patterns, demographic and economic change, diversifying lifestyles or traditional and contemporary techniques of social engineering by various officials in imperial China or modern state bureaucrats respectively.

An article in the fine series 'The story of cities', published recently on The Guardian's web site and entitled 'Beijing and the earliest planning document in history', is a fascinating and highly instructive read in at least two respects.

First, it's definitely high time to have a closer look at historical precedents regarding Chinese city planning to be able to determine the hidden or not so hidden driving forces behind current urban planning programmes.

Second, the example of the long-serving Chinese capital is especially useful in terms of a capital city's general importance to the political / cultural / economic elite and the general public alike as well as in terms of long-term planning priorities of urban bureaucracies and members of the ruling classes now and then.

Oliver Wainwright's piece in The Guardian mentions the earliest planning document in Chinese history, the so-called 'Kaogong Ji (考工记)' or 'Regulations of Construction', that was widely used during the rule of the Ming emperors.

The text dates from the fifth century B.C. and was part of the famous 'Rites of Zhou (Zhou li 周禮)', an ancient Confucian manual of bureaucracy and organizational theory. Wainwright vividly demonstrates the relevance of such invaluable ancient official documents to legions of officials, philosophers, politicians, administrators or planners.

Historical dimensions of contemporary phenomena are rarely discussed in mainstream media outlets (or academic writings, as a matter of fact). And that's clearly a shame because many puzzles would become much easier to piece together and contextualize.

Think, for instance, of the age-old pattern to build hermetically cordoned-off living (and working) quarters with security guards and all of the essential infrastructure, such as workshops, shops, sport facilities, schools and hospitals, inside the actual premises.

Modern-day gated communities located in the suburbs or premium central areas of big cities echo earlier socialist danwei (work unit) living / working structures as well as even earlier building complexes that were inhabited mainly by well-endowed literati or wealthy land-owners (the so-called 'gentry') and their countless servants.

City Planning Museum :: Beijing (Sept. 2009) :: © Ivan Walsh

Even today's 'urban villages' (chengzhongcun 城中村) and their mostly disenfranchised inhabitants in many Chinese cities share some important traits with their historic counterparts; strategies by urban administrations and the security apparatus, for example, are not that different in terms of strictly policing mobile (and thus possibly unruly and dangerous) populations and in trying to safeguard order on behalf of state and society.

Then and now, peasants, workers, the unemployed, weak, old and poor are still at the bottom of a widely accepted social hierarchy whereas the old / new rich, the ever-growing middle-class and the politically connected have profited enormously in an era of economic reforms and rapid social change.

This seems to be not entirely different from earlier, imperial times in China's long history when day labourers, slaves, servants, peasants or unskilled workers didn't enjoy the rights and privileges skilled workers, administrative personnel, the gentry or the literati claimed for themselves.

But back to the 'urban villages' as just one example how contemporary trends may reflect earlier phenomena: Intimidation, eviction and resettlement are most prominent among the various measures city governments take to get out or keep out unwanted 'guests' who don't belong.

Only recently, the central government and city governments have begun to realize that the real estate bubble is threatening the country's economic and social stability and are thus more inclined to make good on promises made a very long time ago.

By giving rural migrants the right to buy less expensive homes in cities and thus being able to obtain an urban hukou (household registration) with all the privileges it entails, the Chinese government is desperately trying to fix the multiplying problems in an overheated real estate market as well as further advance an ambitious urbanization strategy.

The many paradoxes and excesses in contemporary urban planning projects are surely not lost on the writer of the article in The Guardian. He convincingly makes the point that city planning has always been a distinct Chinese method to order society according to preconceived, ancient notions of propriety, class, age, gender, family relations and a classic as well as an up-to-date mechanism to exact a rigorous form of social engineering.

After crossing the Nanpu bridge from Pudong over to Puxi :: Shanghai (2008) :: © Jakob Montrasio

The author puts it this way (and I tend to agree):

'The ancient cosmological symbolism may long have fallen away from the streets of Beijing, but the role of city planning as a means of enforcing social order is as strong as ever.' 

(The Guardian, March 17, 2016)

I highly recommend to have a look at the other eight parts in 'The story of cities' series, namely the articles covering the examples of Alexandria (part 1), Rome (part 2), Baghdad (part 3), Benin City (part 5), Potosí (part 6), Philadelphia (part 7), St Petersburg (part 8) and Kingston (part 9).

The Guardian plans to publish 50 parts in total to outline past and present of global urbanization. A new article has been published nearly every day so far and the editors have been largely successful in recruiting well-informed and witty writers.

I continue to love 'The Grauniad' for exciting novel projects such as this one (the whole 'Cities' section where the series runs is supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, by the way).