China: A Historical Geography of the Urban

Description

This book offers a unique contribution to the burgeoning field of Chinese historical geography. Urban transformation in China constitutes both a domestic revolution and a world-historical event. Through the exploration of nine urban sites of momentous change, over an extended period of time, this book connects the past with the present, and provides much-needed literature on city growth and how they became complex laboratories of prosperity. The first part of this book puts Chinese urban changes into historical perspective, and probes the relationship between nation and city, focusing on Shanghai, Beijing and Changchun. Part two deals with the relationship between history and modernity, concentrating on Tunxi, a traditional trade center of tea, New Villages in Shanghai and street names in Taipei and Shanghai. Part three showcases the complexities of urban regeneration vis-à-vis heritage preservation in cities such as Datong, Tianjin and Qingdao. This book offers an innovative interdisciplinary and international perspective, which will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese urban studies, as well Chinese politics and society. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction (Yannan Ding)....Pages 1-14 Front Matter ....Pages 15-15 Shanghai Parks in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: Architectural and Cultural Exchanges Between the East and the West (Hsiu-Ling Kuo)....Pages 17-39 A City of Workers, a City for Workers? Remaking Beijing Urban Space in the Early PRC (Fabio Lanza)....Pages 41-65 Changchun Across 1949: Rebuilding a Colonial Capital City Under Socialism in the Early 1950s (Yishi Liu)....Pages 67-88 Front Matter ....Pages 89-89 Tunxi: Urban Sectoral Agglomeration in a Regional Centre of Tea Trade (Yi Zou, Xi Lin)....Pages 91-114 What’s in a Name: The “New Village” in Shanghai, 1930–1980 (Duan Zheng, Xiaohong Zhang)....Pages 115-135 A Comparison of Politics of Street Names in Taipei and Shanghai (Wenchuan Huang)....Pages 137-161 Front Matter ....Pages 163-163 Disneyfication or Self-Referentiality: Recent Conservation Efforts and Modern Planning History in Datong (Shulan Fu, Jean Hillier)....Pages 165-191 The Politics of Aesthetics in Tianjin Between Past and Present (Maurizio Marinelli)....Pages 193-224 Living in the “Past”: The Effects of a Growing Preservation Discourse in Contemporary Urban China (Philipp Demgenski)....Pages 225-249 Back Matter ....Pages 251-255