hkskyline
July 13th, 2010, 04:36 PM
Shenzhen's migrant settlements key to city's success
10 July 2010
SCMP
http://www.globalphotos.org/shenzhen/20070624/IMG_5826.jpg
Proximity to Hong Kong is often cited as the main reason for the economic success of Shenzhen and its surrounding Pearl River Delta region. Ironically, when Hong Kong was ceded by the Qing dynasty to the British Empire in 1842, the then barren rock's biggest asset was its location in the Pearl River estuary. The Pearl River Delta had been a major Asian trading port for hundreds of years before the colonisation of Hong Kong. Today, it is home to about 45 million people with a gross domestic product of some US$300 billion, approximately 10 per cent of China's national GDP.
Shenzhen was created along with other special economic zones in 1979. More than perhaps any other city, it has come to represent China's rapid modernisation and urbanisation. Whether touting Shenzhen as the first Chinese city to be based on modern planning and for its economic success, or dismissing it as a capitalist sweatshop devoid of any local character, all seem to insist that Shenzhen is a city with "no history" that transformed within two decades from "nothing" into an "instant city".
Shenzhen's first two master plans were based on a Soviet-influenced, centrally controlled planning model. The planning resulted in an essentially linear city along the coastal transport spine of Shennan Boulevard. The 1986 blueprint planned for a population of a million by the year 2000; a revised version in 1989 raised the estimate to 1.5 million residents. Yet, the population of Shenzhen reached 10 million in 2000.
With such gaps between planners' vision and actual conditions, how did Shenzhen not only survive, but also achieve such economic success? The answer lies in the hidden urban realities of densely developed, informal sites dubbed "cheng zhong cun", or "villages in a city".
Take any satellite image of Shenzhen and examine the areas along the very visible east-west Shennan Boulevard, and you will see that behind the layer of roadside landscapes and towered developments are blocks of densely packed gridded settlements. Venture inside these areas, and you encounter a city different from the one popularly portrayed; here, mid-rise high-density buildings stand within breathing room of one another. The existing 300 or so urban villages are home to nearly half of Shenzhen's population, all packed into a total area of less than 10 per cent of the city's land.
People usually refer to these areas as slums, red-light districts or - according to the Shenzhen Municipality Villages in the City Reformation Declaration of 2005 - "ulcers in our healthy urban environment".
Nearly 2,000 agrarian villages used to dot the city's land. To build the special economic zone, the central government bought the land rights from the village collectives by designating the land as urban and therefore owned exclusively by the central government. In exchange, each male villager received a 120 square metre parcel of land on which to construct a new house.
Over the years, most villagers built basic and low-rent housing on this land to take advantage of the massive influx of migrant workers to Shenzhen, while city planners who did not expect the flow failed to provide enough for their needs. Many former farmers became landlords and, in recent years, many former village heads have become executives of corporations that develop commercial properties and negotiate lucrative deals by selling the village-collective land to private investors and developers.
In addition to housing, the "villages in the city" are also full of street-side stands, small shops, open-air markets, all-night games parlours and underground factories. They often have unlicensed schools, clinics and hospitals, as migrant workers and their children are usually not entitled to the city's public services.
As most of the urban villages are distributed throughout the city, near its many commercial centres, most residents are able to walk to work and save the cost of even public transport. With a road system already at full capacity, it is difficult to imagine the consequences of all these workers needing to commute.
These urban villages have become providers of affordable housing, close-knit social networks and mixed-use developments, making up for what central planning dangerously lacked: a sustainable socio-economic urban fabric for the most basic of people's needs.
The village and the city have always existed in co-dependence. Traditionally, the exchange is agricultural goods for money; today, the former co-dependence has been transformed into an unprecedented web of complex social, economic and political relationships.
Any debate on modern China cannot ignore the massive floating population living and working within the city: the total number of the floating migrant population on the mainland is estimated at 200 million, or a full 15 per cent of its total population.
The study of new Chinese cities must examine the social, economic and political relationships between the village and the city. In most Chinese cities today, the most basic needs - from shelter construction to food preparation - are met by migrant workers with no official status in the cities. This interdependency between village and city is perhaps the most extreme in Shenzhen's case.
Demonising these "villages in the city" as "ulcers" and dismissing the unique history of Shenzhen would lead to a missed opportunity to learn from such a sweeping, although unplanned, urban experimentation on a massive scale.
Shenzhen, seen as China's accidental invention of a radical hybrid urban structure, could serve as a model for sustainable urban development in the Pearl River Delta region and around the world.
Juan Du is principal of IDU_Architecture and an assistant professor in the department of architecture at the University of Hong Kong. She has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Peking University. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in the Journal for Architectural Education
10 July 2010
SCMP
http://www.globalphotos.org/shenzhen/20070624/IMG_5826.jpg
Proximity to Hong Kong is often cited as the main reason for the economic success of Shenzhen and its surrounding Pearl River Delta region. Ironically, when Hong Kong was ceded by the Qing dynasty to the British Empire in 1842, the then barren rock's biggest asset was its location in the Pearl River estuary. The Pearl River Delta had been a major Asian trading port for hundreds of years before the colonisation of Hong Kong. Today, it is home to about 45 million people with a gross domestic product of some US$300 billion, approximately 10 per cent of China's national GDP.
Shenzhen was created along with other special economic zones in 1979. More than perhaps any other city, it has come to represent China's rapid modernisation and urbanisation. Whether touting Shenzhen as the first Chinese city to be based on modern planning and for its economic success, or dismissing it as a capitalist sweatshop devoid of any local character, all seem to insist that Shenzhen is a city with "no history" that transformed within two decades from "nothing" into an "instant city".
Shenzhen's first two master plans were based on a Soviet-influenced, centrally controlled planning model. The planning resulted in an essentially linear city along the coastal transport spine of Shennan Boulevard. The 1986 blueprint planned for a population of a million by the year 2000; a revised version in 1989 raised the estimate to 1.5 million residents. Yet, the population of Shenzhen reached 10 million in 2000.
With such gaps between planners' vision and actual conditions, how did Shenzhen not only survive, but also achieve such economic success? The answer lies in the hidden urban realities of densely developed, informal sites dubbed "cheng zhong cun", or "villages in a city".
Take any satellite image of Shenzhen and examine the areas along the very visible east-west Shennan Boulevard, and you will see that behind the layer of roadside landscapes and towered developments are blocks of densely packed gridded settlements. Venture inside these areas, and you encounter a city different from the one popularly portrayed; here, mid-rise high-density buildings stand within breathing room of one another. The existing 300 or so urban villages are home to nearly half of Shenzhen's population, all packed into a total area of less than 10 per cent of the city's land.
People usually refer to these areas as slums, red-light districts or - according to the Shenzhen Municipality Villages in the City Reformation Declaration of 2005 - "ulcers in our healthy urban environment".
Nearly 2,000 agrarian villages used to dot the city's land. To build the special economic zone, the central government bought the land rights from the village collectives by designating the land as urban and therefore owned exclusively by the central government. In exchange, each male villager received a 120 square metre parcel of land on which to construct a new house.
Over the years, most villagers built basic and low-rent housing on this land to take advantage of the massive influx of migrant workers to Shenzhen, while city planners who did not expect the flow failed to provide enough for their needs. Many former farmers became landlords and, in recent years, many former village heads have become executives of corporations that develop commercial properties and negotiate lucrative deals by selling the village-collective land to private investors and developers.
In addition to housing, the "villages in the city" are also full of street-side stands, small shops, open-air markets, all-night games parlours and underground factories. They often have unlicensed schools, clinics and hospitals, as migrant workers and their children are usually not entitled to the city's public services.
As most of the urban villages are distributed throughout the city, near its many commercial centres, most residents are able to walk to work and save the cost of even public transport. With a road system already at full capacity, it is difficult to imagine the consequences of all these workers needing to commute.
These urban villages have become providers of affordable housing, close-knit social networks and mixed-use developments, making up for what central planning dangerously lacked: a sustainable socio-economic urban fabric for the most basic of people's needs.
The village and the city have always existed in co-dependence. Traditionally, the exchange is agricultural goods for money; today, the former co-dependence has been transformed into an unprecedented web of complex social, economic and political relationships.
Any debate on modern China cannot ignore the massive floating population living and working within the city: the total number of the floating migrant population on the mainland is estimated at 200 million, or a full 15 per cent of its total population.
The study of new Chinese cities must examine the social, economic and political relationships between the village and the city. In most Chinese cities today, the most basic needs - from shelter construction to food preparation - are met by migrant workers with no official status in the cities. This interdependency between village and city is perhaps the most extreme in Shenzhen's case.
Demonising these "villages in the city" as "ulcers" and dismissing the unique history of Shenzhen would lead to a missed opportunity to learn from such a sweeping, although unplanned, urban experimentation on a massive scale.
Shenzhen, seen as China's accidental invention of a radical hybrid urban structure, could serve as a model for sustainable urban development in the Pearl River Delta region and around the world.
Juan Du is principal of IDU_Architecture and an assistant professor in the department of architecture at the University of Hong Kong. She has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Peking University. This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in the Journal for Architectural Education