ArticlePDF Available

SUPERSCRIBING SUSTAINABILITY: THE PRODUCTION OF CHINA'S URBAN WATERSCAPES ARTICLE HISTORY

Authors:

Abstract and Figures

This paper analyzes the linkages between urban waterscapes, nature aesthetics, and sustainability by delineating the re-emergence of shan-shui, translatable as ‘mountain-water,’ or ‘landscape,’ within contemporary urban China. I show how this aesthetic concept, originally emerging in third century Chinese landscape poetry, is used to reconfigure and reimagine sustainability and contemporary China’s urban landscapes. I draw on original mixed methods fieldwork, including interviews over a two-year period, digital archiving, historical texts and discourse analysis. Through these methods, I detail the emergence of shan-shui aesthetics then draw on the concept of superscription, the historical process of layering symbolic meanings, to understand the contemporary superscription of shan-shui with urban sustainability through the writings of prominent Chinese scientists and urban planning experts. Their productive work generated a new imaginary of teleological urban modernity that superscribes shan-shui with urban sustainability as the “shan-shui city.” Through two primary case studies, Tangshan Nanhu Eco-city and Meixi Lake, I show how the production of new sustainable urban waterscapes is linked with place making practices, territorial processes, and localized entrepreneurialism. Finally, I point to the limits of superscription, by highlighting the significant disconnect between the state framing of urban space and the lived experiences of urban residents, which I conceptualize as the osculation of the state. The paper, thus, intervenes in literatures regarding the historical transformations of cultural symbols, aesthetics, urban political ecology, and the political economy of place-making in China.
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
... 19. Whereas aesthetic facets of early ecology in the United States emerged in relation to Southwest desert and riparian landscapes (Sayre 2010), in contemporary China ecological aesthetics are integral to environmental governance as shown through ecocity constructions (Pow 2018), urban brownfield restorations (Rodenbiker 2017), and urban-rural environmental planning projects that integrate "pristine" nature aesthetics with functional land zoning. 20. ...
Article
Full-text available
Although the science of ecology is often understood in antimodernizing terms, this article shows how ecology in China has become a means to articulate green modernization and sustainable development. As scholars predominantly focus on the policy rhetoric surrounding China’s national modernization and sustainable development program called “ecological civilization building,” the origins of how ecology came to take on developmental meanings remain obscure. This article highlights moments of global exchange and knowledge production by Chinese Marxists, earth systems scientists, and economists that produced eco- developmental logics. These logics define an interventionist role for the state, frame urbanization as moral progress, and refashion the role of the peasantry from the revolutionary vanguard to a backward social force impeding modernization. Ecological sciences in China, therefore, lay an epistemological foundation for legitimizing state-led technocratic practices of socioenvironmental engineering and naturalizing social inequalities between “urban” and “rural” people. In highlighting Chinese scientists’ agency in producing knowledge, this article counters diffusionist accounts of science as singular systematically organized branches of knowledge that emanate from the West. Instead, I demonstrate how ecology is contingent on the historical and political conditions through which it takes on meaning. In the context of China, ecology has become integral to environmental governance, state formation, and uneven relations of power.
... 'Green' or 'sustainable' development classifications have been shown to contribute to processes of dispossession, capital accumulation and uneven territorialization by generating sustainability fixes in which capital finds a sink in 'green' projects (While et al., 2004;Yeh, 2009;Corson, 2011;Fairhead et al., 2012;Pow and Neo, 2013;Knuth, 2016;Lin, 2017;Rodenbiker, 2017, Chung et al., 2018. As Chung et al. (2018) detail, urban sustainability and the production of green spaces in China are inextricable from the landed interests of municipal governments, rural villages and real estate-oriented entrepreneurialism, thereby making government intervention in land management and rural communities of key importance. ...
Article
Full-text available
Across contemporary China, city governments are unevenly territorializing peri‐urban villagers’ land and housing by creating new urban ecological conservation sites. I analyze this emerging form of what I call ‘ecological territorialization’ through three interrelated spatial practices: comprehensive urban–rural planning, peri‐urban ‘ecological migration’, and the distribution of institutional responsibility for conservation site financing, construction and management. Detailing this triad of territorializing practices renews attention to the relationship between conservation classifications that justify state intervention, uneven displacements of people from rural land and housing, and site‐specific capitalizations that collectively consolidate urban government control over rural spaces. These practices emerge stochastically as state, private, and semi‐state institutions capitalize on conservation projects in the context of legally and constitutionally underdefined land use rights and ecological land designations. In the current post‐socialist moment of urban ‘greening’, these practices are key to producing frontiers of land‐based accumulation and extending local state control across the peri‐urban fringe. Urban ecological enclosures not only remake city‐level state power but also shape rural people's relationships to land, labor and housing.
... However, as is often the case with urban greening and conservation projects globally (Pezzoli, 1998, Benjaminsen and Bryceson, 2012, Wolch et al., 2014, social displacements are rife. Insofar as urban conservation zoning in China shifts control and access over rural land, the process mirrors what researchers have described as "green grabbing" or "sustainability fixes," which denote the appropriation of land and resources via environmental channels (Fairhead et al., 2012, Pow and Neo, 2013, Rodenbiker, 2017. ...
Article
A central feature of China's “green” development plan has been the creation of conservation zones across the peri-urban fringes of major cities. In these conservation zones, rural land and housing are being unevenly incorporated into urban space, leading to a diverse set of experiences for dislocated villagers. In this paper, I develop a volumetric approach to analyze the spatial politics of agricultural and urban transitions in China's conservation zones. I advance theories of vertical and volumetric space, which consider relations across heights, depths, and surfaces, through attention to the temporalities and everyday experiences of volumes. My volumetric approach provides a foundation for delineating how the uneven valuation and compensation of rural land and housing shapes social differentiation, as well as how villagers navigate and experience rural-urban transitions. Furthermore, I argue that a volumetric account of three-dimensional space exposes the interconnections between agrarian and urban questions, which are usually considered discretely. The central contribution of this paper, therefore, is to reorient the agrarian and urban questions in relation to one another across horizontal, vertical, and temporal axes.
Article
Full-text available
In 2010, the municipality of Shanghai started the "Huangpu River Comprehensive Development Plan", a large regeneration initiative including the Expo site, targeted to revitalize the river banks and generally the urban environment, making Xuhui waterfront one of the six key construction areas of the 12th Five-Year Plan in Shanghai. Formerly one of the largest industrial districts, the so-called West Bund area has experienced a process of substantial transformation, currently still ongoing. Particular attention has been paid to the rehabilitation of the riverside, as a source of landscape enhancement, providing a system of open spaces and public facilities able to meet the dweller's demands and to attract touristic fluxes. For this reason, the West Bund Project represents one of the most relevant regeneration initiative currently taking place in Shanghai. This paper aims to investigate, starting from this specific case-study, the role of water in the definition of cultural and natural elements, revealing new perspectives for the revitalization of the urban environment.
Book
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
Book
The purpose of this volume is to treat the progress of history, civilization and urban development of China together in order to demonstrate the unique qualities of Chinese civilization.The author uses historical dynasties as the vertical dimension, starting from the pre-urban origin of round-moat village settlements of the Yangshao Period, until the most recent transitional city under the present “socialist market system.” There are a total of 13 chapters, covering a time-span of roughly 6,000 years.The book also discusses the theoretical context of the uniqueness of Chinese urban evolution and compares it with experiences in the West. It comprehensively treats major events, economic developments, territorial changes, and developments in technology, art and culture, military as well as administrative systems in the dynasties as urban change dynamics. The material therefore succinctly covers 6,000 years of Chinese cultural history.Besides using a large amount of Chinese literature - including materials on recent archeological finds - the volume explores substantial Western literature on relevant issues with the purpose of putting the Chinese experience in a global context. The author has included in the volume over 100 maps and line drawings selected from his collection accumulated over 30 years as a university lecturer and researcher of urban geography and the Chinese city. They provide vivid illustrations for illuminating key points on the structure of the Chinese city and the geopolitical situation of China in major historical periods. They also add exquisite detail through graphic techniques to the textual treatment of the subject matters, and are in themselves visually appealing, adding unique dimension to the volume.
Chapter
Reducing the conflict between economic development and protection of the ecological environment is key to a city’s sustainable development. A large number of new cities are being constructed every year in China—an inevitable outcome of the rapid economic growth and urbanization process. In addition to all the benefits that cities provide, numerous environmental problems have been emerging, the majority of which relate to pollution and the loss and fragmentation of natural habitats. Balancing economic growth with ecosystem demands in the development of new cities has become increasingly critical, requiring urgent solutions. Balanced urban development requires meeting both natural and urban demands, and therefore early stages of new city planning should be directed by low impact, sustainable development and ecological planning concepts.
Article
Winner of the Stanislas Julien Prize sponsored by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris. This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, which allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of the Chinese people toward their environment and their landscape. Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated the habitat of the elephants that populated the country alongside much of its original wildlife; the destruction of most of the forests; the impact of war on the environmental transformation of the landscape; and the re-engineering of the countryside through water-control systems, some of gigantic size. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the modern era, was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time. Indispensable for its new perspective on long-term Chinese history and its explanation of the roots of China's present-day environmental crisis, this book opens a door into the Chinese past.
Article
From the years 2004 to 2008, Beijing and Shanghai witnessed the construction of an extraordinary number of new buildings, many of which were designed by architectural firms overseas. Combining ethnographic fieldwork, historical research, and network analysis, Building Globalization closely scrutinizes the growing phenomenon of transnational architecture and its profound effect on the development of urban space. Roaming from construction sites in Shanghai to architects’ offices in Paris, Xuefei Ren interviews hundreds of architects, developers, politicians, residents, and activists to explore this issue. She finds that in the rapidly transforming cities of modern China, iconic designs from prestigious international architects help private developers to distinguish their projects, government officials to advance their careers, and the Chinese state to announce the arrival of modern China on the world stage. China leads the way in the globalization of architecture, a process whose ramifications can be felt from Beijing to Dubai to Basel. Connecting the dots between real estate speculation, megaproject construction, residential displacement, historical preservation, housing rights, and urban activism, Building Globalization reveals the contradictions and consequences of this new, global urban frontier.