1. The End of the Village: Planning the Urbanization of Rural China
- Author:
- Weiping Wu, Xiaobo Lü, Nick R. Smith, Wing-Shing Tang, Deborah Davis, and Andrew Kipnis
- Publication Date:
- 02-2022
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has dramatically expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. New development programs, including “urban-rural coordination”, “new-type urbanization”, and, most recently, “rural revitalization”, are restructuring China’s urban–rural relations and imposing novel forms of state-led urbanization onto the countryside. Rural simulacra, such as high-rise new towns, ecological protection zones, historical tourism sites, and industrialized farms, increasingly reflect planners' and policy-makers' urban imaginations of what the rural should be and have more to do with serving urban consumers than ensuring rural welfare. The result is a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Smith’s recently published book, The End of the Village: Planning the Urbanization of Rural China, explores the contested implementation of this radical new approach to urbanization in the municipality of Chongqing. Drawing on the book’s findings, this interdisciplinary panel brings together leading scholars of Chinese urbanization to discuss the ongoing transformation of China’s urban–rural relations. This event is cosponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia GSAPP, and Columbia SIPA.
- Topic:
- Urbanization, Inequality, and Rural
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia