Category Archives: Books

Inaugural lecture at the Ecole de Chaillot delivered by Wang Shu

 

 Text edited and translated by Françoise Ged and Emmanuelle Péchenart. English translation Krystyna Horko. Ouvrage bilingue français-anglais, 128 p., ill. coul., 21 x 17 cm. 978-2-86742-211-9. Site de l’éditeur

Summary, foreword

Wang Shu & Lu Wenyu p. 10
Building a different world in accordance with principles of nature p. 13

Another view

The current state of cities p. 17
Hangzhou p. 18
A lost model p. 24
What about the countryside? p. 25
In China poetry reigned in the towns as well as in the countryside p. 26
Nature and the «natural way» p. 27
A meditative approach p. 29
The width of viewing and thinking p. 30
These paintings are architectural drawings p. 31
The height of viewing and thinking p. 32 Viewing, thinking and wandering p. 33
What to look at and meditate on? p. 34
The time of viewing and thinking p. 38
Painting and contemplation p. 41

The poetics of construction

The Poetics of recycling things p. 44 Teaching inside ruins p. 46
What can we do? p. 47
Grass-roots research p. 52
Tiled Garden, The 11th Venice architecture
Biennale, 2006 p. 54
The Five Scattered Houses in Ningbo, an experimental project p. 56
Teaching and daily practice p. 61

A different utopia Sinuosity

Breathing p. 71
Architecture like the movement of waves p. 78
Two ways of mastering scale p. 80
The Ningbo History Museum p. 82
Acting on changes in the city p. 94
Zhongshan street in Hangzhou recycling time and memory p. 94
Six prerequisite conditions for the renovation of Zhongshan
Street in Hangzhou p. 100
Residents’ smiles p. 105
Finding the natural way again p. 109
Amateur Architecture Studio p. 110
Discussion with the audience

Wang Shu & Lu Wenyu

Wang Shu studied architecture at Nanjing’s Southeast University before going on to do a doctorate at Tongji University, Shanghai, in 2000.

In 1997, he and his wife Lu Wenyu, set up their own agency, Amateur Architecture Studio, in Hangzhou where Wang Shu has also headed the architecture school of the China Academy of Art since 2003.

Their projects have received considerable media attention and been exhibited worldwide (including “Alors, La Chine?” at the Centre Pompidou Paris in 2003, “Positions” in 2008, and “Architecture as a Resistance” at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels in 2009). Since 2003 he has received Chinese and international awards, including the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2007, the Gold Medal of Architecture from the French Académie d’Architecture, and the Pritzker prizein 2012.

After spending the 1990s on building sites learning traditional skills from artisans, Wang Shu carried out a number of projects, mainly cultural buildings, where he demonstrated a sensitive and poetic approach to traditional construction expertise, while using a highly contemporary architectural style. His works include the:

  • Wenzheng College Library at Suzhou University (2000) with Tong Ming
  • Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum (2005)
  • Five ScatteredHouses project in Ningbo (2006)
  • Tiled Garden at the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale (2006)
  • Ceramic House in Jinhua (2007)In addition to using traditional building techniques,

Wang Shu also likes to reinterpret traditional forms and usage in his works to create continuity with the past, something that is often lost in China: high-rise homes (2006) and the renovation of Zhongshan Street in Hangzhou (2009), and the Ningbo Tengtou Pavilion at the Shanghai Universal Exhibition (2010).

Wang Shu’s work reflects his on-going concern about the relationship between buildings, landscape and nature, and he does not reject comparisons with traditional Chinese painters.

The Xiangshan campus at the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou (2004-2007), or the History Museum in Ningbo (2008) come to mind. His current work on the rehabilitation of the Zhoushan harbour and industrial area, to which he has invited the cooperation of other Global Award laureates, demonstrates the detailed attention he pays to sites, their history and former uses, as well as his commitment to the reuse of materials.

Video of the inaugural lesson

China’s workers and peasants: changing class identities

China’s workers and peasants : changing class identities (2012). Ed.by Beatriz Carrillo and David S. G. Goodman. Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing. 176 p. (CSC China in Perspective). ISBN: 978-1781005729

This book explores three decades of economic change in China and the consequent transformation of class relations and class-consciousness in villages and in the urban workplace. The contributors illustrate how the development of the urban economic environment has led to changes in the urban working class, through an exploration of the workplace experiences of rural migrant workers, and of the plight of the old working class in the state owned sector. They address questions on the extent to which migrant workers have become a new working class, are absorbed into the old working class, or simply remain as migrant workers. Changes in class relations in villages in the urban periphery – where the urbanization drive and in-migration has lead to a new local politics of class differentiation – are also raised.

Contents

  • Introduction: the sociopolitical challenge of economic change / Beatriz Carrillo and David S.G. Goodman
  • Status groups and classes in a Chinese village/ Jonathan Unger
  • Awakening the god of earth / Luigi Tomba
  • The making and re-making of the working class in South China / Parry P. Leung and Alvin Y. So
  • Chinese migrant workers / Anita Chan and Kaxton Siu
  • Industrial restructuring and class transformation in China / Joel Andreas
  • Working-class cultural spaces / Jack Linchuan Qiu and Hongzhe Wang.

More about:

 

 

2012年社科院《城乡一体化蓝皮书》

Ru xin 汝信, Fu chonglan 傅崇兰 (2013), Chengxiang yiti hua lanpishu – zhongguo chengxiang yiti hua fazhan baogao 城乡一体化蓝皮书-中国城乡一体化发展报告, Shehui kexue wenxian chuban she 社会科学文献出版社, 420 p. ISBN: 978-7-5097-4145-0

2013 年1月15日,中国社会科学院当代城乡发展规划院、社会科学文献出版社联合主办的“统筹城乡发展改善民生,建设小康社会”研讨会在北京召开,在该研讨会上,中国社会科学院一并公布了2012年《城乡一体化蓝皮书-中国城乡一体化发展报告 》。

该报告是由中国社会科学院当代城乡发展规划院主编,社会科学文献出版社出版。自2011年开始,该报告每年针对中国城填化的城乡规划、产业布局、基础设施、公共服务、土地、户籍、教育、农民工、社保改革等方面提供分析角度与看法。

该报告的作者为汝信 (中国社会科学院研究员、学部委员、博士生导师)、傅崇兰 (中国社会科学院研究员)。

 

The state of China cities 2012/2013

The state of China’s cities 2012/2013 (2012). Beijing : Foreign languages press. 116 p. ISBN : 978-7-119-07952-3

The state of China’s cities 2012/2013 is a collection of contributions from UN-Habitat, China Science Centre of International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, China Association of Mayors and Chinese Society of Urban Planning. This publication captures new initiatives taken by the central and local governments of China to make the life of rural migrants equitable to those of urban residents in terms of security of employment, education, pension, medical care and housing; build 36 million flats for low income families in cities between 2011 to 2015; consolidate institutions for disaster reduction and prevention; expand poverty reduction programmes in rural China; and build and demonstrate low-carbon and ecological cities and communities.

 

 

Technomobility in China: young migrant women and mobile phones

Cara Wallis (2013), Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones, New York: NYU Press, 288 p. ISBN-10:0814795269 ISBN-13:978-0814795262

As unprecedented waves of young, rural women journey to cities in China, not only to work, but also to “see the world” and gain some autonomy, they regularly face significant institutional obstacles as well as deep-seated anti-rural prejudices. Based on immersive fieldwork, Cara Wallis provides an intimate portrait of the social, cultural, and economic implications of mobile communication for a group of young women engaged in unskilled service work in Beijing, where they live and work for indefinite periods of time.
While simultaneously situating her work within the fields of feminist studies, technology studies, and communication theory, Wallis explores the way in which the cell phone has been integrated into the transforming social structures and practices of contemporary China, and the ways in which mobile technology enables rural young women—a population that has been traditionally marginalized and deemed as “backward” and “other”—to participate in and create culture, allowing them to perform a modern, rural-urban identity. In this theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis, Wallis provides original insight into the co-construction of technology and subjectivity as well as the multiple forcesthat shape contemporary China.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction: Mobile Bodies, Mobile Technologies, and Immobile Mobility
  • Ch. 2 Market Reforms, Global Linkages, and (Dis)continuity in Post-Socialist China
  • Ch. 3 “My First Big Urban Purchase”: Mobile Technologies and Modern Subjectivity
  • Ch. 4 Navigating Mobile Networks of Sociality and Intimacy
  • Ch. 5 Picturing Self, Imagining the World
  • Ch. 6 Mobile Communication and Labor Politics
  • Conclusion: The Mobile Assemblage and Social Change in China

Sustainable transport for Chinese cities

Roger L. Mackett, Anthony D. May, Masanobu Kii, Haixiao Pan (eds). (2013) Sustainable transport for Chinese cities. Bingley : Emerald group Publishing. 380 p. (Transport and sustainability ; 3).

The volume is based on papers presented at a workshop on the green transport agenda and its implications for Sustainable transport for Chinese cities - CovertChinese cities, organised by the World Conference on Transport Research Society in September 2010. The five sections of this volume review the challenges facing urban transport internationally and in China. It considers approaches to policy formulation, the challenge of urban mobility and the development of green sustainable transportation, by reviewing best practice in objective setting, strategy analysis and policy selection, and comparing these with current practice in China. The authors examine passenger transport, and considers a number of current policy interventions in China and compare these with western experience with demand management and new vehicle technologies. Topics include 5D land-use transport model for a high density, rapidly growing city and Contextual requirements for electric vehicles in developed and developing countries. Finally freight and logistics is addressed, including the role of freight villages and milk run strategies, and challenges and policy recommendations for road freight in Shanghai.

More information:

Erdos eco-town project

SEI PublicationRosemarin, A., A. McConville, A. Flores and Z. Qiang (2012), The Challenges of Urban Ecological Sanitation: Lessons from the Erdos Eco-Town Project, China. Rugby, Warwickshire, UK : Practical Action Publishing, 2012.

This book describes an attempt to create modern, multi-storey urban dwellings that incorporate ecological sanitation into their design and highlights the experience of implementing the Erdos Eco-Town Project in Inner Mongolia, China. Published in association with Stockholm Environment Institute.

The need for improved sanitation around the world is becoming a crisis, and the situation is particularly critical in urban and peri-urban areas in developing countries. Here the population is growing rapidly, and where sanitation is provided, the means to treat and dispose of waste safely is neglected, with huge environmental and public health consequences. Sanitation solutions are needed that are safe for the user and interlinked with other urban services which can treat waste as a resource.

This book describes an attempt to create modern, multi-storey urban dwellings that incorporate ecological sanitation into their design, resulting in a clean living space, and deriving safe agricultural inputs from human organic waste. The Erdos Eco-Town Project in Inner Mongolia, China, launched in 2003, remains the largest urban project of urine-diversion dry toilets in the world, serving a population of approximately 3000 people in 4–5 storey apartment buildings. The multi-storey collection system also links to on-site grey water treatment, a composting centre, underground urine tanks, and the agricultural reuse of nutrients.

The Challenges of Urban Ecological Sanitation describes the technical design, daily operation and maintenance, costs and benefits compared to conventional systems, as well as the challenges in achieving acceptability with users. It includes technical information and illustrations, but also stresses the institutional structure needed to support this system and discusses its long-term sustainability. It is geared to a broad range of audiences, including engineers, policy-makers, researchers and NGO staff working in the fields of water supply and sanitation.

Environmental governance in China: weakness and potential from an environmental policy integration perspective

Bina, Olivia (2010) Environmental governance in China : weakness and potential from an environmental policy integration perspective. The China Review. 10 (1) pp.207–240.

Interest in China’s capacity for environmental governance is growing, in line with its environmental woes and exponential economic growth. Environmental policy efforts have lacked effectiveness, confirming the persistence of a disjuncture between promise and performance. This article contributes to the debate through the analytical lens of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI): a normative concept and governance regime indispensable to sustainable development. It finds that China, like most OECD countries, falls short of the concept. Despite encouraging recent changes, driven by the Hu-Wen regime, and encapsulated in the idea of scientific development, the analysis reveals weaknesses in all three EPI-type responses: normative, organisational and procedural. The disjuncture is confirmed, but drawing on EPI’s normative perspective, it is suggested that the reasons for this lie as much in the framing of the promise, as in the performance, or implementation, itself. Based on this interpretation and on China’s unique extreme characteristics, it is recommended that environmental policy objectives be given principled priority status, as a condition for effective governance.

Greening China’s rural energy

Christiaensen, Luc; Heltberg, Rasmus. 2012. Greening China’s rural energy : New insights on the potential of smallholder biogas. World bank, Washington, DC. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/9318

Clean, safe energy for rural areas is an important component of green growth and sustainable development. Biogas could be an important contributor, if its record in reality lives up to its expected potential. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of biogas use by smallholder farmers in rural China, using data collected from 2,700 households in five provinces. The authors find that user satisfaction is high, and environmental and economic benefits appear tangible. There are strong indications of reduced use of wood and crop residues for fuel. Less time is spent on collecting fuel wood and cooking, which is especially beneficial to women. Adopters also save on fertilizers, because of the use of biogas residues. Moreover, problems with suspension of biogas use, whether due to technical or human factors, remained limited. However, few tangible benefits to respiratory health were detected. Overall, these findings are grounds for optimism about the potential for of smallholder biogas to contribute to more sustainable development, in China and beyond.

Full text available on line

Redefining urban: a new way to measure metropolitan areas

Report published by the OECD, 2012, 148 p.

This report compares urbanisation trends in OECD countries on the basis of a newly defined OECD methodology which helps cross-country comparison of the socio-economic and environmental performance of metropolitan areas in OECD countries.

The methodology is presented and results from its application to 28 OECD countries are discussed together with policy implication both on national growth and governance of cities.
The report also includes three original papers that present the urbanisation dynamics and prospects in China and South Africa and the governance challenges resulting from the new policy agenda on cities in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1. Redefining urban areas in OECD countries
  • Chapter 2. Urbanisation and migration trends in South Africa: theory and policy implications
  • Chapter 3. Urbanisation in China today
  • Chapter 4.  Focusing on functionality: changing approached to economic development in England
Free preview. The full version is accessible to subscribers on the OECD iLibrary or can be purchased from the OECD Online Bookshop
Get this report: online version paperback