The Urbanism of Chinese Urban Villages: Architectural Exhibitions and Interventions Becoming More Sustainable Approaches of Urban Development?

Jieqiong WANG (University of Michigan)

This paper examines an international exhibition of urbanism and architecture in an urban village in Shenzhen China, to explore how emerging forms of urban practice engage with complicated social and political forces in reshaping places and living experiences in these underserved places.

Studies on Chinese urban villages tend to focus on social and spatial issues such as the transformation of rural culture and organizations, the livelihood of low-income rural-to-urban migrants, and the spatial segregation of these urban villages from the city. Ongoing spatial practices in urban villages are overlooked. The dominant tabula rasa approach through demolition has evicted numerous migrants and interrupted local life patterns. However, the 2017 Shenzhen/Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism(UABB), organized by the municipal government and curated by global architects and artists, signaled a turning point. New spatial and social relations in/beyond urban villages have emerged through the renovation of historical buildings, installations in public places, and revitalization of old factories.

These emerging practices are interfaces where global flows of architectural expertise, state policies, profits, local organizations, and underserved lives encounter and interact. This research employs mixed research methods and tactics, including archival research on documents (representations, proposals, and statements), participatory observations on the processes of curating the exhibition and operating intervention projects, in-depth interviews with different actors and inhabitants (mainly migrants), and mappings of activities and daily routines of inhabitants.

Interim findings show that new forms of collaboration are emerging, through interactions among multiple social actors including city authorities, local bureaucrats, developers, global architects and urban designers, quasi- landlords (ex-farmers), and migrant workers and shopkeepers. Such practices tend to traverse and dismantle conventional territorial demarcations. Urban villages are now transforming into particular urban places with new cultural, environmental, and economic values. However, one question remains: who are now the inhabitants of such places?