Remaking Chinese Urban Form

Duanfang Lu is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney, Australia.

• 1. Introduction: Socialist Space, Postcolonial Time Part I: China Modern 2. The Neighbourhood Unit in China: The Travel of a Global Urban Form 3. Work Unit Modernism Part II: Urban Dreams 4. The Socialist Production of Space: Planning, Urban Contradictions, and the Politics of Consumption in Beijing, 1949-1965 5. Modernity as Utopia: Planning the People's Commune, 1958-1960 Part III: Shifting Boundaries 6. The Latency of Tradition: From the City Wall to the Unit Wall 7. The New Frontier: Urban Space and Everyday Practice in the Reform Era 8. Epilogue

‘With extraordinary detailed first-hand fieldwork and archive search, [Lu] depicts space production in both socialist and reform periods...It traces current urban forms to historical tradition and related many seemingly irrelevant forms to the common logic of space production... Overall, this is a truly benchmark work in the study of Chinese urban form. ―Fulong Wu, China Information ‘In the fields of Chinese development and architecture, this is an essential addition.’ - Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok, University of Hawaii‘Remaking Chinese Urban Form is a work that anyone interested in the question of China and urban planning must read. Yet, in many ways, it is also much more. Bursting with new ideas, the author takes the reader on a barnstorming tour of issues and problems that have afflicted Chinese architecture and urban planning over the last fifty or so years.’ - Michael Dutton, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review‘Lu’s discussion of the architectural and social history of the work unit is a major contribution to Chinese architectural history.’ - Johnathan A. Farris, Journal of Society of Architectural Historians‘This book is an important benchmark in the study of Chinese urbanism and urbanization.’ - Margaret Crawford, Harvard University