Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949-2005

摘要

Urban China has undergone enormous transformation in the past several decades, which has drawn renewed academic interests from urban geographers. Duanfang Lu's book is a welcome addition to the literature, which provides important insights into understanding the multifaceted urban experience in China since WWII. In the book, Lu seeks to examine the (re)making of Chinese urban form in the context of Chinese socialist modernity and Third World scarcity, drawing on a multidisciplinary literature including architectural and planning history, urban studies, and cultural theory, as well as on her extensive archival research and ethnographic fieldwork. In doing so, Lu's goal is not to offer a comprehensive history of Chinese urban form transformation, but to reveal how Chinese society constructed itself in this process.