A HUMAN APPROACH TO CHINESE SPACE
An Interview, Prof. Dr. Dieter Hassenpflug / Heike Haarmann (Birkhäuser)

HH: Prof. Hassenpflug, your book is about China’s approach to New Urbanism. In the context of Shanghai’s satellite city plan ‘One City, Nine Villages’ you are describing how the architects are shaping those nine satellites according the models of several European cities. The Chinese are looking for technically advanced construction methods and for aesthetic urban concepts, you say. Specifically the aspects of density, open/public spaces and centrality seem to be of interest in this matter. Now, in Europe, cities have been growing over many centuries and ideas of ‘spaces’ have been changing constantly. Our cities being enjoyable or unpleasant is very much in the eye of the beholder, and it depends on the geographical point of view and maybe even the weather. Have you ever heard about a ‘human approach to space’ in your studies in China? About how much space a human being needs to feel free and comfortable?

DH: The satellite cities you mention not only reflect Shanghai's desire to relieve its overpopulated urban core in a sustainable way through polycentric urban development. The resulting New Towns also document the distinction needs of a middle class that has grown strongly in the recent past. Different than in the individualized West, the construction of social identities in China is more of a collective, i.e. family or neighborhood oriented character. In terms of urban planning, this is expressed in the cellular structure of Chinese cities. They comprise urban landscapes that are composed of closed neighborhoods (compounds or gated communities). They are the basis for the formation of collective identity, of social difference, and status. In this context, 'branding' or the construction of 'social brand identity' plays an eminent role. Anything that is considered useful for neighborhood symbolization is employed for 'compound branding': perimeter structures, gates and entrances, architectural style, open space design, roof sculptures, and many other items. 'Other items' include copies of European buildings, places, and architectural ensembles. In Shanghai's themed satellite cities, reproductions of Western buildings and ensembles are 'on sale' for the construction of collective social brand identity.
We can speak of a 'human approach to space' in the Chinese context primarily in the sense of creating urban living environments for a middle class that, by now, comprises more than 400 million people. In quantitative terms, apartments are, on average, larger than e.g. those of the German middle class. Spatial preconditions that symbolize the 'good life' to the Chinese further include closed neighborhoods, southern orientation, access to a well-designed green neighborhood courtyard, distinct architectural language, and broad roads for big cars. High density and verticality, represented by residential high-rise buildings, are by no means a problem – and there are no available alternatives, anyway.

HH: Many of our European cities are exhausted because of their inflexibility. They have been designed for a certain cause and for a certain amount of people and today – after centuries – the causes do not exist anymore and the population has exploded. Our city centers can hardly contain the traffic of the people who are working in them, but their shapes or spaces cannot be altered. Did you find any approaches towards urbanism in China that include some kind of flexibility in the context of traffic and density? Are there any future plans for Shanghai’s satellite cities that exceed a few decades? What will they do if those satellites ‘grow together’?

DH: European urban centers of medieval and early modern character are a unique cultural achievement, and their preservation is nothing less than investment in the identity and memory of European peoples. In China, comparable early bourgeois socio-cultural centers with their ensemble of church, market place, and city hall, as well as their immanent facade cult as defining element of public space, don't exist. A free, autonomous urban bourgeoisie never existed in China's past. For the most part, solitary buildings and complexes seem worthy of preservation here, such as imperial and Mandarin palaces, Buddhist temples and pagodas, Confucian schools, imperial city walls, yet also buildings and ensembles created in the Colonial era. These include churches or hybrid Western-Eastern residential complexes or ensembles, such as the Bund in Shanghai or the still existing German city of Qingdao. In terms of urban planning, the absence of a Chinese bourgeois tradition is, for instance, articulated in the absence of a facade cult in city centers as defining element of the European city. However, this doesn't lead to the conclusion that Chinese urban cores generally offer more flexibility (for instance in road construction or redevelopment of parts of the city). Chinese cities also have centers. However, different to the nodal centers of European cities, they are rather structured in a linear way and are characterized by a hierarchical spatial sequence of important secular and religious buildings. Their preservation limits flexibility as well, and one example for this is Beijing's center, persistently defined by the extensive 'Forbidden City' with its 9999 rooms.
In general, the statement can be made that urban planning in China comprises significantly stronger means of action and implementation than in Europe. Strategic plans are oriented on a radically formulated future image of vertical cities with very broad streets, skyscraper-lined CBDs, and endless commercial parks. Whatever may stand in the way of these developments is torn down without much ado. Affected residents are financially compensated and resettled. In Shanghai, the envisioned goal is a polycentric urban landscape that enables reduction of traffic and where subcenters as 'comprehensive towns' offer everything that people require to live in the material world, from apartment to shopping center, from school and hospital to workplace. In this regard, the New Towns are indebted to the tradition of Mao's Danweis, the communist urbanized village collectives. In the New Towns, however, this tradition recedes to the point of obscurity behind the new, glittering urban images that herald newly achieved prosperity.

Prof. Dr. Dieter Hassenpflug
Bauhaus-University Weimar
Chair of Urban Sociology

THE URBAN CODE OF CHINA
ISBN 978-3-0346-0572-4