ABSTRACT

The effacement of the neighborhood as both a morphological and social construct is a depressing characteristic of the modernist pattern of the hyper-growth of China’s cities. The paradigm of superblocks, single-use zoning, automobile hegemony, and high-rise “towers-in-the-park’ has created a much-marked condition of “1,000 cities, one pattern.” However, a modern “urbanism with Chinese characteristics” might be found by a more sympathetic, rigorous, and imaginative use of patterns already inscribed in Chinese cities, including the now valued intensity, conviviality, and variety of the hutong; the scale, harmony, pedestrianism, and formal hybridity of the lilong; and even the sustainable economic and social integration of form and use in the danwei, the Mao-era production unit.