ABSTRACT
David Bray shows how urban planners are reshaping China’s built environments and everyday life through the national programme to ‘Build a New Socialist Countryside’, and contemporary residential design standards embodied in the xiaoqu (small district) model. A case study of village redevelopment demonstrates that new housing estates are inscribed with transformative technologies that encourage a particular style of life and citizenship within each xiaoqu, and link the multitude of xiaoqu together through technological networks that foster a unified national practice of modern citizenship.
