Socialist Urban Planning in Mao's China (1949–1976)

From the Republic’s founding (1949) to Mao’s death (1976), China adopted a socialist approach to urban planning. With Moscow’s aid, the planning of Beijing as the capital was made, initiating a practice that prioritized heavy industry. Since the late 1950s, to speed up the materialization of socialist ideals and for other considerations, Mao launched an unprecedented People’s Commune movement, and a Third-Front construction after, setting a framework for China’s planning practice; these processes reveal a spatial will of the government and the measures the planners as technocrats took in response. This chapter chronicles the history in search of a deep cultural reflection.