ABSTRACT
Enormous changes in urban internal spatial structure have been brought about by emerging transitional institutions under economic reform. Spatial restructuring has transformed the ideal pattern of the ‘socialist city’ (Fisher 1962; French and Hamilton 1979; Grava 1993), a process witnessed in Chinese cities (Ma and Wu 2005) as well as other post-socialist cities in Central and Eastern Europe (Andrusz et al. 1996; Bertaud and Renaud 1997). Rebuilding the socialist city has proceeded through reconfiguring the built environment as well as changing political economic institutions. The central theme of this chapter is whether the transformation has led to a new spatial order, especially at the urban scale. Such a question has been explored in the globalizing city (Marcuse and van Kempen 2000), but has not been fully examined in Chinese cities. Beginning with this chapter, Part III examines spatial changes. This chapter focuses on the inner and central area under new urban redevelopment, while Chapter 9 examines the metropolitan region, in particular urban sprawl, encroaching rural villages, and ‘new’ suburbia.
