ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the potential to promote inclusion during rapid, capitalist urbanization. It defines inclusion as creating physical and social environments that enable formerly disadvantaged or excluded citizens to gain equitable access to opportunities and resources and to participate freely in shaping their shared environments. In contemporary China, despite an expanding middle class, most citizens feel excluded from political processes and disempowered. Yet Liangzhu Cultural Village (hereafter, Liangzhu), a comprehensively-planned new town in Hangzhou, China, offers hopeful signs of progress. Drawing on its development history, on-site observations and multiple actors’ perspectives, this chapter identifies key factors contributing to its inclusive tendencies. Despite the divisive and exclusionary pressures of broader political-economic processes, three types of effort at Liangzhu nudged small but meaningful wins toward inclusion: 1) the designer-driven vision of an open and welcoming community; 2) developer-driven experiments with engaging diverse residents; and 3) resident-driven initiatives forging ownership, mutual aid, and a sense of belonging. To encourage future inclusionary practices, this chapter highlights three enabling conditions despite forces of privatization and authoritarianism: a) making meaning of small but symbolic wins; b) connecting hopeful, everyday actors as infrastructure for change; and c) reinforcing inclusion by interweaving material, social, and normative signals.
