ABSTRACT
Gated neighbourhoods organised by guilds were a feature of Chinese cities in the last dynasty of imperial China, the Qing. Guilds organised fire services and security patrols. Their central buildings were the Huiguan and the temples of their presiding deities. From 1953, the first year of the first five-year plan, the People’s Republic of China began a process of urbanisation and industrialisation that integrated life and work through a completely new institution of neighbourhood: the work unit. By 1978, 95% of urban workers belonged to such all-round work units, though in large cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, the old tenements and courtyards were separate residential buildings and there were neighbourhood factories for the residents not employed in work units. Smaller work units would share facilities within a neighbourhood. Universities and government bureaucratic administrations still retain this system of urban neighbourhood as work unit.
