Urban[sch]isms

1. INTRODUCTION

It could be argued that more than buildings and spaces, the people make the city what it is. Their actions through strife and the need to evolve are the driving forces and catalysts for any built form. From these, the beauties of cities are born.

This idealistic picture of cities and human virtues gets shattered quite effectively when we are presented with reality. Reality understood as the peri-urban industrial areas of China, where strife and desire to evolve have rather unexpected consequences. We come face to face with millions of workers living in crammed semi-urban villages with degraded open space. Soon, we start to ask ourselves: strive for what, by whom and at whose expense? Our idealism is confronted with Chinese influenced capitalism, and we notice it is not about idealism at all but rather about economical gains of few fortunate individuals that were entrepreneurial enough in crucial moments of China’s political and cultural transition. The question of who will uphold the social and moral values is more than obvious. The state is only able to issue policies that can tackle social and spatial problems effectively to a certain degree, even more so as their implementation is usually in the domain of those few fortunate individuals mentioned above – the newly born capitalists. Maybe we should re-examine the initial naive statement which argues that good cities come from the people living in them. The investors, through their short-sightedness see only profit; the fast acquired profit, such deeds are leaving out the social aspects of the formula, which (argued by many) is an important aspect of a sustainable development (1).

By reversing the argument and saying that built environment can bring something to the way society is developing suggests that well designed, thoughtful space can be beneficial to the public and maybe even lessen the inequalities. At the same time, it can hopefully accommodate for capitalistic drive of players involved.

Before venturing into definition of tools for the task at hand, let us first examine the socio-spatial conditions of these peri-urban industrial areas, specifically the area that developed to the North of Shenzhen around Dongguan.

2. PERI-URBAN CONDITION (Image 1)

Apart from bustling new cities of China that permeate into a domain of conurbations or metropolises and are the economic centres of new China’s development, there exists another kind of reality. This reality is in the shadow of prosperous new cities, and if it were entirely up to the Chinese themselves, it would be hidden far, far away from foreign sight. We are talking about places without which Chinese economical powerhouses would not be possible at all ¬– places of intense industrial production that fuel the Chinese march toward global economy. These areas confronted are mixtures of agriculture, industry and low-end housing. We are talking about the domain of hard working people, labouring day and night in assembly and production plants. This is a home to China’s strength - lower class diligent workers and farmers, the production force of new Chinese economy.

Dongguan basin is one of such places. These lands are a dense weave of kilometres of industrial plants mixed together with village-like housing and agricultural patches. As the economical standard of people living here is not great, the consequences ripple throughout the social and physical landscape. Scarce and degraded public spaces with only rudimentary services and no leisure activities are combined with only basic education facilities – no universities, no theatres or cinemas. A vast population of millions, that can easily rival any European city in area and density alike, is living in village-like conurbations.

This unique condition, endemic to China, has not been seen anywhere else in the developing countries. The basis for existence of these vast peri-urban production areas is a complex mix of geographic, cultural and historical (political) reasons. Let us examine a few of them that led Dongguan basin to what it is today.

The geographical position of the Dongguan area (Image 2) contributes substantially to this socio-spatial condition. Its strategic location between the Shenzhen urban basin and agricultural rural hinterland ticks all three boxes for successful industrial production areas: good infrastructural connections to Shenzhen and thus Hong Kong, cheap land for new industrial developments and abundance of cheap labour workforce from the north agrarian provinces.

The other important reason is a much more complex mix of history and policies. Main actors of this reasoning are the communistic past, Chinese “social economy” and a unique business organizational model called Town Village Enterprise (TVE) that was born in Dongguan.

China’s communistic regime had to come up with regulations of the market and goods that would not resemble capitalism. Instead of talking about market economy, the operating concept was “material balances” where basic needs were collectively provided, thus inhibiting the role of currency as mechanism of the capitalistic market. This had severe repercussions on Chinese organization, one of them being China’s self-sufficiency and autarkist economical production. China had to survive without foreign investments, hence needing a high internal rate of savings (Ad lib.: Friedmann, 2005: 10-11). The core of savings came from hard working rural areas that fuelled the industrialization of cities. That was strictly managed by the communistic regime by means of employing several policies to manage the flow of goods. Two more important policies were the institutionalized commune system and household registration system – hukou. The commune system, with its smallest part called “work-unit”, was a socialistic masterpiece of “teaching” people how to live, thus creating a socialistic society. “The work-unit compound serves as the locus for organization of many facets of life…” (Ibid.: 13). The Hukou system tied the farmers to their land and urbanites to the “machinic” cities geared toward industrial production, hence enabling management of industrial production in cities and agricultural in the rural areas. It prohibited farmers to migrate to the cities in search of better life.

The communistic regime realized that small economical yields of food production and inflexible state owned industrial complexes can not sustain the material balances. To battle this, they adopted some of the already happening phenomenon and made them official: bigger regional self-governance and shift from food to industrial production as the national economic base, thus allowing for industrialization of rural areas. The communes were disbanded and the land went into family ownership with assigned production quotas.

The conditions outlined above led to a unique Chinese form of local group entrepreneurship called Town Village Enterprise (TVE):

“They arose in the 1980s in response to the de-collectivization of agriculture, which freed a number of underemployed villagers for other occupations. At the same time the central government passed on responsibility to the local level to manage the new labour available […]. Rather than passing into a private enterprise system, this encouraged the development of a local state corporatism [a lecture learned from rural commune system].” (Walcott, 2003: 92-93).

The TVE lifted individual villagers and local officials from poverty over night, giving them immense wealth and power. The TVEs operate in a gray zone between private and state ownership that well accommodates personal favours and corruption. This condition also propels the uncontrolled development of peri-urban industrialization with all of its social and spatial implications mentioned above.

When being confronted with this peri-urban condition on such an immense scale, some very vital questions start to surface. Why did the fabric stay in this stage of development? How come that there were no internal processes or catalysts that would be able to transform it into a more urban and “user friendly” environment? Part of the answer lies in the nature of “traditional” urbanization model that is the most common path of evolution all around the world.

3. URBANIZATION MODEL

The “traditional” urbanization model (Image 3) advocates for transformation of society on the basis of primary production from agricultural through industrial into post-industrial. It follows the logic of economy and capitalism and could be argued is a linear progression model where agricultural production is replaced by industrial and sequentially by services and tertiary sector production. The leap from one stage to the next only happens when the current mode of production is not economically suitable anymore, thus a more profitable one is needed in order to sustain its development. In the case of peri-urban industrial areas of Dongguan, this has not yet happened; the industrial production is still the main vehicle for development, hence no need for establishing a new one.

There are many repercussions of this kind of urbanization; the perticularly obvious one is pointing out that the agricultural and industrial stages’ social and spatial structure is really poor. The farmer’s and worker’s financial situation is not sufficient enough for development of sophisticated leisure and services. Another serious problem is the monofunctional orientation of areas, thus being economically and spatially unsustainable. For example, car industry in the United States until the late 1970s gave rise to a vast amount of industrial cities, of which Detroit is the most famous one. When the car industry crashed, the repercussions on the social and spatial strata were devastating.

The self-organized “Darwinist” model of urbanization will always face this kind of problems, it will always be unsustainable as it evolves naturally and it favours the fittest on the basis of capitalism and economical drive.

By understanding this process, a different kind of urbanization model can be envisioned that accommodates for better social and spatial conditions, thus enabling a more sustainable development strategy (Image 4). This sustainable model has to start to blur the sharp boundaries between phases and work against the short-sighted economical drive. By dissolving the boundaries, different phases of the model start to mix and interact, which creates a model of better spatial and economical sustainability and social inclusion. This is done through means of tying the now separate production of different stages into one interdependent loop where each stage contributes to the final product of the other stage or, in turn, use the product of other stage. By doing so, the linearity of urbanization model, where the next stage occurs when the previous one ends, is broken. This model argues for a dynamic and interdependent side-by-side development of three basic production sectors, wherein the different mix ratios of sectors determine the modal tendency of a specific organization.

For this model to be applicable in this case study, definition of the programs of each sector that are able to permeate other sectors and connect to them is needed. In the cases of agriculture and industry, that would translate into production of industrial crops which could be used in industry instead of production of food. The argument works also in the other direction; production of industrial goods that use industrial crops, such as bamboo or industrial hemp, can replace traditional resources usually imported from elsewhere.

The biggest social, spatial and sustainable gain happens by introduction of the tertiary sector into the mix. By adding the educated and economically better situated class, an environment that is economically more capable is generated; therefore, it brings about better service sector and consequently better amenities and open spaces. This is in turn beneficial also to lower classes. The most suitable program for the integration of tertiary sector is R&D (research and development) geared toward innovation. By dealing with the industrial and rural environment, this innovation has to be accordingly targeted; it should focus on research of industrial crops, agricultural cultivation and industrial production techniques.

The romanticism of the outlined sustainable model can not be disputed as there are numerous obstacles that must be overcome. The more apparent drawbacks are as follows: • Spatial proximity of sectors from economical point of view is irrelevant as the contemporary technological advancements in transportation and communication can more than compensate. • Higher educated classes have little interest in living in peri-urban areas and mixing with the workers. • R&D and science parks need premier research universities as innovation generating institutions (Ad lib., Ibid.: 176), something that production oriented areas like Dongguan chronically lack. • The only input to R&D comes from educated classes, thus the importance of the worker class is diminished.

On the surface, it seems that the presented model is indeed hopelessly idealistic, but the switch from capitalistically based “natural selection” model to a sustainable one requires acknowledgment of more profound benefits that are not immediately visible, such as: • Innovation works best if it is recognized that knowledge is imbedded in the culture whereby the cultures are regional and specific. • By retaining agriculture and industrial production in the mix, crucial inputs are retained in the form of skills that inform the innovation environment geared towards research of these sectors. • Retaining agriculture reduces food miles. • By dispersing the focus from one sector onto three, area gains in economical sustainability as an urban form; new fabric has more flexibility. This flexibility comes from retaining differentiation that can battle the forces of global economy and balance itself without depending on other areas. • By bringing workers and farmers into the R&D process they are being educated, thus helping the local economy. • By relocating R&D into economically less desired environments, the costs and living expenses are much lower which should benefit the middle class. Furthermore, preserved natural environment of semi-rural areas has a quality of nature which is alluring to the middle class as it represents a luxurious living ideal opposed to the completely built up urban agglomerations, such as Shenzhen, that lost this quality.

Even with all of these benefits, it should be taken into account that R&D in this kind of environment could not be expected to produce great breakthroughs right away. It is rather a long term strategic investment. Nevertheless, informed rationale would seem to favour the latter over the former model of urbanization.

All of the mentioned benefits can largely be seen to happen through setting up policies, as this course of action is the easiest way to render the problem of implementation resolved. Nevertheless, policies tend to get implemented in a variety of ways, meaning, they do not always achieve the desired goal. Therefore, the challenge is to employ the design of built space as a carrier of implementation of sustainable urbanization model. In this aspect examination of tools and mechanisms needed for construction of the sustainable model is in order. As mentioned above, the most important change is introduction of the tertiary sector into the previous two. The most apparent way of doing this is integration of research that is tied to industry and agriculture. This necessitates an inspection of the ways that science parks are integrated into the urban fabric, to understand and deploy them as mechanisms of urban regeneration.

4. TOOLS AND MECHANISMS

The purpose of science parks is geared toward advancing specific fields and their products through innovation as a consequence of synergetic effect of knowledge of different fields. This understanding developed gradually as the benefits of cross-science connections were being understood better.

The first science parks worked under the assumption that if industry and R&D is brought together, the industrial process and / or product can benefit from applied research as the spatial connections and proximity yield interaction and better understanding. Therefore, the first science parks were introverted, enclosed working environments that brought together specific people and programs in hopes of improving and consequently constructing new and innovative ways of production. Image 5 is a diagram of such an enclosed science park where facilities comprise of basic amenity spaces for informal interaction, combined with formal areas, such as meeting rooms, laboratories and production.

The described spatial organization gives limited amount of cross-field operations and interconnections as the environment is isolated. It was realized that for the innovation of leaping forward, the environment needs a much more complex interconnected field of services that are not necessary directly tied to the fields of research. These additional services thus create an environment that is catalytic for innovation not strictly directed and focused. In this aspect, the research clusters started to integrate numerous different functions like hotels, convention centres, and university departments which meant integrating functions usually ascribed to the city. A shift of focus can be noticed, that deviates from controlled and managed organizations favouring engineered environments for strictly targeted purposes, into kinds of organizations, that work on a more intuitive and relaxed level, allowing permeation of informal and “not-focused” components that are indirectly tied to the innovation process. The innovation started to be understood as a product of environment where informal components of everyday life are as much important as are the organized, conventional research activities. This led to complete integration of science parks into the city (Image 6) where housing, schools, business, research centres and commerce is intertwined into a highly productive environment. By introducing R&D into the city, a hybridization and synergetic effect of different fields is very high. Dense and compact organization that produces synergy on this level is a unique quality of cities and can be characterized as the essence of an environment that is uniquely urban.

The notion of this hybridization also needs a material organization, for it is not solely in the act of combining different fields but rather in the ways those fields physically come together and interact that enables the full potential of this kind of hybridization. Spatiality is responsible for enabling the multitude of different modes of interactions to be possible between individuals on one hand and research fields on the other – formally and informally.

The more intriguing aspect of this shift is definitely the informal component of the urban. The component that is happening in the public and semi-public spaces and is mixed with everyday activities like shopping, bringing kids to school, having a walk in a park, … is highly dependent on organization of urban public space – a public space that is geared toward effective interaction between different people is thus an environment where informal innovation can take place. It can be argued that well designed public space is a quintessential part of innovation. Although at the same time, an emphasis has to be made that, innovation as such cannot be appropriated to any specific organization of public space, or put the other way around, the public space as such, however designed it may be, does not give rise to innovation per se. Public space is just a place of interaction and depending on its organization, design and adjacent programmes that interaction can be more intense or less intense, more productive or less productive and so forth.

In the manner argued above, urban public space can be understood as a mechanism for the task at hand. In a similar way, Victor Gruen used public space to make experience of the shopping more pleasant and part of the contemporary urban culture. Therefore, examining Gruen’s ideas and tools can help in grafting the identified mechanisms onto the Dongguan area in hopes of devising a more socially, economically and spatially sustainable environment.

5. IMPLEMENTATION

In terms of implementation two important aspects that have to be addressed in the Dongguan peri-urban case. First is establishing a suitable urban fabric for R&D in terms of material organization, programme requirements and spatial design of public space. Second is integration of farmers and workers into this innovation environment.

As described beforehand, the current organization, spatially and programmatically, is a dense weaving of industry, housing and agriculture. Organization has no apparent logic of nodality and hierarchy – two crucial elements for establishing a good quality urban fabric. It could be argued that the apparent lack of intensifications and sense of order is what makes this place so non-urban. The task therefore is to design “agents of recentralization” (Walcott, 2003: 59) that will give the area a sense of hierarchical organization and direction. The reason for doing this connects back to the requirements for good R&D environments and well designed public space. At this point it should be noted that dense hybrid organization, with belonging public space, is a uniquely urban condition, and on the other hand, it is a perfect condition for innovation environment. If borrowing from the palette of Gruen’s instruments, an understanding of shopping malls as nodes of urbanity amidst suburban housing condition can be employed – a condition that lacks urbanity just as much as peri-urban areas of Dongguan.

For him, shopping malls were not mere places of consumption. He used them as vessel for activity that is social, intense and involving – an activity that is by its character urban (Image 7). By this he was introducing a new fabric element into the suburban structure; an element that was in its essence highly urban. A strong emphasis was on integration of everyday activities. With this, he overcame a phobia of what is expected by people when visiting a shop. He advocated for public space as a “crystallization point” of social and cultural activities, using compact multifunctional space as a design strategy. This was further achieved through clustered organization of mixed functions around an open space from where different linkages could be made and people would be directed to adjacent programs. Direction and hierarchy of public space was further an important element. He achieved that by correct positioning of anchor stores (main department stores) as poles and small retail stores in between the anchors (Image 7). The direction was further enhanced with micro programming of open space as a sequence of events (greenery – fountain – exhibition area – kiosk – sculpture …) (Image 8). (Ad lib.: Wall, 2005).

Shopping malls were machines for creating public urban space through consumerism. He managed to devise a machine that connected private capital with collective need for public space (Image 7).

In the presented abstract a great amount of instruments can be observed that could be directly employed in the Dongguan area. Summation and translation of the tools would go as follows: First task would be setting up a machine that creates public urban space through research and industry (possibly shopping) as those are the economical drivers and potential investors. For this dense programmatically mixed cluster organization would be suitable – combining different programs around a shared public space. These clusters have to comprise of programme of the research and industry sectors as they would be the main purveyors, but on top of that, the clusters have to be infused with programmes for everyday activities such as grocery stores, markets, sport courts or children playing areas to make them more acceptable for the general public. Industrial assembly plant and / or a research department can be understood as main anchors of the public space, thus giving it direction and hierarchy. The industrial plant could work together with the research department on application and development of, for example, eco-plastic produced out of bamboo fibres (2).

In the case of Gruen’s shopping malls, the machine produced introverted urban space that only serviced the surrounding areas and did not incorporate them in any spatial way; furthermore, it was designed on a tabula rasa condition, thus there were no external factors involved that played the role of programme and fabric organization (Image 10). In this aspect, the Dongguan area is much different. There is a dense built fabric already in place with unique material organization qualities that are endemic to this peri-urban biotope. These qualities could be used as an advantage; moreover, there is little possibility that a completely different growth pattern and fabric organization could be introduced and executed. It is much more sensible to work with the local intelligences already imbedded in the site. The spatial interweaving of fabric fragments is a very smart organization native to this ecology. It is flexible and can account for a spectrum of usages and differentiations, thus being able to accommodate change and dynamics of the market very efficiently. This brings about a natural inclination toward hybridization and mixing of programmes which means that the goal should be to correctly steer this already accruing material organization through carefully selected nodes of intervention.

There are some promising material organizations worth mentioning which are already happening: a separation between industrial corridor and dwelling ecology gives separation to freight and local transport (Image 11). Furthermore, the interaction areas (or nodes) between these two systems can be used as the intensification nodes where both systems are controlled simultaneously (Image 11). The dwelling ecology is an intricate mix of housing and rudimentary public functions that are further mixed with agriculture in a sequential order along the main spine (Image 12). Clustering of different housing organizations around the connecting elements in the dwelling ecology is very varied; from villages, new low-end ‘checker’ housing, mid-end blocks and also some villas (Image 13) are examples. When the dwelling ecology perturbs the industrial corridor, the corridor tends to develop a hybrid programme that acts as a mixing medium of industry and housing, usually in form of rudimentary services (Image 14). All this embedded logic works in the benefit of the proposed integration of R&D and creation of good, urban public space. It is a matter of design and programme definition of these spaces that needs the most attention.

Now the second point – integration of farmers and workers into innovation environment has to be addressed and substantiated. On the account of this aspect, an exploration into the ways how Gruen subtly transformed a passer-by into a shopper could be examined. More specifically the examination will start by looking at the ideas of design in his early single retail shops and later public spaces in shopping malls and downtown centres. In the case of individual shops,

“[…]Gruen created a recessed ‘arcade’ entrance flanked by display windows, making an intermediate zone between pavement and shop entrance so people could step out of stream of moving pedestrian traffic and, as he would later express it, begin their subtle transformation – enacted by light and space – from mere passer-by to customer.[Image 15]” (Wall, 2005: 28).

The transformation would take place with the help of immersing the people into the world of products in a sunken-in area – a space to window-shop. This idea progressed into a full length shopping arcade with a combination of adjacent human-sized open spaces that gave the people a feeling of comfort. Not just that these spatial qualities transformed passer-bys into costumers, more importantly, they transformed them into engaging elements of the whole urban public space.

With compacting and mixing programmes in the later projects, when translating his machine into downtowns, he hoped to also introduce integration of different social communities, thus creating new forms of communal living and new threads of human association and connection.

In the case of Dongguan, the task at hand requires to ask how to transform farmers and workers into productive parts of the R&D environment. Apart from integrating them into the formal research aspect, there could be something said of how to integrate them into the informal public life that, as mentioned before, has a big impact on the innovation environment. This can be done through ways of designing public space and adjacent programmes. At the same time it has to be argued for a detailed design and programming definition of each specific public space, depending on the explicit needs of immediate surroundings and not for a generic approach that solves all of the problems in different locations with one design solution. Some of these kinds of spatial organizations could include connection of public space and research facilities to housing, opening the public space to agricultural land and adding programmes that are connected to agriculture, such as shops for agricultural equipment and crops, or devising collective storage facilities for rural production. The instruments of integration are not necessary always spatial. For example, there is also a possibility of creating an “agricultural cooperative” that hosts weekly lectures in a library or can offer help and advice to farmers with legal and technical matters. In turn, that could be a branch of a research department that specializes in new agricultural techniques having a direct feedback from farmers.

This programmatic interaction can go even further, meaning that by fusing production, services and different housing types, mixing of work and different social classes is achieved, thus creation of an environment that also accounts for social inclusion and integration is achieved. Indications of this material organization can again be sensed in the current logic of the fragmented fabric organization (Image 16), although the prevalent programme is still industry.

6. CONCLUSION

Peri-urban condition of production oriented areas of China is a much more problematic situation than one would care to admit. It has serious spatial, social and economical repercussions. The “natural” urbanization model is incapable of resolving these issues, therefore, a “sustainable” urbanization model that tackles these issues through mixing the production phases could be put in place. The idealism of this kind of model cannot be disputed, especially as it works against capitalistic and economical forces, thus a mode of thinking would have to be radically changed. Nevertheless, the long-term benefits of such a model are more than evident – better sustainability in social, economical and spatial terms.

The most important part of the application of this model into a Chinese peri-urban condition is introduction of R&D that brings economically better situated people to the area, thus in turn, produces a better environment also for the working classes. R&D reciprocally benefits from local culture and imbedded knowledge; therefore, the spatial integration is to some extent viable and mutually beneficial.

R&D works best in an urban environment as the informal component of innovation is strongly connected to dense and well designed public space – a quality that is intrinsically city-like. Urbanity is something that peri-urban areas lack the most, although the current qualities of material organization should not be discarded as useless. Local ecology has a natural inclination to fragmentation and hybridization which could be used as an advantage and understood along the lines of sustainable fabric form that can accumulate economical and market fluxes. By introduction of well designed clusters (nodes) of hybridization differentiation is introduced, and to some extent, “urbanity”. By doing so, growth of this ecology is controlled, and construct of a network is achieved that gives the ecology a much needed hierarchy and direction. A careful micro-programming of each cluster’s open space and adjacent programmes for the network to function hierarchically is needed. Furthermore, this spatial design can account for integration of workers and farmers into the social and R&D environments alike.

By designing the clustered nodalities as dense hybrid organizations, integration and embedment of policies into the design process is assured, thus enabling the “sustainable” urbanization model as well. A strong ‘romantic’ component of the proposed model cannot be disputed; nevertheless, by reducing it to carefully designated incisions in the fabric, the theoretical framework functions pragmatically without having to include a vast amount of players into a “re-education” process.