Glossary
Sample
**Archi-scrabble** //n// is the process of making up words for the sake of it (invented by architects that were about to lose a game of scrabble
and tried to fudge their way out – see archi-scrabblers). Augmented by architect-writers as a (pretty) useless exercise
to create an even bigger distance between architecture and its final users, representing the wannabe up-scaling of
intellectuality and the show-off of creativity in a way that is mostly obscuring the lack of actual quality design and
clear-cut plans and sometimes even compromises or prohibits the production of authentic content.
**Synonyms**: terminotrash, glossary sprawl, word cluttering, word wise nosing, archi-nerdism, word masturbation.
~ Rem D. KoolhaasAbbreviations used in the glossary
adj. adjective
cf. (L. confer) compare Ch. Chinese
e.g. (L. exempli gratia) for example
Eng. English
esp. especially
etc. (L. et cetera) and the rest Gr. Greek
i.e. (L. id est) that is L. Latin
n. noun
v. verb
symbols A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z New terms
Symbols
15-minute city n. Also 20-minute, 30-minute etc. is a planning concept that envisions urban environments where residents can access essential services—such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure—within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from home. While this model aims to enhance sustainability and local economies, it remains reliant on preemptive, top-down planning decisions regarding the placement of urban functions. This approach risks creating exclusive enclaves rather than fostering true citywide accessibility and programmatic diversity. Consequently, while the 15-minute city presents an appealing vision, it could inadvertently entrench socio-economic disparities if not carefully integrated into broader urban contexts.
3-D stratification n. describes a situation in which economic disparities between residents are expressed within the urban sphere on a vertical axis, with higher residencies corresponding to greater levels of wealth. Upper echelons enjoy enhanced light and air amenities. The various strata also feed into segregated transport networks: top levels correspond to car-ownership; meso-levels to public transport; lower levels to foot and bicycle.
798 n. is a celebrated art district in northeast Beijing beyond the Fourth Ring Road, now officially promoted as an international showcase for culture in Beijing. The area was previously a military electronics factory district, the name 798 deriving from the former factory 798 (one of the largest and most prestigious factory buildings on site, now an international gallery space). Artists started to move in in the 1990s to take advantage of the large and mostly disused buildings. A struggle for official recognition and protection of 798 as an art district has resulted in agreements between the local government and the land-holding group, although many artists feel rising rents and ideological co-option have compromised the integrity of the area. As of 2019 only one of the first generation of artists of 798 still worked on site.
πr2 n. reflects an ideal circular shaped city, where the correlation between its growing radius and surface area is exponential. A large metropolis may rope in hundreds of square kilometres of new cityscape with every two kilometres of outward expansion. While research suggests cities in Western societies become more efficient and on average more compact as they grow bigger, these advantages are less obvious for Asia’s amorphous and non-contiguous urban agglomerations. This is in line with Alain Bertaud’s general observation that beyond five million inhabitants the fringes of cities start to fall apart much more dramatically. Others have observed a 10 km radius as the natural limits of a city’s innate compact form.
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absolute minimums n. in the city are an aggregation of private living spaces that accommodate public transactions between them. Cities such as Mumbai, where urban space is compressed to the extreme, reveal there is an absolute minimum of private living space per person a city must ensure for people to flourish, and an absolute minimum of public space that is required for the city to operate as an efficient logistic, economic, and social system.
absorption constant n. is a measure of an urban area's capacity to accommodate new residents or economic activities without straining existing infrastructure and services. It quantifies the limits of urban growth, aiding planners in assessing sustainable development potential.
absorption myth n. Both new town and expansion planning rely on the fallacy that its inhabitants will be absorbed right where the urban project is designated.
absorption strategy n. suggests incorporating China’s abundance of underutilised infrastructure and post-industrial space. Thus growth and migration, both to and away from cities, can be absorbed.
accessibility radius n. The radius that describes the distance you can cover in a given time to the center of the circle.
abtopia n. is a place of which the primary and defining quality is not being somewhere else.
abtopian adj. [L. abs, away, from, Gr. topos, place]
adhocracy n. is an organisation with little or no structure; the opposite of a bureaucracy.
advertecture n. is the practice of advertisements painted on the walls of buildings.
aerotropolis n. is a city in which the layout, infrastructure, and economy are centred around a major airport.
agrarian urbanism n. describes rapid urban development in large, low-income agrarian societies that tends to draw urbanites into new spatial configurations. While density thrives in megacities, simultaneously a scattered peripheral growth may quickly transform their rural surroundings.
agrarian urbanism n. Countries with a predominantly agrarian economy tend to accumulate large population concentrations in the countryside. As they industrialise and pivot to consumer markets, urbanisation drives both rapid metropolitan expansions and rural urbanisation. The traditional spatial hierarchy between primary, secondary and tertiary economies that forged urban layouts is disrupted and rural and urban economies become intertwined. The spatial qualities of both rural and urban condition are likely diminished in the process, while the drawbacks of both environments augment.
agri-megalopolis n. is a peri-urban region in which population densities and socioeconomic factors are metropolitan, but the predominant spatial and economic structure have remained agricultural.
americanisation n. is the partial adoption of key aspects of American culture, including the American way of life, the American dream, American social values, and American models of free enterprise—though most often with a degree of insensitivity, exacerbating cultural incoherence.
Anthropocene n. is a proposed geological epoch dating from a yet to be precisely defined commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems. General consensus suggests this to be sometime during the first half of the twentieth century.
anti-urban sentiment n. creates policies that aim to curb or disperse metropolitan growth and densities. Anti-urban sentiment is rooted in a fear of excessively large cities and the so-called “big city ailments” (dàchéngshì bìng 大城市病) associated with them. Largely unsupported by evidence, anti-urban sentiment and the policies they foster—such as depopulating the inner cities—can produce unintended and even adverse effects for the city at large.
arable PUC n. is the area within PUC (People’s Urbanity of China) that is suitable for agriculture (38% of PUC’s total area). Every year on average 5,000 km2 of arable PUC is lost as a result of urbanisation, over-intensive farming and reforestation programs. Related: PUC, People’s Urbanity of China.
archi-scrabble n. the process of making up words for the sake of it (invented by architects about to lose a game of scrabble who tried to fudge their way out). Pursued by architect-writers as a means to increase the distance between architecture and its users, representing an intended up-scaling of intellectuality and creative prowess in a way that obscures the lack of actual design or clear-cut plans, and in its most extreme form serves to compromise or prohibit the production of authentic content. (synonyms: terminotrash, glossary sprawl, word cluttering, archi-nerdism, lexical masturbation) [agglutination architecture + scrabble].
archi-scrabblers n. people who engage in coining an excessive amount of newfangled architectural terms.
artificial city n. a city that cannot survive without resources from beyond its field of gravity. When all correlation between local resource supplies and the city’s consumption is severed, the city is artificial. Historically, cities have evolved synergistically with their surrounding countryside and the resources it can provide. Today, many metropolitan areas are dependent on resources shipped or pumped in over vast distances. In a world of continental urban networks and global resource flows, artificiality has been reached: 70 billion tons consumed annually, with 50 billion tons the assumed threshold of what Earth systems can tolerate. Related: Kilometer Zero.
asian urbanism n. Asia is the urban continent. Its metro regions accommodate most of the world’s urban populations. Though highly diverse, it is distinct from other regions to the point it deserves its own urban epistemology. Asian cultures have embraced high-rise typologies to produce uniquely dense and vast urban centres. However, while its urbanisation is projected to push on for decades, paradoxically moderate urbanisation rates don’t reflect this trend. Expansive fragmentation and rural urbanisation begin to explain this complexity which differentiates Asian urbanism and supports the idea of Asia as an independent taxonomy. Related: Clouds//Spikes.
assemblage n. has been called upon to understand the city as both relational and territorial. Initially introduced by Deleuze and Guattari, assemblage refers to a dynamic process of forming provisional constellations of different elements, encompassing both human and non-human components, that interact to create socio-spatial configurations in urban environments. This concept allows for an exploration of how these elements can come together to form new arrangements and functions, emphasising the processes of becoming and the contingent, rhizomatically and non-hierarchically organised nature of urban realities. This understanding underscores the non-finite or non-discrete constitution of ‘city’, thus undermining closed and singular models of city planning.
The term is employed in a wide array of loosely related bodies of work, including actor-network theory, “new materialist” geographies, and the politics of knowledge, among others. Different scholarly traditions, such as political economy and poststructuralism, engage with assemblage in varied ways, leading to distinct focuses and questions. Notable concepts that arise from this framework include splintering urbanism, global assemblage, worlding cities, and fast policy transfer, all of which illustrate how diverse components coalesce to shape urban life and the associated power dynamics.
~ B ~
baojia n. a system for household administration and population registration first used in the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD, bǎojiǎzhì 保甲制). The baojia grouped households into a scaled pyramidal network, organised to maintain local control and mutual surveillance. During the Ming dynasty, the structure was ten households at the lowest level, 100 households at the intermediate level, and 1,000 households at the tertiary level. Surveillance of society was achieved by a system of periodic reports on good and bad household behaviour; awards were given for praiseworthy deeds, while crimes resulted in hanging a placard in front of the offender’s house. The population enumeration function of the system worked by requiring families to post a “door plate” with data on household members by name, age, and particular characteristics, such as disabilities, or “outstanding contributions to the nation”. (cf. Dutton, M., Street life in China, 1998, Cambridge University Press)
BAU (Business as Usual) n. is a scenario based on an extrapolation of current trends. The last decades in China this implied a harsh juxtaposition of long-term top-down planning (such as stepping stone projects) on top of small casual or in situ developments.
Beijing ringing n. the various phases of Beijing’s urban expansion have been marked by a series of ring roads. Historic Beijing sits within the Second Ring Road (sited on the old city walls); successive developmental eras (Maoist, ’80s, ’90s, etc.) characterise the areas within the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Ring Roads.
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) n. was initially translated as One Belt One Road (yī dà yī lù 一带一路), and serves as a backbone of China’s foreign policy and strategic market expansion. While it claims to facilitate logistics and urban infrastructure development as a conduit for diverse international collaborations—ranging from aid and direct investments to knowledge and cultural exchange—the initiative raises critical concerns. Although the BRI aims to engage numerous countries and foster connectivity, critics argue it often conceals more insidious motives related to geopolitical influence and economic leverage. Many recipient nations risk becoming ensnared in cycles of debt dependency, raising alarms about potential neocolonial dynamics and compromised sovereignty. Furthermore, the rapid pace of infrastructure development frequently prioritises grand projects over sustainable, community-oriented planning, exacerbating environmental degradation and inequity. In this complex landscape, the BRI presents itself as a vehicle for global collaboration, yet it invites scrutiny not only regarding its true intentions and broader implications for the international order, but as a pipeline for Chinese urbanism. Related: Chinese urbanism.
’best’ practices n. in the global era of urban planning are often characterised by the application of Western ‘best practices’ that impose uniform solutions onto highly specific local contexts. This approach reduces the domain of urbanism to the reselling of a limited set of generic typologies ensconced within standardised frameworks. Consequently, this homogenisation not only undermines the unique cultural, social, and environmental dynamics of individual locales but also stifles innovative, context-sensitive planning that could better address local needs and conditions. Such a trend raises critical questions about the efficacy and ethical implications of implementing one-size-fits-all solutions in diverse urban landscapes.
bigature n. an oversized common item to serve as a building.
big-box store n. A large-format store, typically one that has a plain, box-like exterior and at least 100,000 square feet of retail space.
big hair house n. is a house that has a garish style and that is overly large compared to its lot size and to the surrounding houses.
black hole n. is a point in space-time where the gravitational field is so intense that its escape velocity equals or exceeds the speed of light. Analogously, an urban black hole represents a conceptual space characterised by two distinct interpretations: i. A cavity, an abyss, or a programmatic void that signifies a lack of activity or purpose within the urban landscape. ii. A centre of urban gravity that acts as a saturated and stagnant zone, triggering urbanisation without actively participating in it, often coinciding with the historic centre. In both cases, the urban black hole embodies a paradox: it serves as a focal point within the urban fabric while simultaneously exhibiting characteristics of emptiness and stagnation.
blue backbone n. is a dynamic landscape feature of urbanism that, instead of rigidly controlling water flows and surface water levels, embraces the natural dynamics of waterways. This concept facilitates the flow and interaction of water with the surrounding environment. During low tide, the floodplains become accessible and walkable, teeming with reeds and a vibrant array of wildlife. By allowing water to shape the landscape organically, the blue backbone enhances ecological diversity and promotes a more resilient environment that adapts to the natural rhythms of the water systems.
Blue edge / Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) n. refers to an approach in urban and environmental planning that leverages natural processes and ecosystems to address societal challenges. This concept encompasses strategies that restore, maintain, or enhance natural ecosystems to provide benefits such as flood mitigation, biodiversity enhancement, and improved air and water quality. By integrating ecological principles into planning and design, NbS aims to create resilient, sustainable urban environments that harmonise human activity with the natural world.
blueprint planning n. refers to the creation of instant and static masterplans that offer predetermined solutions without sufficient consideration for the unique characteristics of a site. The belief that sustainability can be achieved through blueprint planning fundamentally contradicts the principles of evolutionary development, which emphasises adaptability and responsiveness to changing conditions.
Related: greenfield planning n. involves the development of previously undeveloped land, often disregarding the need for context-specific solutions that emerge from thorough site analysis. This approach can lead to a lack of engagement with existing ecological, social, and cultural dynamics, ultimately undermining the goal of creating sustainable and resilient urban environments tailored to their specific contexts. Together, these planning methods highlight a critical tension between standardised solutions and the necessity for nuanced, context-driven strategies in urban development.
blueprint-on-greenfield n. denotes the practice of projecting standardised blueprint schemes onto undeveloped or virgin land. This approach prioritises inward-looking, uniform and universal schemes that neglect a site's characteristics and socio-spatial context.
blue roofs n. is a tool of analysis that offer planners a ‘low-hanging fruit’ as a basic indicator of industrial development in China. The rising presence of blue corrugated metal sheets throughout the countryside demonstrates the complete assimilation of village-level production into urban economies, illustrating the transformation of rural areas and their integration into broader economic frameworks.
boomburb n. a suburb undergoing rapid population growth.
Boomburbs can be characterised as places with more than 100,000 residents that are not the largest city in their metropolitan areas, yet maintained double-digit rates of population growth for recent decades. The United States currently contains 53 boomburbs: four top 300,000 in population, eight surpass 200,000, and 41 exceed 100,000 people. These important but seldom recognised places accounted for over half (51 percent) of 1990s' growth in cities with between 100,000 and 400,000 residents. Boomburbs now contain a quarter of all people who live in such places—Robert E. Lang and Patrick A. Simmons, "'Boomburbs': The Emergence of Large, Fast-Growing Suburban Cities in the United States," Fannie Mae Foundation, June, 2001
boom economies n. refer to rapidly growing economies characterised by significant increases in production, investment, and consumption, often driven by factors such as technological innovation, resource expansion, or increased foreign investment. These economies experience heightened consumer confidence and job creation, typically resulting in a vibrant market landscape, but they may also face challenges such as inflation, infrastructure strain, and potential volatility. These factors tend to contribute to a muddled spatial context, or landscapes of “exacerbated difference” (Koolhaas, Harvard GSD, 2001).
bootstrap growth n. describes urban economies that achieve expansion by leveraging local resources and capabilities, rather than relying on the influx of migrants and cheap labour from other regions. This approach fosters sustainable development by encouraging innovation, enhancing local skills, and utilising existing assets to stimulate economic progress, leading to a more resilient and self-sufficient environment.
brandscape n. a brand landscape; the expansion of brand outlets and brand-related items (logos, ads, etc.) within an area to the point of dominating the visual and architectural domain [agglutination brand + landscape]
BRI n. acronym Belt and Road Initiative
brickification n. the low-level low-quality version of doorstep urbanisation, where with limited money and minimal organised planning or architecture, an urbanised landscape is creating itself. Existing buildings are often enlarged simply by taking bricks and laying additional stories on top. Related: doorstep urbanisation.
burb n. colloquial term for a neighbourhood.
burb.info n. DCF created web-platform using wikicode to facilitate the online sharing of China and Asia-related ideas and information. Users are able to browse and create nodes, and explore and interlink content via tags.
Butterfly-shaped high rise n. a typical residential tower with butterfly-shaped floorplan.
~ C ~
capacity n. In planning terminology, capacity refers to the maximum potential of an urban area to accommodate population growth, housing, infrastructure, and economic activities within a given spatial context. It encompasses factors such as land availability, existing infrastructure, environmental constraints, zoning regulations, and social services. Urban capacity is crucial for effective land use planning, as it determines how much growth an area can sustain without compromising quality of life, environmental integrity, or service delivery.
carpet planning n. planning models which are formulated without direct reference to specific areas and then rolled out indiscriminately.
CBD n. acronym Central Business District
CCP n. acronym Chinese Communist Party
chai v. n. demolition. The chai character has become an infamous symbol within China’s relentless urbanisation boom. It is frequently daubed in red paint upon buildings scheduled for demolition. [chāi 拆, destruct, dismantle, demolish]
checkmate real-estate n. a process by which rigid government zoning in combination with aggressive non-collaborative plot-driven development forces the urban dynamic into a static endgame position. Plot-by-plot urbanism seals off responsibility over the public domain to private entities unlikely to engage with competing neighbours. As privatised enclaves are burnt into China’s once collectivised plane, projects fail to integrate within the urban network. Checkerboard patterns of alternating overdeveloped and underdeveloped plot quadrants take hold of the periphery. Urban programme, such as amenities and services, are duplicated side by side, or remain absent. Fragmentation continues to the granular scale.
Chengdu 1.5 n. Chinese cities are like software packages: they are continuously being updated to keep up with the ever increasing processor speed of the economy and the ever increasing expectations of its citizens. Like technology rushed to markets as minimum viable products (MVP), glitches and security risks are common and only come forward after it has been widely distributed and installed, thus further increasing the demand for patches and updates. Unfortunately, newer versions are not always backwards compatible with earlier distributions. (equally Shenzhen 2.0, Suining 0.7, etc.)
chiburb n. a residential urban development in China, esp. one which seeks to offer “suburban” qualities while maintaining density and locating itself within a dense urban environment.
—adj. chiburban
—derivative n. chiburbanite, one who lives in a chiburb [agglutination Chinese + suburb]
Chinese Dream n.
1. the aspirational drive for individual prosperity within a modern urban setting. Consumer desire, keyed into traditional family structures, focuses on home and car ownership (over political change) and the small comforts (xiǎokāng 小康) associated with a well-off middle-class society.
2. The publication with the same title authored by Neville Mars and Adrian Hornsby (010 Publisher, Rotterdam, 2008, now NAI010).
3. The central theme of China’s 12th Five Year Plan — ostensibly inspired by the publication of the 2008 The Chinese Dream publication (zhōngguó mèng 中国梦). Related: xiao kang, new dream.
Chinese immobility n. the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of a highly mobile workforce of migrants who on the national and regional level are very mobile, and yet on the local level, mostly confined to the cramped conditions of worker dormitories, remain essentially immobile.
Chinese Moderni$m n.. an architectural style that stresses both its modern character as well as — often through the addition of excessive ornamentation — the affluence or status of its owner.
Chinese Modernism n. mass modernisation cut free from Modernist ideology. The Chinese version of the Modernist urban dream results in a landscape of hash-shaped towers and mega-slab residential projects, only developed through the operation of market forces rather than utopian planning schemes. Chinese Modernism encompasses the anti-urban movement, attracting newfound wealth toward large-scale suburban residential projects with the promise of more green and greater space.
Chinese Prelude n. a combination of urgency and a faith in engineered solutions have fueled China’s light-speed urban development. Yet, as China begins to shed the planning ideologies encoded in its homogenous and rigid layouts, other emerging economies uncritically embrace Chinese urbanism for their own accelerated reconstruction. Related: Chinese urbanism, urbanism of urgency.
Chinese Urbanism (CU) n. is China’s hyper efficient, highly standardised planning template. CU is streamlined for mass production, with components repeating across scales and regions. It allows for speed through a spatially simplistic, rigid and heavy-handed system of space production. Broadly characterised by monofunctional zoning and infill of dense cookie-cutter compounds, its spaces are supported by extensive suburban industries, connected by a universally applied, often over-dimensioned road grid and vast transit networks. CU is centrally conceived and implemented through longstanding public-private partnerships.
Circularity see complete circulation.
city = accessibility n. While population densities or built-up footprint offer benchmarks as to where is urban, they say little as to what is urban. Measuring where populations are within reach of each other renders a more useful construct of what is urban, as defined by its primary function of facilitating connections.
city = people n. People are the prerequisite of cities. The Anthropocene defies this common logic to reveal a paradox. The influence of human construction is virtually omnipresent. But global urban systems do not correspond with population distributions. Once natural landscapes have transmuted into productive urban spaces, yet remain uninhabited and are thus—by many definitions—not the city. Related: Grey Zone.
city = footprint n. See footprint
city of zero liminality n. a city in which there is no experience of transitional tissue — only locations, departures, arrivals, time lost in transit. In a city of zero liminality, the points at which things start and stop have no thickness. The thresholds have no depth, in fact do not exist. [L. limen, -inis, threshold]
coarseness n. crude urban texture resulting from the simultaneous unevenly stretching out and enlarging of public space, architecture and infrastructure, giving rise to a pedestrian-hostile cityscape.
collagetecture n. an assemblage of different architectural styles, whereby a single architectural composition will take motifs and elements from a diverse (often clichéd) historical palette and place them together, esp. in a crass and jarring fashion. Collagetecture is frequently deployed in order to conceal or mitigate what are essentially blunt concrete cuboids (e.g. the setting of traditional Chinese-style curved roofs on the heads of office towers) [agglutination collage + architecture]
commodified leisure n. leisure activities that require the purchase of goods or services.
compact city n. a discipline-wide accepted definition of the compact city model does not exist; however, it is widely recognised as the hallmark and theoretical cornerstone of sustainable planning. The premise of the compact city model posits that higher population densities facilitate robust public transit, public services, and facilities, thereby reducing commute times, increasing trip frequency, and decreasing trip lengths, which ultimately lowers energy demand. Urban compactness serves as an overarching strategy that guides various sustainable objectives, including spatial integration, walkability, land preservation, and the reduction of resource use and embedded energy.
Nonetheless, the steady unravelling of the city construct, apparent in phenomena such as edgeless cities, isolated instances of extreme urban density, or vast rural/urban fields challenge the common interpretation of the compact city model. Additionally, the gradual adoption of the circular economy, which emphasises producing food and renewable energy close to consumers, further complicates the application of the compact city argument. Beyond these spatial hurdles, the compact city model has an inherent temporal challenge as prescribes a fixed outcome, which is untenable in the pursuit of long-term planning objectives. Related: eggless cities, rural/urban field.
complete circularity n. the circular economy aims for resource conservation through consumption reduction, up-, and recycling. The concept was adopted by the Chinese Government in the 11th FYP. In preparation of the 14th FYP, after an ambitious drive for household waste separation, it launched the yet to be defined term “complete circulation” (quán xúnhuán 全循环), which suggest to develop this model beyond mere waste management. To this end DCF has developed a working model to define and implement complete circulation, which localises resource flows based on the sharing principles of kilometer zero. Related: kilometer zero.
completing connectivity n. Many of Mumbai’s informal settlements are relegated to tight crannies of the urban network, trapped between dense corridors of heavy infrastructure. Ironically, although they are often surrounded by roads and transit conduits, these very structures inhibit rather than enhance accessibility, effectively isolating these communities. To improve their economic prosperity, it is essential to integrate these settlements into the broader city by completing the available options, such as skywalks to connect them both to the formal city and to one another. Bridging the physical gaps between marginalised areas and the city fabric improves not only socio-economic opportunities but their visibility.
Complex adaptive systems (CAS) n. refer to cities as open systems that respond to changing requirements through selective adaptation, nonlinear interactions, feedback loops, and emergent behaviours arising from the interactions of various components within the urban landscape. CAS and cities exhibit self-organisation, adaptation, and resilience in response to both internal and external stimuli. Their diverse building blocks confer an almost predictive quality on the city, allowing it to respond to inputs from anywhere within the collective and facilitating coordinated adjustments to emerging challenges and opportunities.
In an urban context, CAS signifies dynamic networks of diverse elements—such as individuals, communities, institutions, and infrastructure—that interact in non-linear ways. While these systems may appear complex, they can often be distilled into a few simple drivers that generate this complexity, including economic forces, social behaviours, and environmental factors. This reductionist perspective implies that planners can theoretically identify manageable levers to influence and shape urban complexity. By grasping the interplay between these drivers, urban planners can effectively foster adaptability and resilience, whilst navigating the inherent challenges of urban dynamics. Recognising cities as complex adaptive systems opens the door to more strategic interventions that enhance urban environments, helping to avoid the pitfalls of spatial simplification often found in the system thinking shaping urban plans.
However, in the context of ‘’Chinese urbanism//, both adaptability and complexity have been systematically designed out. While the societal engineering underlying the Chinese urban miracle relies on a strict set of control mechanisms—such as household registration policies, crude zoning laws, tax incentives, and greenwashing—this reliance paradoxically undermines the very nature of CAS. While barren urban expansions may appear to rapidly evolve into thriving communities, they do so under rigid preconditions that stifle genuine adaptability. This avoidance of experimentation and open-endedness or the ‘failure to allow failure’ can be attributed to an over-reliance on systems of control, which create static end-state urbanism and prevent the rich ecosystems that should emerge from a complex adaptive system.
Despite their dependence on centralised planning and social engineering, Chinese cities are gradually maturing and moving beyond these rigid systems of control, inadvertently entering the realm of complex adaptive systems. However, while underscoring the inherent resilience of cityscapes, this ongoing transition, common across the developing world, generates new challenges. Growing tensions are arising between settings planned from afar and callously juxtaposed on to settings that seem unplanned, driven instead by local, piecemeal incentives. Rather than rich complexity the ensuing landscapes reveal harsh socio-spatial contrasts. This reveals the need for theories that can harness the forces of CAS in the planning process, mitigate the constraints of systems of control, and bridge the harsh schisms between centrally planned and unplanned environments. Related: Chinese urbanism
concept town n. cities aim to serve a multitude of often conflicting desires. City models designed around a single concept and with a tightly defined purpose in mind, not unlike today’s ecocity model, will invariably fail to accommodate future challenges or to adjust to changing societal needs.
conceptual leapfrog n. In China, density itself became immanently achievable. This offered hope for goals even beyond the reach of gradually evolving cities. The concept of dynamic density (DD) applies a long-term planning logic to the fast reality of MUD formations, bringing an aspired conceptual leapfrog within reach of planners. Related: MUD, dynamic density.
connector economy n. a country that acts as a strategic hub for facilitating trade, investment, and the flow of goods and services between multiple regions by leveraging its geographic position in the global economic network. Many new connector economies are the product of China’s BRI objectives. Related: BRI.
consumers’ republic n. an economy, culture, and politics built around the premise of mass consumption.
consumurbation n. Urbanisation in China is not complete until it includes the socio-economic changes which increase inhabitants’ spending on consumer goods. This has long been a strategic imperative for China’s economic future. [agglutination consumerisation + urbanisation]
context n. No planning project exists outside a context of both natural and cultural conditions. The planner’s mission is to create new environments that are responsive to these conditions. Despite this, planning practices remain dominated by models and projects conceived within a contextual vacuum. Beyond urban renewal, modes of space production tend to be internalised and self-referential. Even after decades of rapid urbanisation, planning in China continues to largely occur outside the many intricacies of a given context. In Chinese, the word for ‘context’ (wénmài 文脉) combines the characters for culture and veins or arteries, highlighting the interconnectedness of cultural and natural systems. These should serve as the two data sets that consistently inform planning and design decisions: cultural realities, as well as natural and technological systems and conduits—or, previously existing layers of urban software and hardware.
context-averse adj. describes a planning attitude that disregards existing topographic, ecological, historic, cultural, socioeconomic, or other spatial factors. Context-averse typologies often manifest as expansive structures that overshadow the natural landscape. These structures tend to be introspective, fostering a controlled, insular reality that is wholly disconnected from, or even in opposition to, the intricate and often challenging externalities that define their surrounding urban context.
contiguity n. connectedness in spacetime. See also: contiguousness, discontiguity.
contiguousness n. connectedness in spacetime. See also: contiguity, discontiguity.
conversion n. a form of migration by which the rural inhabitant moves into an urban settlement, is assimilated, and becomes an urbanite. The converted migrant’s spending is focused on the city, and thus drives urbanisation.
cookie n. i. a small sweet cake, typically round, flat and crisp: ii. an urban phenomenon arising from the positioning of satellite cities (the cookies) in close proximity to each other, whereby each town expands, and the spreading fringes touch and fuse, like cookies growing together on a baking tray. An addition to the urban analogy of the Chinese pancake or tandabing. See tandabing, donut, raisin bread, satellite city.
core complexity n. infrastructure offers planners one of the few tools to steer large urban systems. Growth predictably oozes out along road networks and forms neat urban islands around outlying transit hubs. Though both patterns are relatively compact, superimposed the resulting patterns tend to be more loosely scattered and space consumptive.
counter-productive plans n. in the first volume ‘The Chinese Dream’, we explored China’s goal to plan 400 new cities by 2020. They didn’t materialise––instead we observed the emergence of 220 cities of over 1 million people, most often part of larger hybrid conurbations, some over 400 million strong. We should anticipate that ensuing goals for 300, 200, and 100 new ecocities will succumb to a similar fate.
critical mass n. a state of programmatic equilibrium. The city can be defined as a constellation of intensities that emerge at the intersections of dynamic systems in flux. Within this network, a city has accumulated a critical mass sufficient to support collective functions, amenities, and activities, which themselves adhere to a critical dimension—i.e. mass consumption, mass media, and mass education.
cross-regional comparisons n. While Western theory often struggles to remain relevant in non-Western contexts, despite localists’ arguments, the reality of shared planetary exigencies and the undeniable structural uniformity within urban systems worldwide, should justify cross-regional comparisons.
culled cities n. the culled city is a model created through neo-Haussmannisation, slicing through and forcing a new city upon an existing city. The culled city has all the drawbacks of new town planning but occurs within the (historic) confines of an existing city. In Asia, this model is exemplified by Beijing, where large-scale infrastructure has been superimposed upon the fine pattern of the hutongs, destroying neighbourhoods and replacing vernacular typologies with modernist morphology. Related: new town, hutong.
culture of the new n. used to describe a sense that society is a completely open playing field, a tabula rasa on which a new way of life can be constructed, a life which forges a radical break with the past. The new is believed to be implicitly superior to the old; the motto of the culture of the new could be: “We don’t need history here. We are creating it.”
~ D ~
dadui n. n. the lowest rural level in the administrative hierarchy of China. In the pre-reform era the dadui represented a collectivised unit of agricultural production, called dadui or shenchan dadui, literally meaning big production team. The dadui had tremendous local decision making power. In the post-reform era most of the dadui simply became Village Level Administration, as collectivised farming was phased out and replaced with the household responsibility system (occasional collectivised dadui still remain). Though the term is rarely officially used nowadays, many village units anachronistically call themselves dadui. In post-reform China the dadui have often taken on the role of organising enterprises where resources are pooled and collective investments made. These are known as TVEs (Township Village Enterprises, see TVE), the success of which have contributed greatly to China’s economic rise. [dàduì 大队, big team].
danwei n. worker unit — the basic socioeconomic unit of communist China. In the pre-reform era the danwei were the means by which all citizens / workers were keyed into the State production mechanism. People were assigned to a danwei, and the danwei would provide not only a job for life, but also housing, child care, education, healthcare, shops, services, post offices, etc. — all on site. Meals were taken in centralised canteens; marriages and births approved and administered by the danwei. Such workplace communities have fallen into recession since the introduction of market reforms, and many people now work in the private enterprise sector. The structural obligations of the danwei to provide its workers with a job for life and a pension has been a source of friction in China’s transition process, with the danwei struggling to balance books, and the security of older danwei members — those less able to adapt and modernise — coming under threat. [dānweì 单位, unit]
dayuan n. danweis operated within dayuans — literally big yards. The dayuan was an area of land ascribed to a particular danwei in which it organised its production and community activities. Larger danwei (for example, the steel danwei, or the petrochemical danwei) would be responsible for the running of many dayuans, though for individual danwei workers, it was possible for all living activities to be played out within one dayuan. [dàyuàn 大院, big yard]
DCF n. see Dynamic City Foundation.
demolition urbanism n. a style of re-development based on the destruction and demolition of the previous built environment.
decentralised n. a model for cities and regions that have no clear center yet extend across multiple nodes. Decentralised urban networks are diffuse, with moments of intensity that do not define a clear hierarchy.
de-urbanise n. The imprint of cities on the landscape is virtually immutable. Indeed, reversing the natural order of development to return cityscape to agricultural land or natural ecologies, is, while highly desirable and laudable, both technically challenging and generally conceptually unwarranted.
desakota n. a peri-urban landscape typology of Java Island. The term, coined by Terrence McGee in the early 90s, is an agglutination of the words ‘desa’ (village) and ‘kota’ (city). McGee characterised the desakota as combining “high population density and intensive agricultural use”. [ McGee T.G. (2017) The Sustainability of Extended Urban Spaces in Asia in the Twenty-First Century: Policy and Research Challenges. In: Yokohari M., Murakami A., Hara Y., Tsuchiya K. (eds) Sustainable Landscape Planning in Selected Urban Regions. Science for Sustainable Societies. Springer, Tokyo.] Others, notably Clifford Geertz, have described the correlation between wet rice cultivation and “the high potential” of this landscape type to "absorb labor”. [Agricultural Involution: the Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. 1963]. But the desakota of contemporary Java demand new interpretations and new definitions. In parallel formal and formal industrialisation are quickly reshaping this intricate landscape typology. Globalisation has reached the most remote settlements of this rural vernacular, introducing cross-scalar dependencies to what was once a network of autarkic settlements in harmony with nature and topography.
digital twin n. refers to a virtual replica of a physical city. This digital model incorporates big data, simulations, and analytics to mirror the characteristics, functions, and performance of the actual urban environment. Digital twins are used to analyse various urban aspects, such as infrastructure, energy usage, environmental conditions, and social dynamics. This allows urban planners and policymakers to simulate scenarios, test strategies, and make informed decisions about development, sustainability, and resilience. Through the integration of data from sensors, IoT devices, satellite imagery, and other sources, digital twins can provide a comprehensive and real-time representation of key parameters. China is a frontrunner in this field, with several cities also, in part, publicly accessible. Despite the exponentially growing level of detail these models entail, it must be noted that available data is never sufficient to describe the impact of complex processes, such as the weather or the user behaviour on the metabolism of a city. The closed nature of such data models invariably reinforces the insular nature of many sustainable planning models.
discontiguity n. In this volume, discontiguity competes with two other terms: coarseness and fragmentation. At the city level, discontiguity implies a lack of physical or functional connections between different parts of an urban area, indicating a ‘coarse’ and disconnected urban fabric where barriers—such as highways or large developments—impede the smooth flow of movement and activities between various areas. At the regional scale, however, discontiguity encroaches upon the concept of urban fragmentation, describing the process by which urban tissue breaks free from the core of the city. See also: coarseness, contiguousness, contiguity, fragmentation.
donut n. Also doughnut. i. a small fried cake of sweetened dough, typically in the shape of a ring: ii. an urban formation where, either because of building regulations or urban decline, the geographical center of the city becomes a developmental hole, while new build (of residential, office, leisure and retail program) expands to a ring around the center. [dough + nut, urban application via analogy with the Chinese pancake or tandabing]. Related: tandabing, cookie, raisin bread.
doorstep urbanisation n. a form of urban expansion expressed by the process of economic and mental migration, but combined with physical stasis. Villagers become urban in the organisation of their lives and built environment without actually leaving their homes.
dormitory extrusion n. the pre-reform Communist dormitory was extruded in the post-reform era of land values and larger roads, which both facilitated larger blocks in single spaces, and provided a commercial incentive to maximise the apartment yield of a single site. Dormitory extrusions are typically 1980s and 1990s tower blocks of twenty stories. Typologically they are often little more than the older dormitories extruded upwards, and create the same conditions.
dormitory n. housing block for workers. The traditional communist dormitories were generally six story walk-up tower blocks which, arranged in compounds, continue to occupy a significant proportion of China’s cities, and house many millions of Chinese people. The newer style of dormitory worker compounds are to be found on construction sites: these are temporary, prefabricated, one or two story units with characteristic blue roofs and grey panel facades.
duplication n. describes the development strategy that aims to concentrate growth contiguous with existing urban built-up densities by duplicating all of China’s urban settlements regardless of their size—from village to metropolis. This would provide enough capacity to accommodate DCFs 2008 projected urbanisation requirements without having to resort to new town planning models.
Dynamic City Foundation (DCF) n. a research foundation registered in The Netherlands investigating the tensions between rapid urbanisation and sustainable urban planning in Asia.
dynamic density (DD) n. is a theory that emphasises the importance of observing urban (population and built-up) densities over time, outlining an optimal relationship between the density of a city and its built footprint. First presented in The Chinese Dream, the theory posits that as a city grows, its density should increase proportionally, thereby maintaining optimal land use throughout its development, in line with the density curves inherent to that city. This necessitates flexible planning solutions to accommodate these changes. Dynamic density is particularly applicable in rapidly changing contexts, as the methodology operates first as a tool to map the processes and direction of expansion and contraction, and then to assess the quality—most notably accessibility—of new growth.The underlying premise of dynamic density is that urban density is both derived from and produces context. As the city expands, ad hoc representations of density become increasingly futile, and static density objectives—whether caps or targets—can become counterproductive to the city's future potential. As a key indicator of compact growth, density must be observed over time, leading to the assumption that, despite irregularities in metropolitan form, there exists an optimal correlation between average population density and built-up urban footprint. This makes dynamic density an effective design tool: as cities gradually expand their footprint, densities may and should increase proportionally. It suggests market-oriented guidance measures within a conceptual framework aimed at achieving overarching city goals. Importantly, this monocentric model provides the theoretical foundations for achieving compactness across more complex configurations, such as network cities. Related: urban gravity, conceptual leapfrog.
DYNAMISM
Planning in flexible frameworks that allow for continuous adaptation even after completion.
+
DENSITY
Promoting compactness as a unequivocal objective for all planning endeavours.
~ E ~
eco-paradise n. global discourse continues to deify ecocities despite their limited influence on climate issues. China is building ecocities at breakneck speed, but where the ecocity rests on western models, the Chinese context defies these underlying assumptions, laying bare contradictions at the heart of planning.
ecocity n. In this volume ecocity is used as an umbrella term that encompasses the many—often ill-defined and overlapping—environmentally conscious planning strategies currently in circulation. Related: smart city, sponge city, sustainable development.
ecology of solutions n. specifically in emerging economies large-scale public works often don’t suffice to reach all parts of society, while local micro-interventions fail to scale up to meet demand across large parts of society. Low-tech technologies networked together at the scale of the neighbourhood can be designed as ecologies of tactical improvements.
eco-village chimaera n. as a predecessor to the 15-minute city, this planning model hinges on similarly persuasive but false assumptions. Notably, it suggests that within the city urban programme, job opportunities and amenities can be strategically clustered into village-scale communities, thereby reducing the need for citywide commutes. While walkability is of vital importance, beyond offering quick access to daily necessities, the eco-village remains a chimaera, as it relies on the top-down planning of curated functional enclaves rather than addressing the broader complexities of urban diversity and connectivity.
edgeless cities n. an urban center that seamlessly transitions into its non-urban surroundings.
error-and-error n. all urban plans will invariably become outdated. While urban evolution abides by a process of trial-and-error, large-scale planning cannot. Cities are dynamic, yet urban patterns are static and sticky. Once carved into the landscape, urban patterns prove hard to undo. The sheer scale and sclerotic nature of urban systems render testing impossible and make planning mistakes nearly irreversible. Without the means to conduct empirical trials, planning becomes a practice of stacking error upon error.
euroghetto n. an urban enclave architecturally dominated by eurostyle and characterised by Westernised ideals and lifestyle aspirations. [agglutination European + ghetto]
eurostyle n. a neo-classical decorative idiom composed of Greek, Roman, Gothic and rococo architectural ornaments, prevalent in China, esp. among higher end developments of the early 21st century. [agglutination European + style]
evolutionary planning (EP) n. a growing set of urban renewal and intensification strategies that abide by the principles of urban gravity and urban evolution. Incremental adaptations increase compactness and flexibility to—certainly in theory—give rise to a sustainable urban morphogenesis. Related: urban gravity, urban evolution.
exquisite corpse** n. also macabre exquise. A technique of artistic production in which each participant takes turns adding to the collective work, and then passing it to the next participant for a further contribution. Popular with the Surrealists from the 1920s the collaborative process generates unexpected and intricate compositions. Applied to urban planning within the virtual context of a computer model, it can efficiently recreate the layers of accumulative complexity that a city can only achieve through long-term accretion of spatial and programmatic adaptations, thus avoiding the pitfall of trying to design for complexity at once in its entirety. Related: relay.
exurb n. a low density urban settlement located beyond the suburbs of the city in a rural context but still dependent on, connected to and under the influence of a city in its vicinity. Related: satellite city.
~ F ~
false frames n. refer to the limitations of understanding China’s erratic urban landscape through artificially imposed administrative boundaries and frameworks. Irrespective of the actual urban conditions on the ground, cities and urban regions are frequently political constructs characterised by shifting borders and statuses, along with the devolution and consolidation of power, demographics, and economic forces. This conceptual misalignment can obscure the complexities of urban dynamics, leading to a distorted perception of how urban areas function and evolve.
FAR n. acronym Floor Area Ratio — the area of floorspace within a building divided by its total footprint. Also: FSI acronym Floor Space Index (Indian English).
fact-free science n. a seemingly scientific endeavour, such as the computer modelling of a physical phenomenon, that is performed completely without reference to experimental data.
farmland protection act n. In 1994, the State Council passed the Basic Farmland Protection Regulations, which prohibited the conversion of basic farmland to non-agricultural activities and mandated counties and townships to designate basic farmland protection districts in accordance with provincial farmland preservation plans (cf. Ding, C. ‘Land Policy Reform in China: Assessment and Prospects’ 2001). While these regulations may have curbed land conversion, by 2011, ongoing urbanisation had encroached upon the total amount of protected surface area.
field notes n. a collection of observations, contradictions, definitions, and principles that populate this lexicon to inform the concept of evolutionary planning and the overarching mission of replacing all forms of new town planning with brownfield developments. Compiled during two decades of field research and planning case studies across Asia, these notes sketch the contours of a discipline grappling with the challenges of flash urbanisation. They lay bare the increasing dissonance between its touted ‘best practices’ and the urban theories upon which the discipline claims to rest. A pragmatic testament to the evolving landscape of urban planning, this compilation sheds light on how common planning theory is often at odds with requirements in the field, while corporate practitioners all too often wilfully ignore sound academic research. Related: evolutionary planning, flash urbanisation.
field of gravity n. also field of urban gravity the effective area across which forces exerted by an urban entity are reciprocally active. Those living within the field of gravity communicate with the city directly and influence its performance and direction; those living beyond achieve only mediated impacts upon the city. Related: urban gravity.
filter city n. China is a vast brownfield. This painful fact demands a reconceptualisation of the ecocity. Net-zero-carbon or similar standards are by definition not sufficient when pollutants travel uninterruptedly through the air and China’s waterways. China’s ecocities must be the filters at the heart of a network of nodes monitoring and actively reversing ecological damage.
fingerprint n. a diagrammatic representation of the programmatic distribution within an area, which graphically resembles a barcode of linear projections of the percentages of the total surface area. Related: footprint.
flash urbanisation n. projects that are excessive both in pace and scale, attained by streamlining and integrating all aspects of the urban development process for speed—from finance and regulations, to planning, design, and construction methods.
fickle principles n. the field of urban sustainability and resilience is rife with buzzwords that tend to be replaced or revamped with each political cycle—in China, this occurs every five years. Terms like smart city may sound persuasive, yet they lack clear definitions, guiding principles, and the necessary scrutiny regarding their implementation, even within academic circles. As a result, the spatial strategies the professional community delivers are often rested on fleeting trends and political campaigns, rather than on robust theoretical frameworks. Related: panda principle.
floating population n. a body of people who live in a permanently migratory state, having undertaken the first part of migration—i.e. leaving their previous fixed abode—but yet not completing the second stage—i.e. arriving at or even determining a final destination. China’s floating population float and move, often across vast distances, between employment opportunities (frequently in construction). Without permanent resident status in any of the locations where they stop and work, the floating population suffers from legal under-representation, esp. regarding payment and working conditions. Equally the floating population, without the opportunity to settle and integrate, and thus without stake in the matter, exhibits low-levels of personal investment in the urban environment or its own contribution to city growth. In short, China’s most flexible, and most exploitable, labor resource. Official statistics for the floating population of China are lacking, though estimates generally range upwards from 100 million in 2005, while diminishing, remaining significant even as of 2024. Related: Chinese immobility.
—floater derivative n. members of the floating population.
floating urbanism n. forms of urbanism accompanying and proper to floating populations. Floating urbanism comprises a wide variety of sectors and spatial forms and conditions including: i. an informal lending market, often operating on a village level, providing the necessary seed capital for aspirational villagers to embark upon floating migratory paths or pursue in situ entrepreneurial action; ii. forms of quasi-urbanism engendered by in situ industrialisation of rural environments through entrepreneurial activities; iii. an environment of intense competition among extremely atomised production centres, whereby manufacturing can often be traced back to the individual entrepreneur; iv. the clustering of production centres via product category, leading to button towns, sink towns, eiderdown towns, disposable lighter towns etc., to which the world comes for such products; v. the generation of Brand urbanism, in turn acting as a magnet for migration.
floating village n. barracks-like compounds for workers, esp. migrants within China’s floating population, often associated with construction sites. The architecture of the floating village is generally one or two story dormitories built from prefabricated modular parts (essentially making sheds of 1, 2, 3, etc., units long) with characteristic blue roofs. Living densities achieved via closely set steel bunk beds are extremely high (up to 300,000 p/km2). While the floating village is a temporary occurrence within the city fabric and free to move, the inhabitants of the floating village are largely con ned within its perimeter. Thus the floating village presents a paradoxically (im)mobile condition. Related: floating population.
fluid control urbanism n. the space of control is a product of a line of flight that escapes disciplinary entrenchment; however, it introduces its own challenges, transforming the freedom of movement into a new form of sedentariness and immobility. The control society and its formless city do not embody an undifferentiated fluidity. Instead, control necessitates a moment of re-differentiation in terms of informational or cultural identities, which serves as a catalyst for identification. This differential moment is followed by the management of differences through circuits of movement and mixture, which replace the disciplinary enclosures characteristic of disciplinary society.
flyover country n. Pejorative nickname for Middle America, most often used by people on the east or west coast.
footprint n. The built-up area serves as the most basic threshold for defining what and where is city. While this definition is simplistic, it isolates one central aspect of urbanism: the physical. However, in China, this conventional understanding of what constitutes a city is challenged. Here, vast contiguous urban configurations—operating at the scale of the entire Chinese landmass—are sliced according to economic, labour, and demographic formulas that collectively define the status of China’s urban agglomerations. Thus, the physicality that the concept of "footprint" entails can help identify where the socioeconomic and other illusive aspects of urbanity may be located. However, having traced the buildings that make up the urban footprint will reveal the pinpointing its boundaries remains scale-dependent, posing a new epistemological challenge. Related: muddled metropolis, rural/urban field, fingerprint.
footprint of mass transport n. is the total transit catchment area in a city—i.e. the subway, train, and bus networks, described by an accessibility circle around each stop or station, the radius of which is defined by a reasonable walking or biking time under local topographical conditions.
formal economy n. the sector of the economy officially authorised by the state, including SEZs and government-backed real estate. In China, because of a long standing divide between local and central government, and because of central government’s encouragement of local governments to act entrepreneurially in order to meet fiscal targets, enterprises and activities are often officially recognised (and even partnered) by the state on the local level, and yet exist in direct contravention of central government policy. Under such circumstances it is not always clear-cut as to what is and is not a formal economy venture (see informal economy). Corruption abuses, which facilitate and even encourage economic activity outside of the formal economy, have been identified by the Chinese Communist Party as one of the biggest problems facing China today. Related: informal economy.
formless space n. networked forms for the promotion of mobility and the organisation of mobile subjects in formless space. In this space of control, inclusion and exclusion take place through continuous, mobile forms of control as is the case of “networks”, and of the city without walls. Whereas discipline worked as an “instrument of immobilisation”, networked forms of control promote mobility and target the conduct of mobile subjects. These networks engage in anticipatory risk management.
fortress urbanism n. an urban condition in which public space assumes the status of hostile environment and security, achieved only within physically delimited private space, becomes a lifestyle objective.
FSI n. acronym Floor Space Index. Related: FAR
~ G ~
gated community n. a residential compound girt by walls with security protection at the gates ensuring those who enter the community are residents. Gated communities vary in size and levels of sophistication, with higher end gated communities incorporating extensive leisure facilities within the compound (gym, bar, pool, outdoor courts etc.), and offering along with security a lifestyle package and carefully composed architectural aesthetic. The proliferation of gated communities leads to the privatisation of formerly public space, with only arterial thoroughfares remaining in the public realm.
—gater derivative n. a person who lives in a gated community.
Generic City / Genetic City n. In the essay “Generic City,” first published in the tome *S,M,L,XL*, Rem Koolhaas describes the emergence of an Asian city type that is both futuristic and nondescript. The Generic City appears bleak and soulless, yet is imposing in its size, adaptability, and utilitarian qualities. It offers a neutral canvas for new forms of urban life to evolve, presenting a stacked concrete habitat that provides anonymity as a countermeasure to the stifling social control of traditional neighbourhoods. The grid structure on which the Generic City is based embodies the efficiency of a spatial system that can expand quickly and respond to diverse topographies, while also being easily planned and designed—a form of post-modern functionalism that echoes Hilberseimer’s urban minimalism, now animated by the intricate traces of its citizens and commercial activities. This vision serves as a persuasive image and a clarion call to resist the themed enclaves that have only proliferated since its publication.
Conversely, the Genetic City seeks to foster urban complexity through design, acknowledging the inherent difficulty of planning for complexity itself. It tackles this paradox by introducing a generational planning process. Rather than slicing up the project site among different planning teams—which would reproduce the conditions of a checkmate real-estate scenario—the Genetic City allows for a simulated natural evolution of the new urban space by having teams design in relay, one after another. With each additional layer of alterations building upon the previous one, unpredictable and unprecedented spatial and programmatic complexities can emerge. The strong identity of a plan becomes beneficial once more, contributing to the overall diversity of the urban layout. The city is planned to evolve, but initially only virtually in the computer models, so it can match the speed demanded by China’s flash urbanisation.
ghost town, also ghost city n. a settlement void of inhabitants. Notably within the Chinese context it is understood as a newly erected urban project that upon completion is unable to attract residents. The reasons for this may be manifold, and doesn’t always imply a systemic overproduction in the housing market. It can be the result of corruption and bankruptcy, and often it is merely a temporary state; a consequence of housing speculation or a delay in the new occupants to move in. Related: ghost village.
ghost village n. a rural settlement void of inhabitants. As rural communities age and fail to generate (new) forms of livelihood entire villages may eventually empty out.
global cities n. i. a label that has been applied to benchmark and brand major cities that are particularly well connected within the global economic network. ii. in the context of urban theory and city planning we must acknowledge that all cities, no matter how small, are to some extent globally connected. Thus all cities are global cities.
global urban constellation n. a term describing regional urban clusters that extend across national boundaries and continents, aggregating into constellations exceeding 100 million people. Rooted in fertile soil, in moderate climate zones, and favourable topography, these regions have historically facilitated substantial human habitation. Today, they encompass most urban regions, which have turned their historically rural settings an indistinct grey. The global urban constellation represents the final scale at which planning can aim to streamline urban systems and enhance ecological networks. Related: Grey Zone.
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golden ghetto
n. a high end urban area consisting of exclusively wealthy inhabitants who are brought together on the basis of wealth (as opposed to ethnicity, shared interests, activities etc.)
Ghost buildings
The bust that followed Shanghai’s last real estate bubble in the 90s left hundred of high rises around the city unfinished.
Golden Ghetto
green edge
n. the urban zone beyond the urban core yet still within the range of high end mass transport. The Green Edge aims to fulfill demands for both fast access to downtown areas and lower density suburban qualities. It also offer a distinct city limit for planners and developers.
Green Edge
n. A green imaginary that describes the urban zone beyond the core yet still within the range of high end mass transport. The Green Edge aims to fulfill demands for both fast access to downtown areas and lower density suburban qualities. It also offers a distinct city limit for planners and developers.
Greenhouse gas emission
Defines the equivalent number of kilograms of greenhouse gasses resulting from the production and installation of one unit of this material. (Ecotect)
Green Metropolis
n. A green imaginary that envisages a large urban system can be designed to fully comply with natural ecosystems and sustainable and self-sustaining principles.
Grey Economy
The Grey Economy refers to the flow of goods through distribution channels other than those authorized or intended by the manufacturer or producer. They are not illegal. Simply the distributor doesn’t have a formal relationship with the producer of the goods distributed. (Wikipedia)
~ H ~
hash-shaped high-rise
n. typical Asian residential tower with a floor plan that corresponds to the shape of a hash (#) symbol.
household responsibility system
n. reform legislation introduced in 1980 under which Chinese peasant families were allowed to grow and sell crops for profit provided they met their quota responsibilities to the state.
Heat Islands or Canyons
A phenomena of heat locked between the built urban substances.
Hukou
n. a local residency license or permit based on an individual’s household residence, also called household registration. Holders of the appropriate hukou are able to access local services and social welfare (education, legal representation, housing, health care etc.). As the hukou is geographically specific, in order to have access to these services, it is necessary either to remain within the boundary defined by the hukou, or obtain a hukou transfer, which is necessarily contingent upon having an address in the area the hukou is to be transferred to. In the pre-reform era, when the hukou also covered food, labor mobility was effectively zero. Since 1978 the hukou system has been unevenly and incompletely relaxed. A degree of mobility is now possible, though the floating population remains excluded from most urban rights in the cities they arrive in. In this way the hukou structure remains a powerful disincentive to rural to urban migration, in spite of indisputably higher standards of living and public services in the cities. The Chinese government is unwilling to relax the hukou system completely even though it serves to maintain the notorious rural-urban divide for fear of unmanageable migratory flows. [Ch. hukou, literally household-month, meaning permanent residence registration]
Hukou System
The hukou is a urban local residency license or permit usually based on households and as such are also called household registration. It allowed hukou holders to access social welfare that was geographically confined and to access local public goods (including schools), food and other amenities like cheap public housing, free health care, better education and food products at subsidized prices. In pre-reform era without a city hukou effectively means that you are denied access most public amenity, even finding a job was impossible. It was introduced to maintain a dichotomous urban-rural structure with very limited labour mobility. In the post-reform era with the rise of private enterprise hukou is becoming less significant though still play a major role in most peoples lives.
Hutong
n. streets are divided into three sub categories in China, the hutong being the narrowest (followed by xiang and then jie). Hutongs are essentially narrow pedestrian thoroughfares or alleys through neighborhoods of closely packed courtyard houses (see siheyuan). Hutong neighborhoods tend to be composed of traditional one story constructions, and foster a colorful street life and busy communal atmosphere among the residents, shopkeepers and restaurants, all huddled closely together along the hutong streets. Though mostly accessible by car, the hutong streets are too narrow to be used as traffic routes, and as such they remain dominated by people, especially children. However, for all their positive aspects, living conditions within the hutongs remain mostly cramped and basic, with residents relying on public toilets and primitive heating measures. [Ch. hutong, alley or lane]
Hybrid-hutong
n. stacked suburban living operating as a mediator between the compact tower typology and the tightly-knit social environment provided by hutongs.
胡同混合体
名词。层叠的郊区住宅，结合了紧凑的塔楼建筑形态和胡同里密织的社会环境。
~ I ~
I Want generation
n. (also Gucci-generation, Cappuccino-generation) Chinese born after the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution who have come of age in an era of continuous economic growth. Members are strongly orientated toward international pop culture, like to set for themselves and work toward (usually material) goals, and like to indulge in symbolic action that shows they are truly modern: e.g. buying cappuccinos, wearing international brand name clothes, etc. The I Want generation has been accused of selfishness, and labeled little emperors and queen bees. This is due not only to the economic transitions that have taken place within China over the last 30 years, but also the one child policy, which produces a “4-2-1” family structure (one child receives the devoted attention of two parents and four grandparents).
I society
noun. A society in which people emphasize independence and individuality.
ideopolis
n. A postindustrial metropolitan area dominated by knowledge-based industries and institutions, such as universities and research hospitals.
Immobility
The seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of the mass deployment of a highly mobile workforce willing to live far removed from home and family; in reality, such migrant workers are confined to the crammed conditions of their workplace or lodged in barracks, tents and basements, rendering day to day mobility effectively nil.
Imperial overstretch
n. The extension of an empire beyond its ability to maintain or expand its military and economic commitments.
informal economy
n. the sector of the economy which is not officially authorized by the state, and does not feature on national accounts. In China, because of a long standing divide between local and central government, and because of central government’s encouragement of local governments to act entrepreneurially in order to meet fiscal targets, enterprises and activities are often authorized (and even partnered) by the state on the local level, and yet exist in direct contravention of central government policy. Under such circumstances it is not always clear-cut as to what is and is not a informal economy venture (see formal economy). Moreover, the rapidly changing and frequently obscure if not contradictory regulatory environment produces a business environment in which staying within the formal economy can be prohibitively difficult, while the path to the informal economy via bribes is well established. The lack of concrete financial data regarding China’s informal economy has led to wide speculation as to how much it is worth, and to what extent, were it to be counted, it would rebalance the relative sizes of the Chinese and US economies. The informal economy is generally believed to make up at least a significant fraction of the size of the formal economy. (see formal economy)
INFRASPRAWL
imbalance between architecture and infrastructure results in infrasprawl*. THIS can be defined as, on one hand, disruptions of spatial patterns created by excess infrastructure, and on the other, infrastructure that consumes more space than it can serve or generates more traffic than it can process. The city keeps getting bigger, but useful tissue gain is minimal - This is comparable to a relentless pursuit of building height, where accommodating additional upper floors with elevators means sacrificing space at the bottom to shafts. Infrasprawl* suggests a similar optimum applies to the footprint of the city and its infrastructural network.
Example: The combined surface of Beijing’s ring roads covers an area substantially larger than the entire downtown.
基础设施蔓生
建筑与基础设施的失衡导致了基础设施的蔓生。一方面，基础设施冗余打乱了城市空间，另一方面，这些基础设施所占据的空间比能处理的交通更多。城市总是越来越大，而有效组织的增加却不成比例 －这好比要追求建筑的高度，增加电梯可达楼层就意味着更大的电梯竖井要牺牲部分楼体空间。基础设施蔓生旨在说明城市的发展轨迹与基础设施网之间类似的优化关系。
Instant City
a city built almost overnight, without history or previous context.
~ J ~
jedao banshichu
n. offices administering public security, schools and childcare, health and family planning, maintenance of registered hukou records, conflict mediation, environmental quality, and social activities as well as implementation of diverse government campaigns. (cf. Whyte, M. K. & Parish, W. L. Urban life in Contemporary China, 1984 University of Chicago Press) [Ch. jedao banshichu, street or neighborhood office]
Jicen Danwei
n. Grassroot Work Unit
The lowest of the administrative hierarchy in Communist China. The jicen danwei in the rural environment is the village level administration. In the city the jicen danwei can be anything from a school to a small factory. [Ch. jicen danwei grassroots work unit]
Jing Hu
n. the capital of PUC — a continuous urban region of 485,000km2 roughly covering the triangle between Beijing, Zhangzhou and Shanghai. [acrotomous agglutination Beijing + Hu — Hu, name used for Shanghai in official applications, e.g. the Hu shi, Shaghai stock exchange]
Jumin weiyuanhui
n. residents’ committee which serves to integrate non-waged members of society, namely housewives, children, students and the retired, into the state system, transmitting state policy to the local level. (cf. Cartier, C. ‘City-space, Scale Relations and China’s Spatial Administrative Hierarchy’, Restructuring the Chinese City, 2005 Routeledge). [Ch. jumin weiyuanhui, residents’ committee]
~ K ~
K or U-Value
A measure of air-to-air heat transmission (loss or gain) due to thermal conductance and the difference in indoor and outdoor temperatures. As the U-Value decreases, so does the amount of heat that is transferred through the glazing material. The lower the U-Value, the more restrictive the fenestration product is to heat transfer (Reciprocal of the R-Value). (http://www.fireglass.com/)
~ L ~
Land Tenure System
n. land management system in pre-reform China under which all urban land was State and allocated free of charge to danweis (see danwei) by the central state.
Land-Use Fee
n. land-use fees were first introduced in 1979. China started to impose land-use fees on foreign enterprises and joint ventures. The State passed the Provisional Act of Land-Use Taxation on State Owned Urban Land in 1989. According to the law, all danweis and individuals were obliged to pay land-use taxes if they used land in cities, towns, and industrial and mining districts. The rate of land-use taxes depended on city size. In 1993, the State passed the Provisional Act of Land Value Increment Tax on State-Owned Land. It specified that parties or individuals that transfer land-use rights be taxpayers. The Act required that taxpayers should pay a land value increment tax if they gained a net profit through land-use rights transfer and the net profits exceeded more than 20% of total costs (including land improvement costs, construction costs, management fees, transaction fees and taxes). (cf. Ding, C. ‘Land Policy Reform in China: Assessment and Prospects’ 2001)
Land-Use Taxation
In 1989 the state passed the “Provisional Act of Land-Use Taxation on State Owned Urban Land”. According to the law, all work units (danweis) and individuals were obliged to pay land-use taxes if they used land in cities, towns, and industrial and mining districts. The rate of land-use taxes depended on city size and profitability:
- large cities (over 1,000,000) charge 0.50-10.00 RMB/m2
- medium cities (500,000-1,000,000) charge 0.40-8.00 RMB/m2
- small cities (200,000-500,000) charge 0.30-6.00 RMB/m2
- towns, industrial and mining districts (less than 200,000) charge 0.20-4.00 RMB/m2
- if the net profits are less than 50% of total costs, the tax rate is 30% or net profit;
- if the net profits are between 50-100%, the tax rate is 40%;
- if the net profits are in the range of 100-200%, the tax rate is 50%
- if the net profts exceeds 200%, the tax rate is 60%
Land Value Increment Tax
In 1993, the State passed the ‘‘Provisional Act of Land Value Increment Tax on State-Owned Land’’. It specified that parties or individuals that transfer land-use rights be taxpayers. The Act required that taxpayers should pay a land value increment tax if they gained a net profit through land-use rights transfer and the net profits exceeded more than 20 percent of total costs (including land improvement costs, construction costs, management fees, transaction fees and taxes). (Ding, C., 2001. Land policy reform in China: assessment and prospects)
Lines of flight
A vector of escape from a control space
Lockdown
n. The successful isolation of the different social strata of the entire urban community.
on fenced off vacuum-packed residential bubbles...
Urban privatization offensive: evacuate and cauterize
The urban tissue of a very localised area is sucked out and the surrounding edges cauterised or seared. This ensures the area to be worked on is not bled into by surrounding tissue. The implant is then inserted into the evacuated lot. This community, like a silicone implant, sits within the urban body and yet its composition remains alien. {not sure about the mastectomy analogy / also privatization of massive communal land idea should be introduced}
luxury villa areas
bieshu qu
~ M ~
Market-Leninism
n. An economic system that combines aspects of both capitalism and communism.
marketecture
n. i. architecture being marketed aggressively through computer renderings despite the fact that it doesn’t exist as a finished product:
ii. the architecture of a marketing campaign. [agglutination market + architecture, —also marchitecture]
mass customization
noun. the tailoring of a product or service to suit each customer on a mass level.
mega-city
an urban agglomerate with a populations of 10 million or more
Metropolitan gravity
see Urban Gravity
migrant enclave
n. an area within a larger developed region within which migrant workers are clustered, often for specific employment purposes.
micropolitan
adj. Relating to an area that has an urban center surrounded by one or more counties or regions, and that has a population between 10,000 and 50,000; comparable to a small city.
micro-territories
small autonomous regions
Micro Urban governance
community level governance
Mission from God
noun. A crucially important task that must not fail; often used ironically.
MØM - Manifesto of Mistakes
MØM repositions planning as a mediator in the continuous clash of top-down forces and bottom-up urbanism. Manifesto of Mistakes introduces an evolutionary approach to upgrading, densifying, and diversifying Asia’s established cities and urban landscapes, demanding a move away from new town planning; simply put, a moratorium on new cities and outward expansion. Instead, the project constructs a theoretical framework for sustainable planning, based on fostering urban experimentation across scales. MØM is an end to manifestos for a discipline in its infancy.
Mono-sprawl
i. Spatially or socially uniform area that encourages social segregation:
ii. An urban extension that is not necessarily inefficient, dispersed or suburban, but should be regarded as sprawl because of its monofunctional nature (enforcing frequent trips and thus compromising city accessibility). [mono + sprawl]
MONOSPRAWL
Urban expansion that exercises pressure on the accessibility of the city by generating an excess of frequent trips of significant length due to internal inadequacies. Commonly these are newly developed areas wholly dependent on other areas for their own basic needs. They are monofunctional, socially stratified, lack vitality, and, overwhelmingly, are car-dependent.
单一蔓生
城市扩张部分由于功能缺乏而导致长距离经常性交通，这为整体的可达性带来压力。新生区域完全需要依赖外部来满足基本的需求。它们不但功能单一、分化社会阶层、没有生气，而且，无一例外地完全依赖私家车。
Monocentric City
Cities with one clearly defined spatial, political social or financial core. Usually where employment is focused and land prices and density all highest.
Monocentrism
See Monocentric City
MUD
Market-driven Unintentional Development describes an urbanization characterized by organic growth patterns as a result of an accumulation of clearly designed and orchestrated planning. The invariable result: amorphous expansion within a field of urban gravity.
市场化无序开发
市场化无序开发描述的是设计和规划所致的无机的城市化。不可避免的结果是：在城市引力辐射范围中的混沌扩张。
MUD
n. acronym Market-driven Unintentional Development. In spite of slick planning and design at both city and project level, an uncoordinated slew of developments continues to upscale the existing city, and break ground in the suburbs. The invariable result: amorphous expansion within a field of urban gravity.
Municipality
n. in China the Four Municipalities refer to the four designated metropolitan cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqin. The Four Municipalities enjoy the same political power as the provinces, which are the second tier of the administrative hierarchy after the central government.
~ N ~
Nerdistan
n. an upmarket and largely self-contained suburb or town with a high proportion residences owned by hi-tech workers employed in nearby office parks which themselves are dominated by hi-tech industries, any large collection of nerds. [US Eng. nerd + stan, from the Iranian root sta-, to stand, stay, thus, place where one stays, home, country.]
Nomadic nation
The case of China’s farmers turned migrant workers who wander the country without the official permissions they need, or who have no permanent addresses suggest that, in this new social topology one no longer moves from one closed site to another (as it was the case above in the era of disciplinary enclosure) but is increasingly subjected to free-floating, nomadic forms of movement and of control. Perhaps these new nomads are construction workers who live in their job sites, shifting floors as work progresses, and moving on when work is done. The transient 100 or 200 or 300 million souls who now make up China’s floating population of nomads are all people who legally ought to be one place but are not, who ought to have one sort of job but have another, and who are in effect a nomadic nation that is potentially the most disruptive group in China, and the country’s least easily controlled
Nomadism
Nomadism is then the line of flight that crosses and escapes the walled city. Nomadism and large migration emerge in China as critical tools against disciplinary enclosure, as “lines of flight” out of disciplinary space.
No Sprawl
From a numerical standpoint, within the context of Jinghu an area the size of France with an average density of a an small American city, there can be no sprawl.
Example: The hukou* system problematizes migrants’ entry into the city proper while allowing the urbanization of the rural fringe. Illegal renting within villages has furnished cities with a rim of constantly shifting temporary dwellings. Through expansion these are surrounded and ultimately swallowed.
无蔓生
从与法国面积相当却和美国小城市密度相当的京沪区域，我们可以得出的数据结论是此地无蔓生的可能。
例子：户口制度让民工光明正大地进入城市变得麻烦，却加剧了城乡结合部的城市化。农村的非法租赁让城市周围增添了不断变形的环状租居带。它被城市扩张所包围并终将被吞没。
~ O ~
over-planning
n. excessive planning reaching from zoning to the microlevel, effectively excluding the possibility for responsiveness on the part of users or future flexibility, and pushing informal grass-roots developments further out.
过度规划
名词。从用地性质到微观层面的过度规划，有效地抑制了用户对等或者未来灵活发展的可能性，而且进一步扼杀了民间的、自上而下的发展。
~ P ~
pancake model
from the Chinese tan da bing, whereby the urban model of the city is described as a flattened pancake, representing a monocentric mass, with continuous, circular expansion outwards, a congested center and extensive travel times to and from the center; common analogy for describing the current urban shape of Beijing.
panda-hugger
noun. an analyst or academic who believes that China poses no military threat, particularly to the United States (usually derogatory).
Panopticon
Bentham’s Panopticon Writings (1988) and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977) describe the production of life stripped of form and value (dependent labour) placing a spatial emphasis. The panopticon was invented as a universally applicable diagram of surveillance to be used in all institutions, e.g. schools, hospitals and workhouses as well as in prisons
Paradigm
An example, a single phenomenon, a singularity, which can be repeated and thus acquires the capability of tacitly modelling the behaviour and the practice in this case, of urbanists and planners. It is a concrete, singular, historical phenomenon, but at the same time it is a model of functioning which can be generalized.
paradigms of spatial order
a. The paradigm of immobility: In the mid-1950s, China turned from individual land use to Stalin’s Soviet model of collectivization (Soviet-style ‘iron rice bowl’ community). The most extreme of the communes moved people out of their homes into big dormitories where families could be separated. China’s rural labor was kept to the land where it could play the part of a reserve army to be called into action when needed by the party for industrialization projects. The era of collectivization was also an era of disciplinary spatial confinement for China’s rural population
b. The paradigm of disciplinary enclosure: While foreigners created Shanghai as a world port, the city then became a magnet for Chinese looking to work in factories. This large migration to Shanghai, and the foreigners fears that their city would be engulfed, helped lead to the system that divided the city into separate zones, gated sections of town for the colonialists, known as concessions, and the rest for Chinese.
c. The paradigm of control: The new society of control (e.g., post-Mao reformers under the lead of Deng Xiaoping) constitutes a new social topology, in which the geographical/institutional delimitation of discipline, that is, the binary logic of the inside/outside distinction has become obsolete. The city transgresses its limits, its inside/outside divide, and becomes a formless city. At this point space and the city start to be organized according to the principles of “control”.
d. The paradigm of fear and terror: The paradigmatic mode of Chinese urban development that combines official communist-style rule by fiat and market economic opportunism, has a major problem: it is demolishing districts in its rush skywards, displacing 2,5 million citizens in the process since 1990. The economic freedoms of the middle classes are feeding a culture of isolated individualism. The combination of demolition and eviction generates fear and suicide as the only line of flight and escape from the smooth space of control.
Paradigm urbanism
A territorial space and a city that are more or less organized to function as magnets for migrants and for capturing a floating population in a mobile space of control, becomes an example, a paradigm that is repeated everywhere in China.
范例城市主义
领地空间和城市成为吸引民工的磁铁，并在可控的不固定的空间内吸引了浮动的人群，这成为了一个范本，一个在中国各地被广泛复制的范本。
penturban
adj. Relating to the residential area or community beyond a city's suburbs.
—penturbanite n.
—penturb n.
—penturbia n.
—penturbian adj.
People’s Republic of Change
n. the subjective sensation of density formed on the basis of building size, height, spacing, the ratio of public to private space, and the view. The intrusion of tall structures in a tight-knit framework can give the illusion of a densely populated area which may belie the real numbers, and vice-versa.
perceived density
a. intrusion of tall structures in a tight-knit framework, giving the illusion of a densely populated area. See also up-scaling.
b. the subjective sensation of the incredible density of a city that belies the actual calculated density; especially true of Beijing low-rise urban structures.
感知密度
a.高层结构侵入密织的框架，导致高人口密度的错觉。参见上升规模。
b.对于城市难以置信的密度的主观感受，存在于实际的密度中；尤其适用于北京的低层城市建筑。
pericenter
n. a ring around (esp. historic center) of a city which becomes the focal point for new development.
副中心
名词。包围城市（特别是历史中心）的环状带，是进一步开发的重要节点。
Periphery
transition zone between center and suburb; in the case of Beijing, a fluctuating area relatively between the Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads.
周围
中心与郊区的过渡区域；比如北京，是大概介于四环与五环之间的起伏地带。
photoshop urbanism
n. the production of urban realms as derivatives of the production of slick computer renderings for presentations to officials and investors. Photoshop urbanism not only abstracts spatial production away from the physical realm in which it will end up, but shifts the goal posts from the production of 3-D space for users to the production of 2-D images for viewers. [derived from Adobe Photoshop, well known and widely used computer software for image manipulation, urbanism]
photoshop城市主义
名词。城市的生产沦为生产向官员、投资者展示的华丽的电脑渲染图的衍生品。Photoshop城市主义不仅将努力从空间的缔造转移至具体体征细节，而且将目标从未使用者构筑三维空间转移至为审阅者的二维图像的生产。（从知名且广泛使用的电脑图像软件Adobe Photoshop城市主义派生出来）
ping fang
n. a one story dwelling within a hutong neighborhood [Ch. ping fang, one story house]
Plan-Extrusions
n. towers designed through extruding a floorplan, usually consisting of two or more residential units organized around a pair of elevators and supply shafts. The resultant buildings tend to lack three dimensionality or sensitivity to local climatic conditions.
pollutician
noun. A politician who supports initiatives and policies that harm the environment
privatopia
noun. A walled-in or gated community of private homes, especially one in which a homeowner association establishes and enforces rules related to property appearance and resident behavior.
Policy Sprawl
n.
i. the phenomenon by which China’s planning and building policies most often result in the opposite of their intended effect i.e. contribute to rather than minimize sprawl:
ii. the accumulation of unclear, often contradictory policies, creating an environment in which it is both difficult to follow planning laws for those who try, and easy to avoid them for more powerful developers with state partners.
POLICYSPRAWL
Sprawl created by policies which were intended to reduce sprawl but in fact augment it, and policies which themselves are sprawling. Opacity created by excess policies obscures the possibility of achieving ”legal” developments and facilitates widespread abuses on the part of local officials and their private partners.
政策蔓生
那些旨在控制蔓生区的政策往往适得其反，更多的蔓生又需要更多的政策来调控，如此循环。此番政策冗余让‘合法’开发的界限模糊，并给地方官员及其伙伴以滥用权力的可乘之机。
Policy Sprawl
n. i. the phenomenon by which China’s planning and building policies most often result in the opposite of their intended effect i.e. contribute to rather than minimize sprawl:
ii. the accumulation of unclear, often contradictory policies, creating an environment in which it is both difficult to follow planning laws for those who try, and easy to avoid them for more powerful developers with state partners.
政策蔓生
名词。
特指中国的规划与建设规定往往适得其反的现象，比如旨在控制蔓生的反而催生更多；
模糊乃至矛盾的政策的积累造成的环境，它让遵守规划规定难以做到，而与政府有瓜葛的强势的开发商则很容易绕开它们。
SPEEDSPRAWL
Accelerated development can in itself be a cause of scattered urban expansion. Beyond the urban core developments are emerging at such speed that they defy the MUD* logic of seeping urban expansion and break free from gravitational force of the urban core. Their spray pattern in effect reveals the scope of the field of urban gravity and vice versa.
速度蔓生
加速开发本身就能导致散点城市扩张。与“市场无序开发”的渗透式扩张大不同的是，它们在城市的核心生长区外迅速兴起，试图挣脱城市核心的引力。它们喷射状的形态一方面反映了城市引力的强度，另一方面也说明，蔓生区对城市亦有拉动效应。
pollutician
n. a politician who supports initiatives and policies that harm the environment [agglutination politician + pollution]
污染客
名词。支持破坏环境的行为与政策的政客。（政客＋污染的集合）
Polycentric City
n. a city where the population and programmatic cores are distributed among several political, social or financial centers.
多中心城市
名词。人口与城市功能均分布在政治、社会和金融中心的城市。
post-reform era
n. the period of China’s communist history stretching from the accession to power of Mao Zedong in 1949 following the victory of the Chinese communist forces in the Chinese civil war to the death of Mao Zedong and subsequent accession to leadership of Deng Xiaoping in 1978.
privatopia
n. a walled-in or gated community of private homes, especially one in which a homeowner association establishes and enforces rules related to property appearance and resident behavior.
proletarian drift
n. The tendency for originally upmarket products to become popular with the working class and eventually come to be supplied under mass production to the mass consumer market.
Public AmenitiesUse of natural and man-made goods shared with others or beneficial for all (or most) members of a given
community., e.g. air, water, energy.
PUC
n. Acronym People’s Urbanity of China. PUC represents the eastern third of the China in which 96% of the population, as well as 96% of economic activities, migration flows, and arable land are concentrated. It is China’s urban and semi-urban region.
~ Q ~
~ R ~
Raisin Bread
i. a sweet bread containing raisins:
ii. an urban phenomenon caused by the simultaneous upscaling of urban elements by which individual points become ever further away from each other, like raisins in an expanding loaf [urban application via analogy with the Chinese pancake or tandabing, see tandabing, cookie, donut]
提子面包
（含有提子的甜面包）由于城市元素同时升级从而拉长了点到点距离的城市现象，就像正在发酵的面包中的提子一样（城市规划也比作中国的大饼，或者摊大饼，参见摊大饼，甜甜圈和提子面包）
real estate refugees
n. People who move out of the city and into the surrounding suburbs and towns in order to purchase a larger home on a bigger lot.
real sub-urbia
n. parts of the city used, often illicitly, as residential areas which, while being cartographically within the urban core, are physically beneath the dominant program, e.g. a shanty town underneath a flyover, or in the basement of a mall or tower block. [L. sub, under, urbs, a city]
reform-era
n. the period of China’s economic reforms and opening up which started in 1978 with the accession to leadership of the Chinese Communist Party of Deng Xiaoping, and runs through to the present day (sometimes referred to as the post-reform era).
regime of accumulation
n. processes of capital accumulation do not occur outside of a social regime of accumulation. In other words, a specific political and socio-economic environment is required that enables sustained investment and economic growth. This environment is created partly by state policy, but also partly by technological innovations, changes in popular culture, commercial developments, the media, and so on. An example of such a regime often cited is that of Fordism, named after the enterprise of Henry Ford. As the pattern of accumulation changes, the regime of accumulation also changes. The regime of accumulation responds to the total experience of living in capitalist society, not just market trade.
Reality Check
Projection for BAU in 2020
Regionalism
Behind the process of regionalisation lies the concept of regionalism. This can be seen as the normative aspects, or values, that underly regionalisation e.g. the (contested) European identity. Wikipedia
reverse commuter
noun. A person who travels against the normal flow of rush hour traffic, such as from their home in the city to their job in the suburbs.
ring city
see also peri-centric city , peri-center
a. The formation of
b. proposal for an urban organization of the city of Beijing whereby currently developing urban patches staggered around the centre agglomerate to form the basis of a huge urban ring roughly 100km in circumference,
ring model
loose term describing the urban infrastructure of Beijing based upon a series of circular highways surrounding the city center.
rollover migration
n. a form of migration by which the rural inhabitant moves into an urban settlement but is not assimilated. While the migrant stays in the city this is only on a temporary basis.
Engagement in the urban economy is limited as the bulk of earnings are likely to be sent in remittances to the migrant’s origin, either to repay loans taken to fund the migration, or to supplement weak rural family incomes. Without any permanent stake in the city, and with only compromised rights (due to the lack of an urban hukou), the migrant is unlikely to invest personal energy or funds into his urban living environment. Thus the product of rollover migration is often poorly constructed poorly maintained inhabitations through which rolling populations of migrants pass from the pool of China’s floating population.
rural rebound
n. The recent and significant population increases in rural and exurban areas following years of declining or stagnant population growth.
Rurban
adj. Combining aspects of both rural and urban or suburban life. [agglutination rural + urban]
—rurbanite n.
—rurbanism n.
rural urban syndicate
RUS
n. acronym Rural Urban Syndicate (Chinese Chenxiang Jehebu). RUS is a term used to describe the informal partnerships which develop on the urban fringe between new and often services-deficient planned expansions (see monosprawl) and the unofficial gray economy-driven urbanization of rural villages (see SUV). The SUV component of the RUS is highly responsive and rapidly reorganizes to cater to the needs of the stiff urban program produced by large developers (generally characterized by monolithic architecture and inflexibility to on the ground human concerns). Often the SUV will have been generated prior to the RUS as a village for construction workers during the building of the official development. Once the development is completed, the SUV transforms into a service provider, offering cheap restaurants, local transportation, and prostitution to the new inhabitants of the new homes. The RUS is both generated through and marred by its informal status. The low regulatory environment allows the RUS to develop in a very organic and ad hoc fashion through the low level flourishing of entrepreneurial activity, producing an extremely lively and dynamic relationship. However without proper infrastructure, any political status, or real legal rights, the SUV component is inevitably built to shanty town standards, and exists only under the permanent threat of demolition by unimpressed local government.
Regime of Accumulation
Processes of capital accumulation do not occur outside of a social regime of accumulation. In other words, a specific political and socio-economic environment is required that enables sustained investment and economic growth. This environment is created partly by state policy, but partly by also by technological innovations, changes in popular culture, commercial developments, the media, and so on. An example of such a regime often cited here is that of Fordism, named after the enterprise of Henry Ford. As the pattern of accumulation changes, the regime of accumulation also changes.
Similar ideas also surface in institutional economics. The main insight here is that market trade cannot flourish without regulation by a legal system plus the enforcement of basic moral conduct and private property by the state. But the regime of accumulation responds to the total experience of living in capitalist society, not just market trade. (Wikipedia)
Ringing
Ringing describes the way Beijing’s urban expansion has been in phases and each marked by a corresponding Ring Road. For example Historic Beijing is within the Second Ring Road while Maoist Era expansion was mainly outside of the Second Ring Road. Reform brought Urban Expansion to outside of Third Ring Road, and so on and so forth.
Rollover
a form of migration by which the rural inhabitant moves into an urban settlement but is not assimilated. The migrants stays in the city temporarily and does not become part of the urban economy; the temporary or floating migrant is much more likely to be sending money back to a permanent home still in the village than spending it in the city.
~ S ~
sear ’n’ seal
to reconfigure a city to conform to life in the vacuum-packed community. Within the new China everything is individually packaged. The streets are swept by discarded plastic. Development sites within the city are enclosed by corrugated sheet walls. The old hutongs are sucked out and the space is sealed off for the new urban community: self-contained, self-policed and serviced, wrapped up and packaged like a new snack.
Semi-urbanized village
SUV
a village on the urban fringe which has become semi-urbanized through an influx of migrants drawn to the urban center. Often high rents and restrictive building regulations within the official urban zone make the city a migrant attractor in terms of employment opportunities, but a migrant repeller in terms of accommodation. Villagers on the urban fringe have taken advantage of looser building regulations on land defined as rural and turned landlord, either constructing dormitory blocks for migrants themselves, or leasing the land out to migrant leaders who oversee the construction of such buildings and manage the direct letting themselves. The size of the village remains the same while the density explodes, and the village population frequently comes to be dominated by migrants from a particular province (migrants from different regions of China tend to stay together for reasons of language and ethnicity). However, as the developments are mostly informal, the village is only ever semi-urbanized (indeed the village relies upon maintaining its rural status in order to be able to pursue the highly profitable activity of renting accommodation to migrants), and remains rural in terms of paved and electrical infrastructure, communal water supplies, etc. The essentially poor state of housing in the SUV and the informal situation of the migrants breeds little incentive to stay or work to improve conditions. The migrant populations of the SUVs are mostly composed of rolling migrants from the floating population. (cf. Deng, F. & Youqin Huang ‘Uneven Land Reform and Urban Sprawl In China: the Case of Beijing’ 2004 where the term SUV was first introduced)
SEZ
n. acronym Special Economic Zone. The opening up of China in the reform era took place through a series of experiments, foremost amongst which was the formation of SEZs. SEZs are characterized by special regulatory environments geared toward attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) through special tax incentives, greater independence on international trading activities, facilitation of sino-foreign partnerships as well as wholly foreign owned enterprises, production of export-oriented goods, and the primacy of market forces. The first SEZs created in 1980 were focused on the south east, most notably in Shenzhen, opening up manufacturing links with Hong Kong. Their success led to a widespread rolling out of SEZs across the coastal regions, and spun off into the inauguration of many further zone categories including Hi-Tech Development Zones (HTDZs) and Export Processing Zones (EPZs). The ensuing “zone fever” was subsequently cooled by the Chinese Communist Party, who saw the pace of zone creation outstripping the winning of FDI, and the potential negative impacts of a plethora of zones upon national urban development. (see zone fever)
Shanghaism
A magic that other cities are trying to replicate. City leaders everywhere want to remake cities in order to reinvent themselves as players in the market economy. Cities like Nanjing, Beijing, and Guangdong and hundreds of other Chinese cities on the make, are trying to do nearly anything to replicate some of Shanghai’s magic.
Shanghai Fever
n. The massive inflow of investment, the meteoric rise in the number of skyscrapers, and the resultant property speculation in Shanghai, are collectively known as “Shanghai fever.” The construction explosion that grew out of the Reform Era has not, of course, occurred just in Shanghai. The amount of construction in China as a whole during the past 20 years exceeds the country’s combined total over the preceding few centuries. However, no city in the country has witnessed a greater change in its urban landscape than has Shanghai. Inspired by Shanghai fever, cities such as Suzhou, Kunshan, Hangzhou, and Ningbo all set ambitious goals for economic growth.
Sheng
n. province [Ch. sheng, province]
shift and shaft
v. to shift programs to a lower levels of government without providing the means with which to pay for those programs.
Siheyuan
n. a unique type of courtyard dwelling found in China, composed of a yard enclosed by four buildings. The siheyuan formed the basis of all ancient Chinese cities. [Ch. siheyuan, literally four (sides) enclosed courtyard, meaning a courtyard house]
SOE
n. acronym State Owned Enterprise. In the pre-reform era all licensed economic activity in China was managed by the state via SOEs. Reform era competition from the private sector has revealed the gross inefficiency of many SOEs. However the Chinese Communist Party has been unwilling to enter into their wholesale privatization (as would be recommended by Western institutions such as the World Bank or the IMF), and instead has sought to make the SOEs behave in a more profitable fashion through the promotion of state capitalism, especially at the local level. The SOEs present a unique fiscal structure, conforming neither to models of private enterprise nor purveyors of public good. They continue to make up a large part of the China’s production and the Chinese economy, to employ a workforce of millions, and enjoy special privileges with China’s banks (which too occupy a similarly quasi-capitalistic space frequently referred to as the “socialist market economy” or “socialism with Chinese characteristics”).
Shenzhen 2.0, Chengdu 1.5, Suining 0.7, etc.
Chinese cities are like software packages: they are continuously being updated to keep up with the ever increasing processor speed of the economy and the ever increasing expectations of its citizens. Like software that is being rushed to the market, glitches and security risks only come forward after it has been widely distributed and installed, thus increasing the demand for patches and updates even further. Unfortunately, newer versions are not always backwards compatible with earlier distributions. See also: Update strategy {Not sure if the city itself is the software. Seems more obvious to make the projected image of the city / the ideology of the city the software and the city the hardware. Fits your title – like economy as processor speed, not actual processor. cool analogy }
shift and shaft
v. To shift programs to a lower level of government without providing the means with which to pay for those programs.
—shift and shaft n.
—shift-and-shaft adj.
single-brand store
see also single-brand identity store. noun. A store that sells only a single brand of merchandise.
space invader
noun.
i. someone who violates the personal space of other people by standing too close during conversations, touching legs or arms when seated beside a person, and so on:
ii. a sudden intrusion in the urban realm, usually facilitated by a context in which planning regulations are so abstruse and bureaucratic as to be ignored completely, and your neighbor in the course of your day at work erects an entire new dwelling nine inches from your bedroom window:
iii. a monster from outer space who invades the planet, esp. for the purposes of munching the roofs off iconic buildings
Spare Space
n. design strategy that anticipates extensive future expansions.
special economic zone see SEZ
Spatial prototypes
a. The prototype of the camp: An exceptional, excluded space entrenched and surrounded with secrecy for the production of life stripped of form and value and dependent labour. In addition, to collectivization and the commune, Camps like structures in the People's Republic of China are also called Laogai, which means "reform through labor".
b. The prototype of the walled city: A system that divided the city into separate zones, gated sections of town for the colonialists, known as concessions, and the rest for Chinese. This is the city founded on the divide between its “intramural” population and the outside. The territory and the city are imagined as a disciplinary space entrenched by “walls”, originating in the act of inclusion/exclusion. Entrenchment establishes a clean-cut distinction between insiders and outsiders, between the subjects and the outlaws. The “outside” is distinct from the city, but it becomes so primarily through a sovereign act dividing the urban from the non-urban. This city is a diagram of discipline. Such disciplinary enclosure is an “anti-nomadic technique” that endeavours to “fix” mobilities
c. The prototype of the formless city: A city that is not characterized by an inside/outside distinction but by a multiplicity of cross-border flows in every direction for the production of mobility. This city is no longer founded on the divide between its “intramural” population and the outside; it no longer has anything to do with the classical oppositions of city/country nor centre/periphery. The city of control is a reticular ou-topia, sharing with all other networks a fibrous, thread-like capillary character that is not easily captured by the notions of levels, layers, territories, spheres, categories, structure, systems. Contrary to the disciplinary enclosures of the walled city, this city is a technological artefact for the promotion and management of nomadism and mobilities.
d. The prototype of the city as jungle: This city emerges out of the limitations of the society of control and its formless city. In here, the city assumes the status of an object “beyond control.” It becomes a zone in which the figure of the engineered middle class meets the evictee in a struggle for survival. In the emerging “urban jungle” the law is privatized, chaos is the rule, and city dwellers are forced into underground caves in search of safety. In the city as jungle you are made to disappear.
Speed-sprawl
n. beyond the urban core developments emerge at such speed that they defy the MUD logic of seeping expansion and break free from gravitational force of the urban core. The resultant spray pattern in effect reveals the scope of the field of urban gravity and vice versa.
splatter pattern
n. the formation, visible on satellite maps, of a splatter pattern of development resulting from the last three decades of expansion of the built environment on every scale. Urban regions, towns, fragmented networks and villages have all exploded in size over an already densely populated area, with little overarching rationalization or objective for the development pattern other than for each individual settlement (and individual) to maximize economic output.
Split City
a city consisting of a distinctly old and distinctly new part.
state owned enterprise see SOE
sprawl
v. sprawled, sprawl•ing, sprawls
v. intr. To spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion.
n. Haphazard growth or extension outward, especially that resulting from real estate development on the outskirts of a city: urban sprawl.
urban sprawl
n. The unplanned, uncontrolled spreading of urban development into areas adjoining the edge of a city.
Note: Definitions and measures of sprawl are heavily debated, but broadly accepted meanings concentrate upon the fringe development of rapidly expanding urban areas characterized by a declining of the (aggregate) urban density, as evidenced by:
a. decline in population density of built-up areas
b. decline in floor area in built-up areas
c. changes in quality, performance, etc.
sprawl constant
a variable that defines the surface area of the transitional between rural and urban zone. Its is linked to the mass, speed, radius and field of influence of a city.
sprawl-speed
Index for sprawl based on traffic assessment of new building projects considering the travel time to the CBD; urban density tends to drop with falling transportation costs and rising incomes.
Sprinkler City
n. A fast-growing outer suburb or exurb.
Stealth wealth
noun. a form of wealth in which a person’s or nation’s lifestyle and purchasing patterns do not reflect their net worth.
Stretch marks
coarse urban areas rendered completely useless. Aggravated form of coarseness.
SUV (Semi-Urbanized Villages)
a village on the urban fringe which has become semi-urbanized through an influx of migrants drawn to the urban center. Often high rents and restrictive building regulations within the official urban zone make the city a migrant attractor in terms of employment opportunities, but a migrant repeller in terms of accommodation. Villagers on the urban fringe have taken advantage of looser building regulations on land defined as rural and turned landlord, either constructing dormitory blocks for migrants themselves, or leasing the land out to migrant leaders who oversee the construction of such buildings and manage the direct letting themselves. The size of the village remains the same while the density explodes, and the village population frequently comes to be dominated by migrants from a particular province (migrants from different regions of China tend to stay together for reasons of language and ethnicity). However, as the developments are mostly informal, the village is only ever semi-urbanized (indeed the village relies upon maintaining its rural status in order to be able to pursue the highly profitable activity of renting accommodation to migrants), and remains rural in terms of paved and electrical infrastructure, communal water supplies, etc. The essentially poor state of housing in the SUV and the informal situation of the migrants breeds little incentive to stay or work to improve conditions. The migrant populations of the SUVs are mostly composed of rolling migrants from the floating population. (cf. Deng, F. & Youqin Huang ‘Uneven Land Reform and Urban Sprawl In China: the Case of Beijing’ 2004 where the term SUV was first introduced)
Sprawl Derivatives
Sprawl, originally a neutral term, has become a catch-all pejorative for unwelcome urban expansion. DCF sprawl derivatives describe and evaluate specific characteristics of that expansion which impact negatively upon accessibility.
蔓生衍生品
‘蔓生’本来是个中性词，如今却成了一切不受欢迎的城市生长形态的代名词。DCF蔓生衍生品所指的是那部分会伤及城市可达性的蔓生。
~ T ~
tabula rasa
urban areas still to be demolished.
tail unit
it is standard practice among developers to retain a number of higher end units (typically around 5 to 10%) on a new development in order to be able to offer them to local officials, or keep them available for use by VIPs who may pass through. These leftover units are referred to as tail units.
Taikonaut
n. A Chinese astronaut.
Tandabing
spreading of the pancake. A popular term among Beijingers used to describe the formation of the city, suggesting it is flat, round and growing outwards. [Ch. tandabing, big spreading pancake]
teledensity
noun. The number of telephones per 100 people in a region.
Teletopia
a (hypothetical) place in which all interactions take place via telecommunications networks. As transportation concerns are effectively eliminated, residents of a teletopia are able to live wherever they please (with due consideration of other factors) so long as they remain connected to the telenetwork.
The Chinese Dream
1. aspirational drive for individual prosperity within a modern urban setting. Consumer desire, keyed into traditional family structures, focuses on home and car ownership (over political change).
2. Continuing assured Chinese Communist Party rule (preferably with moon landings).
The Cappuccino-generation
See also the Gucci-generation, or the I-want-generation .
Chinese born after the turmoil of the cultural revolution had cleared, coming of age in an era of continuous economic growth. Members are strongly orientated towards international pop culture, like to set and work towards their self defined - usual material – goals and like to indulge in symbolic action that shows they are truly modern: e.g. buying cappuccino’s, wearing international brand name clothes. { I feel these are really cool and should be defined separately. This will the stratification of the society. Couples saving up for a coffee are not the same as those buying Gucci shoes (even if they can be in two years time). Maybe we can come up with five or so. The I-want could be the overarching one! Love that… something describing spoiled single child also very interesting. }
The function of gating
Under socialism, gating reinforces political control and collective consumption organised by the state; in the post-reform era, the gate demarcates emerging consumer clubs in response to the retreat of the state from the provision of public goods. In the Chinese city, urban fragmentation is paving the way to a new urban experience of insecurity and fear, which has begun to appear in the discourse of 'community building' in urban China. The scene of demolition and eviction serves here as the spatial prototype of this paradigm of fear.
The Household Responsibility System
The system-instituted in 1980-, allowed Chinese peasant families to grow and sell crops for profit, provided they met their quota responsibilities to the state.
The Hukou system
{add Chang’s terms / definitions..}
A household registration system designed to prevent rural-to-urban migration and to divide rural from urban space. It is a tool for the creation of immobility and the apartheid-like camp
The landscape of mass consumption
xxxx see also consumerbation
Thermal Comfort
A method uses the upper and lower comfort band temperatures set for each zone. If the internal zone temperature is above the upper value or below the lower value, it is deemed uncomfortable. As standard is considered 21-24°C. People can be quite comfortable at internal temperatures in excess of 30°C with the right clothing, mean radiant temperatures and air movement. In case of Beijing a conservative range of 18-26 in a building in a continental monsoon climate of Beijing.
The scene of demolition
An area that is cordoned off by tape, the kind you get at a crime scene or a danger zone. What is cordoned off may be a house or a restaurant standing amid the rubble; the building has been trashed in a totally demolished area. This is the scene of the expropriated and of the evictee.
The time of cohabitation
The solution that the Chinese state has given to the problem of assembling together (the problem of the public realm and public space) a set of disorderly voices, contradictory interests and virulent claims and of accommodating so many dissenting parties, has been to get rid of most of them. With the arrival of the society of control, the Chinese seems to be willing to change time and shift from the time of Time (the time of substitution) to the time of Simultaneity, that is, to space as a series of simultaneities, or the time of cohabitation.
The time-space of the Special Economic Zone: the time of substitution
The blank condition (the tabula rasa) of the special economic zone represents the cleansing march of progress that renders passé the contradictory interests of people, the set of disorderly voices, contradictory interests and virulent claims.
to rearchitect
verb. To make fundamental changes to the design or structure of something.
TRANSSPRAWL
Additions to the city may exhibit sprawl characteristics but serve as a necessary phase within the transition to a larger city. Big official developments may initially appear brutal and under-serviced, but density and local entrepreneurialism may quickly supply the necessary life. Equally informal settlements lacking in basic infrastructure can be recognized and absorbed to become healthy tissue. Transsprawl* acknowledges the potential maturing urban expansion.
过程蔓生
城市的任何增加部分都可能呈现蔓生的特点，但它们可能仅仅是城市升级的中间过程。大型城市开发在最初阶段会显得粗糙且功能不足，而密度和本地商业精神的形成将很快唤醒城市的生机。那些规划外缺乏基础设施的自发式居住地也能被承认、吸收成健康的城市组织。过程蔓生试图承认那些有成熟潜能的城市扩张。
transnational suburb
n. A suburb made up mostly of immigrants who maintain strong ties to their home countries.!!!!
tunnel advertising
n. Advertising consisting of a series of illuminated screens in a subway tunnel, each projecting one image from a sequence to create an animation effect as the train goes by.
TVE (Township or Village Enterprise)
n. Acronym Township Village Enterprise. In the reform era the easing up of regulations around entrepreneurial activity facilitated the formation of TVEs. Contrary to the popular imagination, many TVEs are not solely private ventures but are state mobilized, involving partnerships with local administrations (which frequently behave in an entrepreneurial fashion), and the collectively pooled resources of villagers. Usually small in scale, the flexibility and adaptability of the TVEs made them ideally suited to the rapid pace of change in both regulatory and consumer environments of the early reform period. The explosion of TVEs throughout the 1980s and 1990s was a major contributor to China’s economic “miracle”, with TVEs at one point accounting for two thirds of China’s manufacturing output (though this figure has fallen, it is estimated that SMEs still account for some 60% of China’s GDP). However after this initial success, in more recent years the TVEs have been condemned as under-regulated and over-polluting. The smallness of the TVEs tends to mean they operate using less sophisticated and more energy intensive technologies, and fail to benefit from economies of scale. Moreover, the atomized production networks formed by the TVEs not only inflict logistical expenses, but also problematize the widespread implementation of best practice, the sharing of knowledge, and the investment of pooled surplus in high quality research and development centers.
~ U ~
Upgrade
n. A form of urban expansion which does not need to justify itself against population movements or the relationship between rural and urban economies. It is simply people moving into bigger apartments, shared with fewer people and increased space for service and infrastructure bringing about a massive reduction in people per m2 of built area. Without anything having to change in terms of population numbers, the city is building itself dramatically upwards and outwards.
up-scaling
The push towards larger blocks, taller buildings and more luxury for a better market, often maintaining the same density as smaller-scaled typologies.
Update strategy
n. The policy for cities to keep renewing themselves, continuously updating their urban structure.
upgrade
n. A form of urban expansion which does not need to justify itself against population movements or the relationship between rural and urban economies. It is simply people moving into bigger apartments shared with fewer people, bringing about a massive reduction in people per m2 of built area. Without anything having to change in terms of population numbers, the city is building itself dramatically upwards and outwards.
upscaling
n. The expansion of the built environment via the enlargement of each individual element within it — i.e. the road, the block, the setback around a building etc. As the only the human being is not upscaled, the process results in a coarsening of the urban fabric.
urban hierarchy
from geographic center moving radically out in distance—
a. (city) center: A heavily populated city at the core of a large metropolitan area
- in the case of Beijing, from the center to Fourth Ring Road.
The term often refers to the CBD or downtown in that both serve the same purpose for the city. City centre differs from downtown in that downtown can be geographically located anywhere in a city, while city centre is located near the geographic heart of the city. In Beijing the CBD should be distinguished from the center as it is predomiantly residential.
b. periphery: transition zone between center and suburb; in the case of Beijing, a fluctuating area relatively between the Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads.
c. suburb: suburbia.
1. The term suburbia is frequently used to encapsulate the concept of suburbs as oddly picturesque slices of tract-home nuclear family life that harbour forces destructive of natural human impulses towards true community and concerns of communal welfare.
d. sub-satellite: planned development possessing the size of a satellite but lacking the distance, governance and / or infrastructural connection to the city core.
e. satellite: smaller municipalities that are adjacent to a major city which is the core of a metropolitan area, possessing their own municipal governments distinct from that of the core metropolis (wikipedia).
f. outskirts: moderately or non-urbanized area within the field of influence of urban gravity .
urban arrearage
n. The expansion of the built environment via the enlargement of each individual element within it — i.e. the road, the block, the setback around a building etc. As the only the human being is not upscaled, the process results in a coarsening of the urban fabric.
urban heat island
n. A metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surroundings as a result of the density of built surfaces, waste heat, and high levels of unvented thermal mass. The urban heat island effect is commonly more pronounced at night. —acronym UHI
urban privatization offensive
n. The urban tissue of a very localized area is sucked out and the surrounding edges cauterized. This ensures the area to be worked on is not bled into by surrounding tissue. The implant then inserted into the evacuated area sits within the urban body and yet its composition remains alien.
urban lumberjack
noun. A logger who works in an urban environment collecting and selling wood retrieved from demolished buildings.
utopian
a. often Utopian Of, relating to, describing or having the characteristics of a Utopia: a Utopian island; Utopian novels.
b.
1. Excellent or ideal but impracticable; visionary: a utopian scheme for equalizing wealth.
2. Proposing impracticably ideal schemes.
(Anti) Urban Sentiment
Since the fifties, at every level fear has permeated China’s planning decisions: fear of overcrowding centers, fear of erratic growth, fear of unmanageable cityscapes. Since the early eighties the wellestablished anti-urban sentiment of the communist heyday had to be dismantled with a strong pro-city narrative.With the urban registration system still in place a binary rhetoric continues to carry a strategy of both urban compactness and dispersion and relocation. In effect, anti-urban sentiments undermine momentum of the compact cityand concerted efforts of rural development.
城市情结(反)
上世纪五十年代伊始，中国城市规划的各层面被恐惧参透：对拥挤中心的恐惧，对于自主发展的恐惧，对于不可控制的城市空间的恐惧。而后从八十年代开始，对于城市的爱火缓慢重燃。而户口制度仍然强悍着。若要拯救城市、与散点城市扩张作战，我们不能给任何反城市的情绪或政策以立足之地。
~ V ~
village-within-city
n. A phenomenon produced by rapid urban expansion, whereby the urban fringe reaches and jumps over what used to be a surrounding village, thus creating a village within the city. The city may also encompass a number of floating villages (see floating village).
Virtual City
n. A city which exists in an imaginary space and which is uploaded to the popular imagination via advertising and media technology, esp. sophisticated computer graphics featuring fly-throughs of architectural renderings. The virtual city usually has a physical counterpart, the reality of which may be thrown into shadow or suppressed by the seductive power of the virtual city imagery.
~ W ~
Work-unit compounds
From its appearance, the work-unit compound is a diagram of control that conforms to the definition of a Panopticon –like structure
well-off society
Chinese: xiao kang, from the Chinese meaning “small well-being”, or ‘moderately well-off’; first mentioned as a goal of the Chinese state in 2002, xiao kang incorporates the ability to buy into the Chinese Dream, where everyone will achieve a moderately rich status, with a car and a modern house.
Westernization
n. The adoption, most often in parts and therefore with a degree of cultural incoherence, of certain aspects of Western culture, reaching from consumables to political and market models.
~ X ~
Xian
n. Chinese political district roughly equivalent to a county. The xian was the lowest territorial administrative structure within the hierarchy of ancient China (initially set up during the Qin Dynasty, 265-420 AD). In contemporary China the xian are on the same administrative hierarchy as cities. [Ch. xian, county]
xiao kang
n. Small comforts, in full.
xiao kang she hui
n. Society of small comforts. The xiao kang she hui, generally used to mean a well-off society, was adopted as an explicit goal for China’s rise by the Chinese Communist Party in 2002. What exacty the small comforts comprise remains ill defined, but the xiao kang ideal has been incorporated into the Chinese Dream, with desired levels of wealth equating to ownership of a modern urban dwelling and a car. [Ch. xiao kang she hui, society of small comforts]
~ Y ~
Yingzi Danwei® (shadow danwei)
n. Shadow danwei. While the old style state-run danwei, which combined employment and living within a single compound, have been in recession since the introduction of reforms, new compounds for employment and living have been created by market mechanisms. These consists of dormitories for workers (usually migrants) located on site with the factories or construction projects in which they work. Unlike the communist danwei, the yingzi danwei are not officially promoted, nor do their inhabitants enjoy social rights, entitlements, or the “iron rice bowl” ideal of a job for life. [Ch. yingzi danwei, shadow danwei, see danwei]
yuppie slum
noun.
1. An upscale neighborhood populated mostly with young professionals and managers.
2. A neighborhood with older and slightly run-down houses that young professionals purchase and renovate.
~ Z ~
Zhejiangism
Zhejiang, although only a tiny province by Chinese standards, is a magnet to migrants. Migrant farm women who work hard in Zhejiang sock factories, are those who made the men’s dress socks that sell in department stores in the USA and Europe. Nine of every one hundred of China’s wandering workers make their way here.
Zone fever
n. The success of the SEZs in the 1980s seeded PUC with the widespread desire to replicate Shenzhen-style growth (a southern fishing village before the inauguration of the SEZ) through the creation of zones of their own. Local governments declared development zones, requisitioned farmland, and started to build infrastructure before securing foreign direct investment (FDI) or even undertaking detailed feasibility studies. The number of zones swelled from 117 at the end of 1991 to 2700 by the end of 1992. However, many of these zones were doomed to remain empty, and in the mid 1990s central government intervened, canceling 1,200 vacant zones and returning over 130,000ha of land to agricultural use.
new terms
CHANG - ( Chang's entire article needs to be coined )
Eminent Domain
Entrepreneurial State
Flash Motorisation
Floating Population
Floating Village
Household Responsibility System
Village-within-City
high-end mass-transit
Transit systems that can process .. XXXXXX
KATHY
Shapeless city
post-planning
over-planning
3D-stratification
dormitory extrusion (see kathy)
floating village
splatter pattern
D-rail
pull factor
black hole
danwei
TVE
HTDZ
stepping stones
dispersion
peri-centric city
peri-center
reason d'etre
dream scenario
doom scenario
density
critical mass
doughnut model
orthogony
dystopic
chiburb
Liminality
chiburbanite
Chinese density
Splatter pattern
....
....
....
....
in Green Edge chapter
green ambitions
Jing Hu
ESA
dormitory extrusions
grid
rurban
real estate refugees
over-planning
carpet planning
critical mass
split cities
cell pattern
the Strip
solar aquatic system
vista
L-building
compartmentalized
ping fang
hutong
L-building mediate
in L-building chapter
terrace housing
in Dynamic Density chapter
urban nodes
birch theory
post-planning
in Policy Sprawl chapter
siheyuans
1. Central state in Beijing.
2. Provinces (sheng*), the four municipalities (zhixia shi*) including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing and autonomous regions (zizhi qu*) which are autonomously governed areas of ethnic minority groups.
3. Cities (shi*), counties (xian*) and county level towns (chen zhen*).
4. Towns (zhen*) and townships (xiang*) or
5. Villages (they actually come under the jurisdiction of Counties or xian*)
On a sub-urban level, large cities are often subdivided by districts (qu*), which are in turn further divided into street or neighborhood offices (jedao banshichu*) and residents’ committees (jumin weiyuanhui*). They are the lowest effective reach of the state and state surveillance.
Owned by neville mars / Added by neville mars / 18.1 years ago / 224944 hits / 7 hours view time
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