Page 48 - JCAU-4-1

Two Water Towns in the Qingpu District of Shanghai Semprebon

shores experienced a growing interest by Water towns were lively economic
institutions and administrations which are centres in pre-modern China. As
eager to exploit the new cultural status. manufacturing and trading hubs, they
Despite this favourable condition, experts attracted entrepreneurs, literati, and retired
noticed that relatively little attention had been officials, who invested in mansion
directed to the settlements’ overall patterns constructions to showcase their social
and morphological features [53] , mainly emancipation [57] . The symbiotic relationship
relegating the heritage domain to single between the watercourse and the surrounding
monuments or episodic artefacts. This environment was the principal element
developmental approach caused disharmonic structuring the formal qualities of the
transitions between traditional ambiences and settlements’ fabrics. Its importance in
surrounding fabrics, readable in the physical Chinese urban culture led German sinologist
relationships between the old and the new in Karl Wittfogel [58] to coin the term “hydraulic
the community’s social structure, with the civilization” to address the “intimate link
margination of certain citizen groups. between environmental authority in the form
of water control and political power” [59] .
4.1 Water towns in the Southern Yangtze Many water towns in the Lake Tai Basin
River Delta have already been included in the lists of
Water towns in the southern Yangtze River historic and traditional settlements compiled
Delta are unique artefacts in China that by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural
represent an outstanding balance of natural Development and the State Administration of
and cultural environments [54-56] . They are Cultural Heritage. Over the last decades, their
situated in a complex and multi-scalar water distinctive built environments have been seen
system whose main arteries, the Yangtze as a lucrative ambience for mass tourism
River and the Grand Canal, regiment a fine- consumption, activating a process of heritage
grained canal network, covering the area commodification [Figure 3]. Their Historic
between Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Urban Landscapes’ spatial experience [60]
the Lake Tai. Philip Ball argued that “there underwent a process of fragmentation with
could be few locations of more strategic the introduction of activities and spaces
importance to China’s water transport dedicated to visitors, such as souvenir shops
network than the junction of the Yangtze with run by a new class of merchants or turnstiles
the Grand Canal” [54] . and gates where entrance fees are collected
[61] .

Figure 2. Location of Zhujiajiao and Liantang water towns in relation to Shanghai and to the Yangtze River Delta.
Source: Elaboration by the author on a satellite image from Google Earth

AccScience Publishing 6