Page 129 - JCAU-6-4

Journal of Chinese
Architecture and Urbanism Socialist urbanism and cultural infrastructure facilities

than question them. Scholarship on city types, from institutions under party leadership (Hu, 2021, p. 107). In
medieval to industrial and neoliberal, among many others, the process, material construction of the built environment
characterizes the literature. Chinese history claims a became a demonstration of socialist urbanism and an
similar epistemology with imperial cities, sub-categorized extension of the ideology of socialist construction.
by dynasty, Republican-era city, Mao era city or socialist Like other state-owned companies, China’s design
city, and reform-era city. and construction firms have marketized elements of their
This article problematizes the periodization of city practice in recent decades, yet they have not dissolved. The
types and categories of urbanism to intervene in the state design institutes have continued under reform. They
assumption that socialist urbanism in China ended with plan and build major infrastructure projects including
the development of cities in the reform era. The political iconic buildings attributed to renowned international
economy of reform decentralized decision-making and architects. “While the creation of high-profile public
marketized economic activity, introducing state capitalism projects such as urban developments, skyscrapers, grand
while establishing the space for hundreds of new cities. theaters, libraries, museums, and galleries has largely
Rapid urbanization ushered in ideas from city and regional been credited to internationally celebrated architects and
planning based on the capitalist city, with subsidiary companies, China’s state-owned design institutes” are the
language and terms from new-build gentrification to “main forces” in development and construction (Xue &
economic zones decorating the discourse. However, the Ding, 2018, p. 113). Theater, library, and museum buildings
widespread adoption of so-called global urban theory has constitute cultural infrastructure facilities in the city. Their
also masked more complex realities about conditions of development by state design and construction companies
socialist urbanism in China (Cartier, 2024). points to the continuity of socialist construction of cultural
The expanding arena of scholarship on the formative infrastructure projects since the Mao era.
decade of the 1950s features research on cities and This article makes an argument for the historical
socialism and rural-urban relations (Brown, 2012; Gao, continuity of socialist urbanism in China based on the
2004; Hirata, 2023; Hou, 2018; Li, 2018) including studies state construction of “cultural infrastructure facilities” or
of architecture and the built environment, and state wenhua jichu sheshi (文化基础设施) in the reform era. It
design and construction firms (Ding, 2021; 2023; Li, 2014; demonstrates the continuity and significance of cultural
Roskam, 2015). Its temporality, embedded in the time of infrastructure facilities from 1949 through the reform
the planned economy, circumscribes socialism and the period and up to the present. It examines the origins of
city within the Mao era. Accounts of the post-Mao era cultural infrastructure facilities in the transfer of socialist
chronicle the demolition of danwei (单位), or work-unit urbanism from the Soviet Union to the PRC and identifies
compounds for commodity housing and new commercial the importance of design aesthetics in the production of
precincts (Bray, 2005; Lu, 2006). Yet since socialism is an cultural facilities based on the theory of socialist realism.
enduring official political-economic philosophy of the The empirical account draws for contemporary evidence
People’s Republic of China (PRC), and some fundamental on cultural facilities planning and construction in
institutions from the era of the planned economy – state Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, and cities
ownership of land and the hukou (户口), or registered of the Pearl River Delta region, namely, Shenzhen, Shunde,
permanent residence system – have transformed but not and Dongguan. The analysis shows that even in the leading
discontinued in the reform era (Chan & Wei, 2019), is it region of reform, state planning of cultural infrastructure
also possible to identify continuing elements of socialist facilities has endured.
urbanism? In “The Search for the Socialist City,” Kotkin (1996)
Recent scholarship on the history of architecture and recognizes the dynamic nature of the city under socialism
design firms in China suggests the potential. In the early as the site for the construction of socialist goals and ideals,
1950s, architectural firms became consolidated in state- as well as the elusiveness of defining socialist urbanism
owned design institutes that would rebuild the country for amidst debate over the socialist path. Socialism is subject
socialist industrialization under party-state authority. Hu to reinvention and by party elites, and so are its cities. In
(2021) shows how Soviet advising in the 1950s introduced “What Was So Socialist about the Socialist City?” Zarecor
the Soviet model of state design institutes for architectural (2018, p. 95) reflects on the contemporary existence of
reconstruction to the PRC. These institutes consolidated socialist built environments and urges an examination
“all construction-based design disciplines,” including of how “the socialist scaffold has continued into the era
architecture, landscape architecture, and construction of neoliberalism.” She approaches a definition of socialist
engineering, into integrated design and construction urbanism where she writes, “The universal aspiration

Volume 6 Issue 4 (2024) 2 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.1995