Page 133 - JCAU-6-4

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

the contemporary cultural facility housing the National entirely new buildings. The prominent cities of the 1990s,
Center for the Performing Arts stands side by side with the especially Guangzhou and Shenzhen, began planning
Great Hall of the People, one of the Ten Great Buildings. monumental iconic cultural facilities at new locations.
Positioned as if regarding one other, these buildings A clear approach emerged in the process, first developed
exemplify the resonance and interplay between the cultural by Shenzhen: The creation of a large-scale new city center
and political spheres. Their relational layout arguably on a tabula rasa site with an axial plan dominated by
“illustrates the close association of urban development government buildings and cultural infrastructure facilities.
and politics in China” (Sun, 2019, p. 99). This cityscape’s Such plans, often on a north-south axis, evoke the formal
politics of aesthetics manifest in contemporary design for layout of Chinese imperial cities (Cartier, 2002) and the
a new cultural facility that represents the internationalized blank slate approach of the experimental socialist city.
vision of reform – opening to the world.
In addition to Shenzhen, other cities in the Pearl River
4. Cultural infrastructure facilities in the Delta embarked on the construction of these new city center
reform era projects. The planning discourse in China commonly
refers to them as “CBDs” or central business districts and
Old city or new city, the urban planning requirements the term has circulated widely in the literature on Chinese
of a contemporary Chinese city include construction of cities. By the early 2000s, over 35 cities had proposed new
cultural infrastructure facilities. The number of cultural CBDs (Li, 2019). However, at their cores, these new city
infrastructure facilities in a city, their size, prominence, and centers demonstrate little, if any, commercial development.
design significance, reflect the city’s level of government The core of a new city center is a large rectangular open
and budget (Guo et al., 2004; Guo & Sun, 2006). In the space or plaza, headed by a new government building
early reform era, most cities constructed new cultural and flanked by multiple cultural infrastructure facilities.
facilities in the 1980s, followed by new and larger versions, The overall plan and built environment – the form and
often on new sites in new locations, in the 1990s. function – reproduce a contemporary version of the
Consider the example of constructing cultural socialist model urban landscape.
infrastructure facilities in Shenzhen. In 1980, Shenzhen
emerged as a new prefecture-level city with a distinctive 4.1. New city centers and cultural infrastructure
functional assignment, the first special economic zone. facilities in cities of the Pearl River Delta
The popular narrative in reform history portrays Shenzhen Cities in the Pearl River Delta region were pioneers in
as the first and most successful special economic zone, constructing new city center projects featuring distinctive
leading economic reform with the highest annual gross cultural infrastructure facilities. Through international
domestic product growth globally, in the mid-1980s, as architectural competitions, Guangzhou and Shenzhen
if unshackled from socialist requirements (Cartier, 2018; envisioned iconic monumental buildings for their new
2020). However, this narrative about Shenzhen misreads cultural facilities. However, the path of development was
the cultural facilities mandate. far from straightforward. An analysis of the prolonged
In the early 1980s, Shenzhen had official instructions planning process of Zhujiang New Town, also known
to allocate land and construct “eight cultural facilities” for as Pearl River New Town, a new city center or “CBD”
a museum, library, theater, news center, television station, development in Guangzhou’s Tianhe district, recalls the
science museum, stadium, and university. Shenzhen challenges.
officials, facing responsibility to jumpstart the reform The Zhujiang New Town project was initially planned
economy, expressed concern at the time. The Shenzhen for development in the 1990s but conflicting priorities
mayor said, “we would rather go hungry than build the hindered progress (Tian & Shen, 2011). The project
eight cultural facilities” (Sun, 2019, p. 77). His counterpart prioritized high-rise office space, as Li (2019) explains,
at the Propaganda Department pointed out that investment but new commercial buildings in other districts were
for “cultural construction” in 1981 – 1983 accounted for already becoming established. By the end of the 1990s, “the
one-third of total infrastructure finance in Shenzhen (Sun developed area mostly consisted of high-end apartments,
& Xue, 2020, p. 440). Even in the earliest years of reform the costs of which were easily recovered by real estate
and opening, the Shenzhen government prioritized the developers. Not a single business office building was
construction of cultural infrastructure facilities. opened and Guangzhou’s CBD had, quite unexpectedly,
From one decade to the next, cities that built cultural been hijacked into a high-end residential area” (Li, 2019,
facilities in the 1980s sought to update their cultural p. 279). In addition, the resumption of agricultural land
infrastructure, relatively modest in scale and design, with on the eastern flank of the project, including land in

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