Seeing ghosts: parsing China’s “ghost city” controversy

Controversy has arisen in recent years over the creation of so-called “ghost cities” across China. The ghost city term tends to describe large-scale urban areas, sometimes planned as new towns, featuring an abundance of new built space and appearing to also have extremely low tenancy. This article examines key questions related to the ghost city phenomenon, such as: what is a ghost city? Are ghost cities driven by a tendency toward over-supply in housing? How are local-level political incentives aligned to foster the production of ghost cities? Are ghost cities temporary anomalies or structural features of China’s urban-led economic growth model? We discuss recent scholarly research into ghost cities and present original findings to show how an excess of urban space may plague certain Chinese cities.     

1990—2014年印度城市扩张时空特征对比分析

印度是人口仅次于中国的发展中国家,也是“一带一路”倡议的重要节点。印度正处于城市化快速发展阶段,分析印度城市化特征具有重要意义,而中国国内关于印度城市化和城市扩张的研究和报道相对较少。论文选取10个人口超过100万的印度城市,获取1990、2000和2014年基于Landsat影像的土地利用数据和人口数据,采用圈层分析法将城市划分为等间距的同心圆圈层后统计各圈层内建设用地密度,选取增长率、密度、强度以及景观指数指标对印度城市扩张进行多维度对比分析。研究发现：①城市土地扩张快于人口增长,1990—2000、2000—2014年土地年均增长率分别是人口年均增长率的3.27和2.43倍。②建设用地密度随着与城市中心距离增加而衰减,且在一定距离内快速下降;同圈层内建设用地密度随时间逐渐增加;城市以分散的方式向外扩张,城市形态变得更加松散,特别是在第二阶段(2000—2014年)。③建设用地斑块破碎化程度与城市扩张强度的空间变化相吻合。城市扩张最活跃区域与景观破碎度最严重区域都随时间不断向外推进,城市扩张对景观格局产生显著影响。在全球城市扩张背景下,研究结果将为理解城市扩张时空特征而提供印度样本,也将为研究其他地区城市扩张提供分析方法和思路。     

The Spatial Dialectics of Modernity and Retail Affect at Abasto Shopping,Buenos Aires,Argentina

Abstract

The paper is about the political life of a building: the Abasto. Located in what was called the “most porteño” neighborhood in the first part of the 20th century (“porteño” is someone from central Buenos Aires) when it functioned as the city's main food market, the Abasto became a massive shopping mall in 1998 amid rapid neoliberal restructuring. This paper charts the political life of this building in two steps. First, by drawing on theories of socio-spatial dialectics, this paper charts the history of the Abasto as an urban object in a wider political landscape of porteño modernity. Second, by incorporating recent theories of affect and presenting findings from field work carried out at the mall in 2010 and 2011, this paper develops a framework for understanding the politics of consumption in a “post-neoliberal” urban landscape.     

基于“规模—密度—形态”的大连市城市韧性评估

以建设安全城市为目标,依据地理学和景观生态思想方法,构建基于“规模—密度—形态”的三维城市韧性研究框架,并对2000-2016年大连市各县市区的城市韧性进行评估。其中规模韧性利用生态基础设施工具进行度量,密度韧性利用生态足迹与生态承载力工具进行度量,形态韧性基于源汇景观平均距离指数进行度量。还对各年份三类韧性的组合形式进行综合评判。本文认为,“规模—密度—形态”三位一体的韧性评估方法可有效识别城市的韧性特征,是建立城市规划与城市韧性研究之间有效联系的纽带。研究发现：① 规模安全是城市空间扩张的基本约束条件;② 生态承载力是城市密度的安全阈值;③ “源—汇”景观的空间耦合是优良城市形态的基本特征;④ 是“规模—密度—形态”三个韧性的组合状况而不是某一单项指标决定城市的安全性。基于规模、密度、形态韧性及其组合特征判定,为未来大连的城市发展提出建议：① 严格限制中心城区与金州区开发强度,遏制其蔓延式增长趋势;② 严格控制海岸带开发,维持山体和绿色植被斑块的完整性;③ 促进市域均衡开发,提升城市整体韧性;④ 优化新市区开发战略,形成良好城市形态。     

Work,Home, and Market: The Social Transformation of Housing Space in Guangzhou,China

Principal components analysis of small-area data provided by China's 2000 Population Census shows that major new economic and social forces largely shape the spatial composition of housing in Guangzhou. This is generally manifested in a series of concentric rings: the old urban core, the middle zone of reform housing, and the outer ring of new commodity housing. In addition, urban villages punctuate the metropolitan landscape. Corresponding analysis of sociodemographic attributes depict a metropolis in transition, with market elements and choice-based housing decisions beginning to impinge on the urban fabric. However, the deeply entrenched socialist institutions established during the early years of the People's Republic ensure the continuing dominance of the workplace and occupational attributes as factors structuring China's metropolitan space.     

国内外城市扩张内涵及度量研究进展

系统开展城市扩张研究,是防治城市蔓延、促进城市精明增长的重要基础。利用文献研究法总结国内外城市扩张内涵与度量的研究进展,并对发展趋势进行评述。研究表明：城市扩张度量研究备受关注,成果产出呈逐年增长之势。从代表性论文发表情况来看,“刊源集中”、“稿源集中”特征明显,中、美两国城市扩张研究成果产出量大,国内学者仍需在提升成果影响力上持续发力。城市扩张内涵界定百家争鸣,但国内外学者已形成一定的共识,即城市扩张是对特定城市发展模式下城市形态的“现实性”描述。尽管已形成了“城市用地扩张”和“城市蔓延”两大代表性研究框架,城市扩张概念内涵仍需进一步完善。城市扩张度量研究成果丰硕,但已有指标和模型多从单一的“时间”或“空间”维度表征城市扩张时序演化规律或空间格局,新数据、新理论及新方法应用有望促进城市扩张度量“时空统计模型”研究。城市扩张度量实证涉及全球、国家、流域、城市群、城市、街道等多个尺度,中国成为城市扩张度量研究的热点区域。研究呼吁重视在充分顾及区域制度与社会经济状况及城市管理需求差异前提下的城市扩张内涵界定,强化城市扩张度量时空统计模型研究,积极推进微观尺度城市扩张度量及成果应用。     

基于城市功能格局的西安市文化产业空间集聚研究

针对以往文化产业区位特征研究中缺乏与城市功能格局有机联系的问题,以中国西部重要的文化产业集聚中心西安市为案例,采用土地利用区位商、标准差椭圆、热点分析和叠加分析等方法,分析其文化产业的空间集聚特征及与城市功能格局的耦合关系。结果表明,2016年西安市的文化产业布局具有较强的“空间+功能”依附性特征,其空间集聚以城市发展主轴为方向线,集中在以一类工业和科教功能为主、开发较为成熟的城市综合功能区。传统商贸业、物流业等要素集散枢纽对文化产业的空间集聚影响较为显著。面向生活服务的文化休闲娱乐服务业的空间分布相对均衡,而面向生产服务的文化创意和设计服务业则表现出较强的产业关联导向和环境氛围导向特征。     

A PLACE UNBECOMING: THE COFFEE FARM OF NORTHERN LATIN AMERICA*

ABSTRACT. This article examines recent transformations of the coffee landscape of northern Latin America through the optic of “place as process.” As coffee became the most important regional export crop, its “place” evolved. Coffee lands in northern Latin America now embrace 3.1 million hectares, often contiguous across international borders. Like many agricultural systems, coffee has succumbed to intensification, a process termed “technification” in the Latin American setting. The result is a landscape mosaic in which a traditional agro-forest coffee system coexists with coffee lands transformed by modernization. The institutional forces behind this process, as well as some of its social and ecological consequences, are discussed.     

近代南京城市社会空间结构——基于1936年南京城市人口调查数据的分析

以1936年南京城市人口数据为基础,利用城市社会生态因子分析手段,采用聚类分析方法,对南京城市社会空间结构加以分析.结果表明,影响1936年南京城市社会区形成的主因子有城市商业/居住活动因子、政治活动因子、教育因子、贫困人口因子和城市公共福利设施因子等5个.1936年南京城市社会区划分为6个主要类型:①高级政府官员/知...     

Cities within cities: intra-urban comparison of infrastructure in Mumbai,Delhi and Cape Town

Comparison is now taken as vital to the constitution of knowledge about cities and urbanism. However, debate on comparative urbanism has been far more attentive to the merits of comparisons between cities than it has been to the potential and challenges of comparisons within cities—to what we call “Intra-Urban Comparison” (IUC). We argue that a focus on the diverse forms of urbanism located within cities may generate critical knowledge for both intra- and inter-urban comparative projects. IUCs highlight the diversity inherent in the category “city,” revealing dimensions of the urban that are central to how cities work and are experienced. We mobilise fieldwork within three cities: Mumbai, Delhi and Cape Town, and consider both how these cities have been historically understood as different urban worlds within a city, and discuss key findings from IUCs we have conducted on infrastructures. We find that IUCs can enhance comparative work both within and between cities: reconceptualising urban politics; attending to the varied and contradictory trajectories of urban life; and bringing visibility to the diverse routes through which progressive change can occur.     

Creating public space,creating ‘the public’: immigration politics and representation in two Copenhagen parks

ABSTRACT

Contestations over immigration, citizenship, and belonging play out every day in urban public space. In this article we study the design processes and use of two Copenhagen parks, Superkilen and Mimersparken, to explore the creation of public space and the “public” in Denmark. Who is part of the Danish “public”? What right do immigrant residents have to shape public space and their neighborhoods? How are the boundaries of Danish national identity policed and contested in public space in Copenhagen? The Danish government has increasingly moved toward far-right anti-immigrant stances, even while Copenhagen promotes a multicultural vision of a diverse and cosmopolitan city. Superkilen and Mimersparken illustrate the shortcomings of Copenhagen’s multiculturalism: though Copenhagen celebrates immigration, it left little space for residents to make meaningful decisions as political actors. In the case of Superkilen and Mimersparken, designers’ stylized idea of immigration is more celebrated than the actual presence of immigrant residents.     

Burgess and Hoyt in Los Angeles: testing the Chicago models in an automotive-age American city

For much of the twentieth century, the “Chicago models” proposed by E. W. Burgess in the 1920s, Homer Hoyt in the 1930s, and Chauncy Harris and Edward Ullman in 1945 dominated discussions of the spatial form of cities in the United States. The changes that have subsequently occurred in American urban geography naturally raise questions about the continuing relevance of the models. In recent years, a “Los Angeles School” in geography and urban studies has dismissed the Chicago models as outdated. But the critics have provided little empirical evidence in support of their claims. Identifying exogenous amenities—those of distance from the city center, terrain, and waterfronts—as central elements in the Chicago models, we analyzed the relation of these factors to the patterns of income in Los Angeles and Chicago using spatial statistical regression. The newer, automobile-age city closely follows, while the older city of Chicago deviates substantially from, the patterns predicted in the classical Chicago models. These models may best describe the most recently built American cities and may be more relevant than ever today in explaining the dynamics of urban form.     

城市广场与人居环境的研究进展——基于CiteSpace软件的图谱量化分析

城市广场在现代城市开放空间体系中具有公共性、艺术性、活力性,是人们生活居住重要的休闲场所.文章使用CiteSpace信息可视化工具,梳理国内外研究内容,对Web of Science和CNKI数据库城市广场与城市人居环境重要文献进行关键词聚类分析,结合整理城市广场"人居环境"崭新视角.结果表明:①城市广场的研究作为城市...     

Evolving Spatial Form of Urban‐Rural Interaction in the Pearl River Delta,China

Much of the development literature and the theory of urban transition have been based on an arbitrary division of production space into city and countryside. Despite growing recognition of the need for an integrated approach to urban‐rural relations, controversial issues related to the definition and measurement of the phenomenon remain unresolved. This case study of spatial transformation in China's Pearl River Delta analyzes with greater precision the geographic extent and functional attributes of a zone of urban‐rural interaction located outside and between major metropolitan centers. This zone has been the spatial focus of industrial and commercial development, although most of its population remains officially classified as “agricultural.” The peri‐urban zone was initially left behind by the central cities in terms of its contribution to the regional economy. After a decade of postreform development, this zone has moved ahead of the central cities and become the region's main destination for in‐migrants and foreign investment. The growth of the zone of urban‐rural interaction outside the central cities has absorbed a significant amount of the increased urban population, but it has not brought about a reduction of regional economic inequality because of the persistence of a backward economy in the periphery. Theoretical questions are raised concerning the validity of several fundamental assumptions underlying the conventional model of urban transition.     

Shifting borders,shifting center: hedging-out uncertainty in west Jerusalem’s urban core

ABSTRACT

This article argues that contested cities are inherently characterized by uncertainty and uses the interconnections between conflict, uncertainty and urban planning as a new analytical framework for investigating conflict cities. In the contested city of Jerusalem, geopolitical uncertainty stems from the Israeli occupation over East Jerusalem. Focusing on recent urban regeneration plans for West Jerusalem’s city center, the article explores how the municipality locates, plans and imagines the city center when the city’s external and internal boundaries are contested and unfixed. A two-tier analysis is employed. First, a historical analysis shows that the “city center”, as defined by authorities, is an unfixed locale that shifts in concurrence with shifts in the city’s boundaries. Then, a geopolitical analysis shows that by shifting the city center’s boundaries, the Israeli authorities decouple the city’s economic development (in the west) from Israel’s continuing ethno-national policies (in the east).     

Transformations of the Spatial Hegemony of the Courtyard in Post-Soviet St. Petersburg

Abstract

The courtyard is a space that existed before, during, and now after the Soviet period in Russian urban history. Noting the change in the courtyard's formerly hegemonic position on daily trajectories illustrates both Harvey's and Lefebvre's suggestions for uncovering the way that spaces articulate social values. A particularly revealing case study occurs in the struggle over including courtyards in a Chinese developer's project for a new multi-use district outside St. Petersburg. A brief history of the courtyard in Soviet planning allows subsequent analysis of the ways in which the city administration, the Chinese design team, and Russian planners deployed the courtyard as a spatial code for social meaning in design discussions. Examining the change in function and conceptualization of the courtyard shows how different groups in post-Soviet Russia seek to retain or redeploy concepts of the “collective” as they attempt to remake St. Petersburg as a successful “world” city.     

基于城市形态发生学的商丘归德府古城空间特征分析

采用城市形态发生学研究方法,在实地调研的基础上,利用历史文献、考古调查,结合古地图、航片、遥感影像等资料,对河南商丘归德府古城的城市形态进行了复原与分析。研究结果显示,归德府古城呈圆形的外边缘带,与呈方形的内边缘带,分别修筑于不同时期,具有不同的功能,“外圆内方”的空间形态实际上是城市变化的结果,反映了文化与自然环境两方面的作用。归德府城市形态各组成部分的变化并不一致,其中外郭城的变化最大,内城的变化相对较小,内城的街道、街区格局基本与清代的格局一致。内城的城墙-城门-护城河、棋盘格式街道格局、标志性建筑物（如文庙、府学等）,以及少量的呈点片状分布的古建筑和民居,构成了归德府城市形态主体,在中原地区具有典型性和唯一性,值得特别关注和保护。     

CONSTRUCTING AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN SPACE IN ATLANTA,GEORGIA*

Recognizing the connections between the construction of urban space and racial identity, this article explores an urban redevelopment scheme launched in 2004 by Big Bethel ame Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Known as the “Renaissance Walk,” Big Bethel's project is a $45 million dollar redevelopment plan to turn an adjacent city block into a mixed‐use development. By looking at the racialization of place from the perspective of those who live, work, and organize along Auburn Avenue, one of the most historically significant African American business corridors in the United States, I contend that Big Bethel's redevelopment project is emblematic of contemporary black counterpublic spaces and links the redevelopment project undertaken by Big Bethel with African American identity positions.     

技术创新对黄河流域城市绿色发展的影响研究

创新是推动黄河流域高质量发展的重要途径之一。利用2006—2018年黄河流域79个地级以上城市的面板数据,首先构建指标体系对各城市技术创新及绿色发展水平进行分析,其次通过面板计量模型深入探究技术创新对城市绿色发展的作用机理。研究表明：① 2006—2018年,黄河流域城市技术创新与绿色发展水平均得到明显提升,但空间差异显著,总体呈“下游>中游>上游”阶梯式递减特征。② 黄河流域城市技术创新对绿色发展总体上没有显著影响,但在加入技术创新的二次项后,两者之间呈现显著的“U”型非线性关系,即技术创新先抑制后促进城市绿色发展,这也验证了技术的“回弹效应”假说;③ 技术创新对黄河流域城市绿色发展的影响可以通过直接效应和间接效应共同体现,但这两种效应正好相反,即一个城市技术创新能力的提升对该城市绿色发展存在显著的“U”型（先抑制后促进）关系,但对邻近城市的作用呈现倒“U”型相反的关系。根据研究结论,从技术创新对城市绿色发展的直接效应和间接效应2个方面提出了相应的政策建议。     

Post-Soviet urban renewal and its discontents: gentrification by demolition in Baku

ABSTRACT

Gentrification is being increasingly discussed as a driver of urban change globally, including in the former Soviet Union. However, the translation of the gentrification phenomenon into post-Soviet cities like Baku remains poorly understood. This article explores how a particular form of state-led “gentrification by demolition” is unfolding in Baku. We assert the ongoing relevance of using the framework of gentrification to analyze the processes. We go on to use the case of the recently demolished Sovetsky district to carefully expand the geography of the gentrification discourse. We argue that Baku’s own “landscape of gentrification” is shaped by anumber of preconditions. It bears the marks of the legacy of post-socialist cities. However, it more resembles muscular state-led “gentrification by demolition” that is characteristic of Chinese cities. It also echoes Soviet city-building legacies in its use of spectacle and “grand gesture” to legitimize and buy support for gentrification policies.