Evaluating the Effects of Urban Spatial Transformations

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This project examines the effects of urban redevelopment on residents and other users of the urban built environment. The research will analyze urban government and planning projects that seek to enhance public life, stimulate consumption, recreation and urban tourism, and establish norms of civil behavior. Specifically, research will focus on the actual effects and outcomes of such projects and whether those effects and outcomes match the objectives of government and urban planning. The project will be carried out in three interior Chinese cities undergoing large-scale projects redeveloping both the commercial and residential built environment. Preliminary field reconnaissance suggests that such redevelopments are viewed by municipal officials as ways of modernizing older socialist architecture and city plans by introducing new market-oriented economic forms of development. But officials also tend to view urban redevelopment projects as capable of improving resident behavior and creating 'civilized' cities with 'harmonious' development. Critical scholars have suggested that such projects, while often improving standards of living and increasing consumption for many urban residents, should also be understood as enhancing state disciplinary power over citizens. This research will test empirically whether the actual effects and outcomes match the objectives of urban planners and, in doing so, will address two significant questions: 1) do these projects indeed change resident behavior in significant ways? and 2) do these projects in fact enhance state power in the case of China specifically? By answering these questions, this research will provide a grounded empirical study that interrogates popular assumptions about the nature of authoritarian state power and whether urban planning and urban built environments are effective conveyors of that power.Research will be collaborative between the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) and Guizhou Minzu University (GMU). Fieldwork will directly involve the training of young scholars from both the United States and China in a collaborative manner. The research will help scholars from a relatively poor and isolated region of China develop networks and ties to a broader international, especially US, academic community than they would otherwise not have. By publishing in both popular media as well as academic and broader urban planning outlets, results will have the potential to influence both the academic and policy communities. The project will include workshops, mini-symposia, and conferences at both CU and GMU addressing both the academic and policy implications of research findings. Results will be featured at the annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers and the Association for Asian Studies.