Made in China? Concepts and Strategies of Urban Brownfield Development for Abandoned Industrial Sites in Chinese Coastal Mega-Cities

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The project investigates concepts and strategies of brownfield redevelopment for abandoned inner-city industrial sites and their implementation in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Its starting point is the evolution of new policies of pro-active and differentiated upgrading policies for former manufacturing sites. As a result of the on-going transformation of the Chinese economy, the process of brownfield redevelopment is continuing or only starting to take off. The project wants to explain the complex variety of redevelopment strategies, which have not yet been investigated systematically, and their drivers and specific features. Besides local growth strategies, the rationality of urban development and urban planning and the changing leeway of real estate development is to be incorporated into the explanatory approach, taking into account land use rights and land transactions based on a reformed leasehold system. The dynamic urban development observed so far seems to follow a simple model of profit-making characterized by the forces of densification, increasing building heights and urban expansion into peri-urban areas. The project wants to explain the specific development paths in this field systematically and to demonstrate the relevance of specific political and economic parameters, governance arrangements and planning ideas. It will try to demonstrate that there is a particular “Chinese way”, deviating significantly from known international development strategies, and producing a great variety of site-specific redevelopment concepts. The pressure to intensify land uses in the inner cities of growing regions has recently increased as a result of national policies to save valuable agricultural areas. Thus, it has to be explained why and when relatively low buildings densities are kept on former manufacturing sites despite redevelopment. In terms of urban planning, the project looks at how actors balance the conflicting claims of creating additional floor space, keeping historically significant industrial heritage, improving the general accessibility of upgraded open spaces, and creating urban design "Highlights" with a certain relevance for city marketing purposes. With reference to urban design, the project analyzes the meanings attributed to the building stock and how the latter is re-used, complemented, superimposed, neglected and renewed. It will identify the urban design models and visions that are shaped by the complex interactions of developers, landowners, users and planning bodies.