In this work the author endeavors to treat “Danwei” system as a special and highly organized form of community and sets about his study from the perspectives of “Danwei–community’s” change and urban community reconstruction. When it comes to the construction and development of urban communities in contemporary China, academic circles at home often attempt to unravel its intimate and indissoluble connection with “Danwei” system and seek to lay emphasis upon the great complexity of their interactive relationship with each other. However, academic circles generally incorporate “Danwei” system taken as a national system as well as a universal institution into their fields of research, whereas they rarely enter into a critical examination of the variations in its multiplicity of specific denotations by taking account of such variables as space, region and culture, nor do they show much concern about the existence of different types of “Danwei”. In view of the foregoing difficulties in which the study of “Danwei” system gets entangled, this study attempts to accomplish the following main purposes. Firstly, this study shall introduce such a variable as locality into the research on “Danwei-community” by starting off from the research perspectives of “Danwei-community’s” origin, formation and change. Secondly, several super-large industrial communities in the old industrial bases shall be chosen as classic cases in illustration of long-standing complications and entanglements enmeshed in this study. And thirdly, it seeks to reveal the mode and experience of urban community development against a background of “Danwei” system reform so that by gaining a full understanding of as well as making an in-depth analysis of their rich implications we can enrich the theory of urban community construction in the Chinese context and hence grapple successfully with some theoretical problems confronting urban community reconstruction against a background of “Danwei-community” change, which shall eventually bring about a smooth transition of “Danwei” society. This book will assuredly open an exceptional window to the transition of China from traditional to modern society, the transition of Chinese society from planned economy to market economy, and the change track of the interplay between the Chinese government and modern Chinese society after the founding of New China in 1949, at the present time and even in the foreseeable future.

The danwei (workunit) has been the fundamental social and spatial unit of urban China under socialism. With particular focus on the link between spatial forms and social organization, this book traces the origins and development of this critical institution up to the present day.

Centered on the urban workplace, the danwei (workunit) has been the fundamental social and spatial unit of urban China under socialism. Not only was it the source of employment, wages, and other material benefits for the vast majority of urban residents, it was also the institution through which the urban population was housed, organized, regulated, policed, educated, trained, protected, and surveyed. Furthermore, as the basic unit of urban society, each danwei became a community, providing its members with identity, a "face," and social belonging. With particular focus on the link between spatial forms and social organization, this book traces the origins and development of this critical institution up to the present day. Recent economic restructuring has seen the danwei lose its dominant role, yet its presence still influences the possibilities for urban transformation. Moreover, the author argues, the new institutions emerging in its place display important characteristics of the old danwei system.

How have the development and redevelopment of China’s cities since the early 1950s transformed the settlements and fortunes of a fifth of the world’s population? Rapid urbanization since the 1980s has changed the nation from a rural society to an urban one, marking it as one of the most significant transformations in history. As a country with severe land scarcity, land resources are intensively contested for during urbanization under the new regime of marketization. This book focuses on the impact of the institution of land rights that have transitioned from private ownership to socialist state ownership, and subsequently to public land leasing in the urban domain, and to collective ownership in rural areas. In the context of defining the relationship between the state and the market, the gradualist transition of land rights gives rise to intriguing processes of place-making. The elaboration of these processes will engage several revealing conceptual notions: land as a means of production, land commodification, ambiguous land rights, incomplete land rights, trading land use rights for land development rights, institutional uncertainty, land rent seeking and dissipating, local developmental state, danwei-enterprises, and more. The newly created landed interests are embedded intricately within the urban spatial structure. This book would especially be of interest to scholars interested in developmental economics, urban planning, geography, public policies, public management, and sociology, and also practitioners focusing on development and planning.

The Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning series offers a selection of some of the best scholarship in urban and regional planning from around the world with internationally recognized authors taking up urgent and salient issues from theory, to education for and practice of planning. This 7th volume features contributions on the theme of Transformative Planning: Smarter, Greener and More Inclusive Practices. It includes chapters from leading planning scholars and practitioners who critically examine how transformative planning practices seek to reduce inequalities, promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, achieve gender equality, improve human health and well-being, foster resilience of urban communities and protect the environment and thereby change urban planning paradigms. Several case studies of emerging transformative planning interventions illustrate practical ways forward. Transformative Planning offers provocative insights into the global planning community’s struggle and contribution to tackle the major challenges to society in the 21st century. It will be of use for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in the wide-ranging fields encompassed by urban studies, sustainability studies, and urban and regional planning. The Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) series is published in association with the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN) and its member national and transnational planning schools associations.

This issue of A+BE addresses two critical urban issues China faces today: housing and urban renewal. In the recent two decades, the Chinese urban housing stock underwent a significant, if not extreme, transformation. From 1949 to 1998, the urban housing stock in China largely depended on the public sector, and a large amount of public housing areas were developed under the socialistic public housing system in Beijing and other Chinese cities. Yet in 1998, a radical housing reform stopped this housing system. Thus, most of the public housing stock was privatized and the urban housing provision was conferred to the market. The radical housing privatization and marketization did not really resolve but intensified the housing problem. Along with the high-speed urbanization, the alienated, capitalized and speculative housing stock caused a series of social and spatial problems. The Chinese government therefore attempted to reestablish the social housing system in 2007. However, the unbalanced structure of the Chinese urban housing stock has not been considerably optimized and the housing problem is still one of the most critical challenges in China.

The trajectory and logic of urban development in post-Mao China have been shaped and defined by the contention between domestic and global capital, central and local state and social actors of different class status and endowment. This urban transformation process of historic proportion entails new rules for distribution and negotiation, novel perceptions of citizenship, as well as room for unprecedented spontaneity and creativity. Based on original research by leading experts, this book offers an updated and nuanced analysis of the new logic of urban governance and its implications.