Chance encounters w/the elevated landscapes of Guangzhou, near Zhu Jiang New Town

Spent the past week exploring events/meeting urban enthusiasts in and around the Pearl River Delta (PRD).  Roughly ten years ago, Koolhaas (and the GSD) recognized this region of China to be the generator of the “city of exacerbated difference” (Project on the City).  He referred to city building as an opportunity to engage in urban design at many different levels and through a variety of different cultures.  A decade later, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong have continued city building at a rate and scale that deserves further investigation.  In a sense, they have been completely transformed, re-imagined, and re-appropriated by a new population.  Within the last ten years, Hong Kong’s northern territories are infilled with new towns, Guangzhou is constructing a new city axis and public attractor weighted heavily with what LA architecture critic, Frances Anderton, raises as “architectural excess” and Shenzhen has a burgeoning new art’s district (the Overseas Chinese Territory, or OCT) inhabited by (basically) returning expats.  The delta region, due to its unique location geographically, economically, and politically, is the leading model for new cities in China.  I set out to the Shenzhen/Hong Kong biennale, themed “City Mobilization,” to find out if the fruits of this labor are applicable to a wider venue abroad.

Landscape urbanism mediates sporting venue and housing in the OCT, Shenzhen

At the opening day activities, Shenzhen/Hong Kong Architecture and Urbanism Biennale, Shenzhen’s Civic Square, main venue

Biennale theme: City Mobilization

Tessellated  urbanism, subdivide surface realized.  Saw works in-progress in the PRD, including Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House (pictured), SOM/Smith+Gill’s Pearl River Tower, and OMA’s Stock Exchange in Shenzhen.  See flickr for more.

On the Pearl River

Back in the peaceful and sprawling green swathe of Shenzhen.  I was lucky enough to find a translator and enthusiastic guide, Mr. Jeffrey Li, for a final day of poking around in the city’s villages.  According to the researchers at Urbanus, there are roughly 40 ‘Villages in the City.’  I had heard a number closer to 200.  The city is in a state of flux; it is constantly growing.  Some villages are being demolished to make way for more office high-rise towers.  I saw the demolition debris during my first trip down Shennan Road and wondered if this building type and the life within would soon be erased from history.

Xiaodu Liu says this isn’t a Chinese phenomenon.  He cites similar examples from Bangladesh and somewhere in eastern Europe.  He recommends some hot spots for village exploration as well as his firm’s book, Village/City City/Village.

The trip got ethnographic really fast.  Li and I arrived at the site, and we could have been in Emeryville.  California on the outside and China just beyond the crust.  This village in the city was wearing a mask, but through the cracks and crevices, we saw those handshake-sized alleyways, the shops of everyday things, and the people that call this neighborhood home.  We walked the streets and ate at a local restaurant.  The villages are a great case study in the necessities of daily life.  Essentially, basic needs are all you find.

We went up into one of the typical six-story village towers.  (Seven floors requires an elevator, so that constraint has generated the form of these buildings.)  We met a family (Man and Woman A) living in one bedroom of a two bedroom apartment.  They were beyond hospitable – invited us in, offered us a drink and a chat with english-speaking brother/friend, Vincent (Cheng Zhi).

Reminiscent of the density of Beijing’s Hutongs, these village towers offered more space, and seemingly, were more livable.  I was carrying some Hutong postcards in my bag, so I took the opportunity to ask the family if they would rather live in the lower style villages or the tower.  They like the space that the tower provides.  I asked about their opinion of the city too.  They like the transportation in Shenzhen.  Really, though, Man and Woman A are like so many others here, working to send money back to their families living in inland China.  They are here for survival rather than by choice.  Their ‘one child per family’ (Child A) is actually back ‘home’ as well.

The winding space of the streets below is really fascinating.  Walked around some more, photographed, and wondered how my thesis might be able to accommodate degrees of public architecture like this.

The post title:  I was at the markets today.  If you didn’t know, China is renowned for its ability to copy brand name merchandise.  Since most of the factories where the actual products are manufactured are nearby, it is not surprising that their fakes are very good.  Clothing, watches, bags, electronics, books – you name it – China copies it.  Some would argue that, just as the architecture is often a ripped-off version of a Western building, China isn’t really producing anything new, just recreations and simulations of other things.  Anyway…I saw a knock-off Banana Republic blouse….the brand’s impeccable font replaced with the words, “Banana Empire.”  Nice.  It’s true, some things can’t be replicated.

Noodles for lunch: $0.88
Tiffany earrings: $2.20
Switching flights because I showed up at the airport on the wrong day (I’ve done this twice now): $0.00  (It wasn’t free last time.)
Power to the people: priceless

But China isn’t totally immune to ‘the crisis’ (I hate that word.)  There is a new city called Dongguan, another Pearl River Delta city just outside of Shenzhen, that has arguably fell to its demise because of its dependence on foreign exports.  It is a sprouting city, completely based on manufacturing, and gets its labor force from small villages in inland China.  A Chinese man staying at the hostel here (who lives and works in New Zealand as a regional planner) told me that nearly 1,000 factories closed down right before the Chinese New Year because foreign investors could no longer afford to buy products.  He has heard that the city, now in jeopardy of becoming the newest ghost town, has turned into a crime infested no man’s land.  The unemployed are robbing, stealing, and maybe worse.  He advises me NOT to check it out.  It would be a lie to say that I am not extremely curious to go anyway.

Shenzhen has a short history.  The skyscrapers, the parks, the expressways, and the metro that define this modern, linear city sprang up in the last 30 years.  The map I bought at a local bookstore shows the transformation of the city from a small fishing village with a few official, but isolated roads in 1977, a larger node of development with a designated capital in 1984, and that same area of development multiplied by about ten times in a linear configuration in 1995.  The building and population explosions that Shenzhen witnessed at this time were due to a burgeoning manufacturing economy.  Factories sprang up on this relatively inexpensive land just outside (and to the north) of Hong Kong.   Present day satellite images and maps reveal that most of the voids of the 1995 maps have been infilled.  And now, the city finds itself involved in service and electronics trade rather than manufacturing.

I’m located in a very posh pocket of Shenzhen.  When the manufacturing plants and factories dried up, many were converted for other uses.  This area of former worker housing, is now upscale apartments, an international youth hostel, and an arts district.  Galleries, furniture shops, and high-end cafes dot the area.  It is clear that designers have been here.  In fact, the architectural office of internationally recognized Urbanus is right around the corner, and I have an appointment to speak with them about their work and the future of Shenzhen later next week.

I spent the first couple of days here at two extremes.  One, was at the electronic market, a central business district area of Shenzhen, and the second was exploring the city’s “Village in the City” phenomena.

Shenzhen’s electronic mall and surrounding area at rush hour is the busiest, most crowded part of China I’ve seen so far (and it doesn’t raise a finger to India).  It was a little like witnessing a Chinese version of Times Square on the outside.  Inside, is completely different.  China’s indoor, compartmentalized, windowless, cramped booths and cubicles, and the sprawling underground malls deserve another post.  This is definitely public space and I need more time to digest it.  Yesterday’s trip inside the bowels of this shopping labyrinth left me running for natural light and air after I bought another pair of refurbished and rebranded headphones from a man with six fingers on one hand.

The villages in the city are fascinating.  They are harbingers of public space.  I set out for the first site rather blindly, with last years NY Times articles and advice from (Shenzhen researcher, classmate, and friend) Natalia Echeverri in the back of my mind.  I was looking for these dense and compact mid-rise towers in the midst of newer, taller skyscrapers , the products of unregulated development and property rights laws during the city’s huge transformation.  These areas used to be the small low-rise villages.  When the city grew, the villages turned into 8-12 story towers, but they retained the footprints and configurations of the original settlements.  These modest concrete (often run-down) buildings exist, literally, side-by-side with new 30 story towers of glass and steel.

I found the “handshake buildings” of these ‘villages.’  (So named because one can literally shake hands with a neighbor due to the close proximity of adjacent buildings.) The gap is unimaginable (And for the second time I am asking myself, do these people like natural light an air?!).  This ‘space’ has to be more extreme than any public housing tenement in the history New York City.  The spaces between buildings function as shafts for plumbing and electricity, existing at no more than a foot wide at the upper levels of the buildings.  On the ground, there is a larger setback.  Food carts and people are passing through.  There is a pattern of card games and gambling going in the the homes and cafe dives below.  (These are def. not the sheshe retrofits of my neighborhood.)  Lunch here costs less than 40 cents.

This city is really about conversion and adaptation.  It is a model that has been influencing other Chinese cities all around this Pearl River Delta region.  I’m curious to know if the lessons here can be applied elsewhere.  Can the west learn something from the east?  I’ll be looking at more of these pockets of unregulated development in the next few days.  Then, I’m interrupting Shenzhen with a few nights in Hong Kong, the city that has been calling ever since I arrived.  My next appointments here are later next week.

Is this really the most public example of Chinese collective space?  (Hutong bathroom, Beijing)