CPRG: The Trials of China’s Technoburbia

Speaker: Professor Nick Phelps, Chair of Urban Planning and Associate Dean International, Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, University of Melbourne

Abstract: Set against the wider background of global suburbanization, this paper contributes to the emerging literature on the formation of technoburbia in China, and more importantly, the potential “urban contradictions” accompanying this process. Through a bottom-up empirical exploration of the Future Sci-tech City Corridor in Hangzhou and its embedded Featured Town initiative in particular, we observe how the future of technoburbia in China is by no means free from similar challenges in housing affordability and labor stratification. However, these contradictions are managed entirely differently in China. Nevertheless, the highly planned nature of China’s technoburbia also rubs up against political decentralization, demographic change and economic upgrading, implying significant trials and tribulations along the way.

Short bio: Professor Nick Phelps was previously Professor of Urban and Regional Development in the Bartlett School of Planning and Pro Vice Provost Regional (Southeast Asia and Australasia) at UCL. His books include Interplaces (OUP, 2017), Sequel to Suburbia (MIT Press, 2016), International Perspectives on Suburbanization (with Fulong Wu Palgrave, 2011) and An Anatomy of Sprawl (Routledge, 2011). He is on the editorial boards of Economic Geography, Urban Geography and Journal of Economic Geography.

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LinkThis event is part of Bartlett 100, a year-long celebration in 2019 to mark 100 years since the naming of the faculty. Find out more.