Neighborhood Shaping, Social Management & Community Governance: Evolutions of Community Building in Urban China

BCCN Lecture Series #3: Neighborhood Shaping, Social Management & Community Governance: Evolutions of Community Building in Urban China
 

The "Lecture Series on Science, Technology, and Innovation" at TU Berlin in cooperation with the BCCN (Berlin Contemporary China Network) provides an interdisciplinary platform to explore cutting-edge developments in science and technology. International experts share insights into innovative approaches and discuss their societal, economic, and environmental impacts. The series encourages dialogue between research, industry, and the public, offering students and attendees a chance to engage with forward-looking topics.

Here you can join this and other online or hybrid lectures of the lecture series: https://tu-berlin.zoom.us/j/69639573548?pwd=l4NpWJI9B3qilouRvqq3OzFke88E5J.1.

Abstract:

China has a long history of neighborhood development, as a unit for both spatial organization and social management, and has officially initiated community building since the 1990s after the concept of community was introduced to the country to deal with the challenges of social management and public service supplying brought about by the transition from planned economy to market economy under the circumstance of reforms. Focusing on urban China, this lecture starts with a terminological differentiation between neighborhood and community in Chinese language and the outline structuring of China’s grassroot organizations. It makes a review on China’s historic evolutions of neighborhood development before the reforms and its contemporary transitions to community governance after the reforms. It then analyses the policies influencing both physically and socially China’s community building, in particular urban planning and design as both policy and technical tool for community governance, and demonstrates some experimental cases of community building in Beijing. It finally concludes with the significances and challenges of community building in China’s high-quality development.

Bio:

LIU Jian received her Bachelor degree in Architecture and Master and Doctor degrees in Urban Planning & Design from Tsinghua University. She is a full professor of Urban Planning & Design at Tsinghua University School of Architecture, and a Registered City Planner in China. She is the Managing Chief-Editor of China City Planning Review, editorial board member of the Journal of Planning History, Urban Planning International, and Urban Design, Scientific Committee Member of International Forum of Urbanism, Vice Director of International Urban Planning Branch of the Urban Planning Society of China, Vice Director of Female Urban Planners Committee of China Association of City Planning. She is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Graduate School of Design Harvard University, visiting scholar at l’Oservatoir d’Architecture de la Chine Contemporaine of France and at UBC Center for Human Settlements. Her research interests include urban and regional development, town and village planning, urban regeneration and redevelopment, planning institution and management, and international comparative studies. She publishes both domestically and overseas, and chairs or co-chairs national and international funding research projects, as well as practical projects of urban and rural planning in a number of Chinese cities, with both national or ministerial prizes.