Creating Chinese Urbanism

‘Creating Chinese Urbanism is a genuinely compelling book. On the one hand, it embarks on a path of retheorising Chinese urbanisation as a process during which social orders and modes of associations are fundamentally altered, an inquiry that has hitherto been under-scrutinised in urban China studies. On the other hand, the empirical materials presented in the book are extremely rich, drawing upon the author’s three decades of research’
Urban Studies

‘For its careful documentation of urban transformation this book has made a quite monumental contribution to urban studies and should find its place on he shelves of urban scholars no matter their regional emphasis.’
Eurasian Geography and Economics

‘A significant and ground-breaking contribution on an important topic, this book draws on an impressive reservoir of both English- and Chinese-language studies’
The China Quarterly

‘This book is arguably one of the most comprehensive and illuminating works on Chinese urbanism. With its accessible writing style, vividly documented case studies and cutting-edge analysis, anyone who wants to learn more about the historical geography of urban China would benefit greatly from reading it.’
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

‘Concisely and clearly written. A great read for scholars and urban planners who are interested in the impacts of marketization on Chinese society and the consequential changes at the neighborhood-level. It is an approachable read for students and scholars who want to conduct theoretical research in the field of urban studies. Overall, this is an enticing and enlightening book that tells a story of neighborhood social changes in China.’

Journal of Urban Affairs

‘Taking the vantage point of concrete residential neighborhoods, Creating Chinese Urbanism offers a cutting-edge analysis of how China is becoming urban and grounds the changing state governance in the process of urbanization. Its original and material interpretation of the changing role of the state in China makes it suitable reading for researchers and students in the fields of urban studies, geography, planning and the built environment.’
China City Planning Review

‘The intention and scope of Creating Chinese Urbanism is ambitious, even for Wu, one of the most prolific scholars of urban China. It is not short of seeking an endogenous theory of Chinese urbanism, derived from lived social worlds.’
Urban Geography

‘The rapid redevelopment of Chinese cities, along with the vast expansion of geographic and social mobility, have almost completely erased the collectivist urban neighborhoods typical of the Mao era. In this deeply researched book, Fulong Wu vividly documents the varieties of newly emergent urban communities and provides a conceptual framework for understanding a new and distinctive Chinese urbanism.’
Andrew G. Walder, author of China Under Mao

‘Fulong Wu grapples with the complexities and contradictions of social change in urban China — state-centered but creating new opportunities for individualism, disrupting traditional village and neighborhood social relations but generating new forms of association. He shows the relevance but also the limited reach of general models like market transition, postcolonialism, and neoliberalism. Like an ethnographer, his approach is to understand social relations at the ground level, working upwards from that vantage point to understand the ongoing Chinese urban revolution on its own terms’
John R. Logan, Professor of Sociology, Brown University

‘This book provides a novel, insightful and inspirational interpretation of the emerging state-society-space relationship in China where an urban revolution is taking place at a scale and speed unparalleled in the world. Theoretically informed and empirically grounded, the book takes us to embark upon a fascinating journey travelling from Chinese workplace (danwei) to neighborhoods, urban communities, and urban villages so as to unveil a phenomenal and restless landscape of greater urbanism and state-centred governance. A path-breaking contribution to the burgeoning literature on global urbanism in general and China’s new urban social geography in particular.’
George C.S. Lin, Chair Professor of Geography, University of Hong Kong

‘In this masterful study of residential neighborhoods across regions, generations and classes in China today, Wu successfully convinces us that China’s contemporary sociopolitical transformation is ultimately an urban transformation. This book is one of the most illuminating reads in the last decade on Chinese urbanism.’
You-tien Hsing, Professor of Geography and Director of Global Studies, UC Berkeley

‘As observers continue to grapple with the significance of China’s urban revolution, this book offers an innovative conceptual framework for thinking about the meanings of this revolution from the perspective of urban neighborhoods with different housing forms. Richly illustrated, and drawing upon decades of research and observations from one of the most prominent and prolific scholars of the contemporary Chinese city, Creating Chinese Urbanism locates the essence of China’s urban revolution in the passing of longstanding modes of social relations and their replacement with new institutions of governance in which the state led-urbanization remakes the nature of state power itself.’
Mark W. Frazier, New School for Social Research

‘In this pathbreaking study of the diversity and heterogeneity of neighborhood life in urban China, Wu Fulong asks readers to reflect on the seemingly simple question what distinguishes the rural from the urban. But rather than foregrounding paired comparisons of the material conditions and built environments, Wu focuses on comparing social relationships within four types of urban residential areas: alleyway or courtyard neighborhoods built before 1949, socialist era workplace apartment blocks, peri-urban villages now physically incorporated within cities, and suburban gated communities. And rather than foregrounding contemporary debates about agglomeration and capital accumulation, Wu asks readers to concentrate on the degree to which grassroots sociality and social relationships have departed from Fei Xiaotong’s concept of differential modes of association (差序格局chaxugeju) developed during fieldwork in rural China during the 1930s. Thus, for Wu the “fading of rurality is urbanization” (p.231) and the absence of a placed based moral order marks entry to city life. A remarkable, original and bold interpretation of China’s recent warp speed urbanization.’
Deborah Davis, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Yale University, USA