Negotiating Planning and Placemaking: The Roles of State and Communities in Spatial Transformation

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

In East Asia, state institutions continue to play a key role in urban development and redevelopment. However, the state's spatial projects have proved subject to a variety of contestations, from urban dwellers' temporary placemaking practices to peri-urban villagers' questioning of state policy on urban-rural integration. This interdisciplinary panel examines how people with different identities and interests engage in these complex negotiations of placemaking often against and also alongside the state institutions. Hou discusses temporary urbanism as insurgent planning, arguing that temporary interventions are part of the everyday norm in many East Asian cities where citizens face the scarcity of real estate and that such practices are increasingly recognized as a desirable tool for revitalizing underutilized sites. Sang likewise discusses the role of transient interventions in the politics of postindustrial redevelopment, through a visual analysis of graffiti at one derelict location in Taipei, finding that industrial ruins are not empty, peripheral sties but rather potent spaces that invite citizen commentary and appropriation. Taking the tourist city Hualien as primary focus, Chen contends that a new cultural strategy emphasizing local identities and community participation has helped create new urban places in Taiwanese cities, due to the incorporation of neoliberal principles that emphasize competitiveness and decentralization into urban policies. Analyzing Guangzhou and nearby villages, Shih argues that although the state’s urbanization policies may have imposed structural constraints on the process whereby villages are brought into the fold of urbanization, villagers nonetheless question the state’s territorial power. Finally, Lu and Kang will respond to the papers.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• TZE-LAN SANG, Michigan State University

Chair

• Mi Shih, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Individual Presentations

• Temporary Urbanism as Insurgent Planning: Structure & Snapshots of Everyday Urban Flux in East Asia - Jeffrey Hou, University of Washington

• Identity Politics, Community Participation and the making of New Places: Examples from Hualien City, Taiwan - Yi-Ling Chen, University of Wyoming

• China’s Urbanism at the Urban-Rural Boundary - Mi Shih, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Discussant

• Min Jay Kang, National Taiwan University