Maturing Megacities: The Pearl River Delta in Progressive Transformation

This edited volume covers the multiple changes concerning urban governance in the course of the progressive transformation of the Pearl River Delta mega-urban region in China. Looking at the megacities Guangzhou and Shenzhen, it analyzes the maturing of socio-economic, political and spatial structures after the first waves of economic globalization, political transformation, and their rapid expansion and urbanization. The initial claim and starting point of the book is the existence of a profound multidimensional shift in the coastal mega-urban region with a major tendency towards urban upgrading, economic restructuring and a clearly observable consolidation of political institutions. For the first time since the beginning of the reform and opening up after 1978, this has led to a stronger bias toward urban regeneration, an adaptive re-use of the building stock and an establishment of post-industrial knowledge-based creative industries. The book investigates these changes as a set of mutually dependent developments that have to be understood and analyzed in connection with one another. Thus, the backgrounds and underlying forces that shape physical restructuring in the developed urban cores of the mega-urban region and the ways in which the relevant actors and institutions are trying to both cope with and to influence each other are introduced here.

Uwe Altrock has degrees in Mathematics as well as Urban & Regional Planning. He is now Professor for Urban Regeneration and Planning at the University of Kassel, Germany.
Sonia Schoon has studied Chinese language and culture at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. She obtained an MA in Chinese Studies, European Anthropology and Public Law at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel, and graduated with a Dr.Phil. in Chinese Studies at the same institution.