Village in the City: Asian Variations of Urbanisms of Inclusion

The "Village in the City" is surely as a specific as a spectacular urban form that is generated by the particular urbanization process that China is undergoing during the last two decades. The massive scale and the unprecedented speed of such urbanization implies an incredible multiplicity of "villages in the city". As such, there are as many counter figures as there are "regular" and normalized "urban" environments that engulf these villages, and thereby catalyze their peculiar, complementary forms of development. Village in the City opens a window on recent research on the dynamic transformation processes of this specific contemporary Chinese phenomenon that is simultaneously fascinating and frightening. Design research finally demonstrates alternative development modes for this particular urban form from which rampant energy overflows and that anyway and anyhow has to be appreciated for the vivacity/liveliness with which it induces into the contemporary Chinese city.

Kelly Shannon is professor at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Bruno De Meulder is professor of urbanism at the University of Leiden. Yanliu Lin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Human Geography and Planning at Utrecht University.