Speaker: Leif Johnson, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University While scholars have long tracked China’s rapid infrastructural development, the everyday labor of migrant workers in infrastructural construction has often been rendered as a natural and uncomplicated aspect of rural-urban migration. In response, I trace the development of a long-term telecommunications infrastructure reconstruction project in Shanghai from the perspective

Speaker: Li Zhigang, Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, School of Urban Design, Wuhan University, China ***This talk will be in Mandarin*** China faces significant challenges in neighborhood governance, particularly in old and dilapidated neighborhoods (老旧社区). In this context, some new and experimental approaches to neighborhood governance have emerged. This talk focuses on three representative

Speaker: Andrew Grant, University of Tampa Examining Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, this talk argues that urban redevelopment and greenfield expansion have devalued the older urban areas in which Tibetans live.  Through over twenty months of fieldwork between 2012 and 2017, I found that un-redeveloped urban places were becoming increasingly associated with crime, grime, and

Speaker: Leonardo Ramondetti, Post-doctoral Researcher, Politecnico di Torino Since the early 2000s, China has seen unprecedented urban growth, spreading to every corner of the country. Driven by the urban entrepreneurialism of major municipalities until the mid-2000s, the reins have since passed to the central and regional administrations which plan development in a more comprehensive and

Speaker: Yang Yuzhen, Professor of Architecture and Urban Development, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing University ***This talk will be in Mandarin.*** Modern public spaces in Chinese cities have undergone significant changes over the past century. The transformation of Chongqing, an inland city, is an essential part of China's modernization process from east to

Speaker: Rosealea Yao , Senior Analyst, Gavekal Dragonomics China’s property-market slump worsened in 2023. The burst of pent-up demand that followed the reopening from Covid containment evaporated by April, and sales deteriorated until tentatively stabilizing in August. Rosealea assesses the outlook for the property sector and risks for developers going forward, as well as the policy response and

Speaker: Fang Xu , Continuing Lecturer, Interdisciplinary Studies Program, University of California Berkeley The transformation of Shanghai into a global city has driven millions of Shanghainese away from the urban core; and turned both the historic urban Shanghai and its newly urbanized periphery into a manifestation of the “China Dream”. Shanghai has also experienced the

Speaker: Jesse Rodenbiker, Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University; Assistant Teaching Professor of Geography, Rutgers University. Rodenbiker's new book Ecological States critically examines ecological policies in the People's Republic of China to show how campaigns of scientifically based environmental protection transform nature and society. While many point to China's ecological civilization programs as a new paradigm

Speaker: Shaun SK Teo, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore Is Chinese urbanization unique? What can we learn from Chinese urbanization? How might cases in urban China be integrated into global discussions on urban governance and transformation? This talk addresses these burning questions. Chinese urbanization presents rich cases for an engaged pluralism

Speaker:  Zhang Qinghua, Peking University This talk delves into the impact of within-city administrative border adjustments on individual firm productivity and local economic development. Employing a unique quasi-natural experiment conducted in China since the 1990s, the empirical analysis reveals that district border adjustments have a significant positive effect on the TFP of manufacturing firms in the

Speaker:  Margaret Hillenbrand, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture; Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford University On the evening of November 18th, 2017, a blaze broke out in a two-story building in Xinjian urban village, just outside Beijing’s sixth ring road. At least 19 people, including 8 children, died in the flames. Using fire safety