Speakers: Sarah Chang, Assistant Professor of History, Miami University

This presentation examines the relationship between urban renewal projects and SOE closures from the late 1990s to today. It uses published government and factory documents, oral history, and ethnography to explore how Chengdu’s urbanizing projects after the 2000s redefined the purpose of urban space, ejected industrial communities from the urban core, and imagined new zones of development in response to the Belt and Road Initiative. The talk analyzes how the Party engaged in adaptive strategies of governance and borrowed from Mao-era political sentiments to induce industrial communities’ compliance with changing urban and industrial policies. Connecting Mao-era urban and industrial drives with the present, the presentation observes how Chengdu is transforming a socialist-era industrial district into a free trade zone and international hub for transportation and logistics, part of China’s New Silk Road.

This event series is sponsored by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, and the Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Presented via Zoom Meeting.
Meeting link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93343229272