Critical scholarly attention to vertical urbanism has expanded greatly in recent years but has se... more Critical scholarly attention to vertical urbanism has expanded greatly in recent years but has seldom engaged with the variety of high-rise urban forms developed in mainland Chinese cities following the demise of socialist urban political economy. This paper introduces the case study of Chongqing as a critical example of the cultural significance of vertical urbanism in the postsocialist Chinese city, examining how supposedly 'weird' spaces of vertical density are materially and discursively constructed. Chongqing has undergone rapid urban expansion since the 1990s within a narrow and mountainous terrain, resulting in a number of extraordinary instances of extreme vertical density in the city. These sites have subsequently become 'spectacles' in themselves, widely photographed and discussed on social media. This paper surveys online discourse and imaging of these sites to categorise them as examples of connection, compression and luxification. Verticality is used to construct imaginaries of urban futures, and designations of 'weird' verticality differ between outsiders and locals. Such imaginaries may also obscure the history of urban restructuring which gave rise to these spaces in the first instance, and the conflicts between public and private space which emerge from this restructuring. The example of Chongqing provides an important demonstration of verticality as an everyday, historically grounded and contested environment within the city, rather than a recent imposition on a residual horizontal way of life. This paper concludes with a call for greater ethnographic attention to the weird qualities of such vertical spaces in the production of new urban theory.
Debates over the ontology of contemporary urbanization have questioned the notion of a meaningful... more Debates over the ontology of contemporary urbanization have questioned the notion of a meaningful ‘outside’ to the urban and have called for greater attention to the socially contested construction of urban subjects and space. Ethnographic study of informal peri-urban agriculture in the rapidly urbanizing city of Chongqing in Southwest China allows for a critical examination of the everyday ecologies and economies of planetary urbanization. The state-led expansion of Chongqing since the early 2000s has created a peri-urban zone consisting of large areas of undeveloped land awaiting construction, which is utilized informally by displaced ‘urbanized’ peasants and migrant workers. The use of this ‘empty’ urban land for agriculture reveals informal practices and displaced subjects which are variously positioned as ‘outside’ or ‘within’ urban systems and values. The undeveloped land remains ecologically entangled with urban processes and is the site of a contested commoning of space which is regarded as external to urban market values. Theorizing from the kongdi (empty land) launches a novel understanding of under-studied urbanizing spaces which are positioned ambiguously outside urban governance, are under threat of rapid enclosure within urban regimes of accumulation, and spatialize the negotiation of the boundaries and meaning of the urban itself.
Critical scholarly attention to vertical urbanism has expanded greatly in recent years but has se... more Critical scholarly attention to vertical urbanism has expanded greatly in recent years but has seldom engaged with the variety of high-rise urban forms developed in mainland Chinese cities following the demise of socialist urban political economy. This paper introduces the case study of Chongqing as a critical example of the cultural significance of vertical urbanism in the postsocialist Chinese city, examining how supposedly 'weird' spaces of vertical density are materially and discursively constructed. Chongqing has undergone rapid urban expansion since the 1990s within a narrow and mountainous terrain, resulting in a number of extraordinary instances of extreme vertical density in the city. These sites have subsequently become 'spectacles' in themselves, widely photographed and discussed on social media. This paper surveys online discourse and imaging of these sites to categorise them as examples of connection, compression and luxification. Verticality is used to construct imaginaries of urban futures, and designations of 'weird' verticality differ between outsiders and locals. Such imaginaries may also obscure the history of urban restructuring which gave rise to these spaces in the first instance, and the conflicts between public and private space which emerge from this restructuring. The example of Chongqing provides an important demonstration of verticality as an everyday, historically grounded and contested environment within the city, rather than a recent imposition on a residual horizontal way of life. This paper concludes with a call for greater ethnographic attention to the weird qualities of such vertical spaces in the production of new urban theory.
Debates over the ontology of contemporary urbanization have questioned the notion of a meaningful... more Debates over the ontology of contemporary urbanization have questioned the notion of a meaningful ‘outside’ to the urban and have called for greater attention to the socially contested construction of urban subjects and space. Ethnographic study of informal peri-urban agriculture in the rapidly urbanizing city of Chongqing in Southwest China allows for a critical examination of the everyday ecologies and economies of planetary urbanization. The state-led expansion of Chongqing since the early 2000s has created a peri-urban zone consisting of large areas of undeveloped land awaiting construction, which is utilized informally by displaced ‘urbanized’ peasants and migrant workers. The use of this ‘empty’ urban land for agriculture reveals informal practices and displaced subjects which are variously positioned as ‘outside’ or ‘within’ urban systems and values. The undeveloped land remains ecologically entangled with urban processes and is the site of a contested commoning of space which is regarded as external to urban market values. Theorizing from the kongdi (empty land) launches a novel understanding of under-studied urbanizing spaces which are positioned ambiguously outside urban governance, are under threat of rapid enclosure within urban regimes of accumulation, and spatialize the negotiation of the boundaries and meaning of the urban itself.
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