TU Delft Seminar of the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA)

An UKNA seminar organised by the Department of Architecture at Delft Technical University, Delft, the Netherlands.

Speakers:

Dr.Ir. Gregory Bracken and Ir. Xiolan Lin
Urban Knowledge Network Asia (2012-2016): An Evaluation

Dr. Ir. Maurice Harteveld
Chinese Communal Space Rediscovered in the Age beyond Modernism: Beijing

Harry den Hartog
New Perspectives on Socio-economic and Environmental Challenges along Shanghai’s Urban Edges

Coffee break

Tom Daamen
Shanghai Huangpu Riverside: Next Generation Waterfronts?

Prof. Lichun Xiao
The Aging Problem and Planning on Facilities for the Elderly in Huangpu District, Shanghai

Prof. Suyun Hu
Elderly Services in an Ageing City: A Shanghai Case Study

Abstracts

Urban Knowledge Network Asia (2012-2016): An Evaluation

Dr.Ir. Gregory Bracken and Ir. Xiaolan Lin

The Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) is a European Union funded research project. Part of Marie Curie Actions, this International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES) was awarded in 2011 and began its four-year programme in April 2012. It consists of more than 100 researchers from institutes in Europe, the United States, India, and China, all of whom are researching the Asian urban environment. More information can be found at the UKNA website: www.ukna.asia

Evaluation overview

Chinese Communal Space rediscovered in the Age beyond Modernism: Beijing

Dr.Ir. Maurice Harteveld

The lecture illuminates traditional Chinese communal spaces like hutong, part of extensive alley areas in Beijing, and siheyuan or courtyard houses. These spaces are of great interest for the understanding of the city’s culture, especially in times of rapid socio-spatial change. Yet, knowledge on these spaces seems overshadowed by a focus on growth: the hutong areas have especially declined due to this. Since the period of the fall of the feudal society, the quality of living in these spaces reduced and continued to diminish in the decades following the establishment of the People’s Republic. Coevolving modernisation established the concept of an open city. Planners and designers introduced new transportation systems, including wide roads and public transport, and they created urban spaces symbolising the People’s country. They also reconstructed residential environments. Indirectly, and in their own way, they followed the Corbusian model which resulting in a concentration on building design independent of environment. This disconnect has resulted in the creation of lost spaces alongside large-scale infrastructure, the relocation of upscale community places, the fragmentation of the city, and, as already mentioned, the despair of the daily-life environment in the hutong areas. Supported by an understanding of communal space, the above-mentioned problems will be the next ones to tackle.

New Perspectives on Socio-economic and Environmental Challenges along Shanghai’s Urban Edges

Harry den Hartog

In the last two decades hundreds of thousands of rural migrants have moved into Shanghai. Simultaneously, large amounts of rural land have been incorporated into its urban borders. Chongming Island was recently designated China’s National ‘Green Eco-Island’ and is seen as a pilot for sustainable development. Located in the middle of the Yangtze River Estuary, it was long isolated and still lags behind Shanghai. It has rich ecological value and agricultural resources but urban-development pressures have become enormous, especially since the completion of a new tunnel-bridge in 2011. The national government wants the island to be a national example of sustainable development but the local government seems keen on real-estate development. New infrastructure and urban development will undoubtedly bring new opportunities and prosperity to Chongming’s million-plus inhabitants but they will also pose a threat to traditional lifestyles. This paper presents observations and analyses of the discrepancies and conflicting interests between top-down planning ambitions and local daily reality on the rural fringes of Shanghai and asks how can local, regional, and national interests be balanced?

Shanghai Huangpu Riverside: Next Generation Waterfronts?

Dr. Tom A. Daamen

In many of the world’s largest seaport cities the waterfront transformation schemes initiated before the turn of the century remain unfinished. While these projects move forward, a new trend in developing waterfronts seems to have emerged. Old port structures and port-industrial terrains have become search-areas for new and sometimes highly modern types of business and manufacturing. Creative industries take up residence in old warehouses and shipyards, and research-and-development facilities choose to locate themselves in the cheaper, rougher, and often easier-to-adapt, seaport structures. Still relatively close to the inner city, these waterfronts are exciting new frontiers of ‘hybrid urbanism’ in which new economies and lifestyles mix with conventional port business, industries, and trade. By extension, it has recently been argued that, since the 1960s, there has been little or no waterfront redevelopment research in mainland China even though many Chinese cities have seen considerable waterfront change. It is therefore both interesting and relevant to mirror the – mostly Western – academic insights on this topic against the features of waterfront development in contemporary China, most notably Shanghai. What do ‘next generation waterfronts’ have to offer? And can they also be found in Shanghai?

The Aging Problem and the Planning of Facilities for the Elderly in the Huangpu District, Shanghai

Prof. Lichun Xiao

Huangpu district, a large part of central Shanghai, is characterized by large population density and a high degree of aging; meanwhile, the district confronts a high built-up ratio and nervous – suggest another word? land use. Another marked phenomenon in the district is the separation of registered and actual residences. In the current situation there is a mismatch between facilities for the elderly and the aging population (including institutional ones as well as care in community) and the service demand of the aged, especially in quantity, structure, and distribution, which is not according to the Shanghai government’s requirements. According to the prediction of the Shanghai Special Layout Planning on Service for the Elderly (2013), the elderly population in the Huangpu District will peak in 2025, with a corresponding pressure on aging as well. How to positively respond to this trend? Build a system of facilities for the elderly with Shanghainese features? or improve the basic urban capacity for providing services for the elderly? Can these meet multilevel and diversified service demand for the elderly? These are some of the questions planners need to consider. This paper will propose specific planning advice and implementation paths for these questions in the short, mid- and long term.

Elderly Services in an Ageing City: Shanghai Case Study

Assc. Prof. Suyun HU

China’s One Child Policy has completely changed the pattern of elderly services in the country; the elderly can no longer rely on family care, nor can they expect it in the future. This paper will give a brief introduction to Shanghai’s elderly care, including outlines of present and future plans. Shanghai will be establishing five systems for elderly service by 2020: namely, 1) supply, 2) security policy, 3) demand evaluation, 4) monitoring, and 5) regulation.

 

Biographical Notes

Gregory Bracken is an Assistant Professor in Architecture Theory, TU Delft and founded, along with Dr. Manon Osseweijer, the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) www.ukna.asia in 2012. Dr.Ir. Bracken is also one of the founding editors of Footprint journal www.footprintjournal.org and his research is primarily concerned with the urban environment of East and Southeast Asia. Recent publications include The Shanghai Alleyway House: A Vanishing Urban Vernacular (Routledge, 2013 – and translated into Chinese by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in 2015), Asian Cities: Colonial to Global (editor) (University of Amsterdam Press, 2015), and Aspects of Urbanization in China: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou (editor) (University of Amsterdam Press, 2012). www.gregorybracken.com

Tom A. Daamen is Assistant Professor in Urban Development Management (UDM) at Delft University of Technology. In his research work Tom aims to understand strategies for the development of waterfront zones in the context of evolving seaports in urbanizing delta regions. With an interdisciplinary research approach he provides insight in the dynamics behind port-urban waterfront change and produces principles for managing such change through collaborative efforts. To this end, Tom is deeply involved in several academic research, education, and valorization projects on the fringe of spatial planning, urban development, and economic geography. In TU Delft, Tom lectures in several BSc, MSc, and post-experience master courses. He supervises graduate as well as PhD research projects, and is a guest lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Amsterdam, Antwerp University, TIAS Business School, Tongji University, Shanghai, and Columbia University, New York.

Maurice Harteveld is specialised in the theory of urban design and the architecture of the city, with a current focus on the issue of public space and interdisciplinary thinking. As such, the body of his work emphasises the multiplicity of public space from the point of view of understanding use, governance, and significance. His work explicates interrelated socio-spatial transformations and cross-cultural exchange. In this he focusses on epistemological approaches, philosophically departing from after the Age of Modernism. While so doing he is developing the field of urban design in TU Delft, and he extends his work to several places abroad, throughout Europe, North America, and China.

Harry den Hartog is an urban designer, critic, and founder of studio ‘Urban Language’. After working for more than ten years for a number of Dutch urban-planning and architecture firms he founded his own studio in 2004 in Rotterdam and gives advice on urban design issues. Since the late 1990s he has been a regular visitor to Asia, especially China. Since 2008 he has been based in Shanghai and is frequently asked to participate or organize debates and exhibitions by various organizations in Europe and Asia. He regularly writes essays and papers and has produced two books; one of which was Shanghai New Towns: Searching for Community and Identity in a Sprawling Metropolis (2010, 010 Publishers). Since 2012 he has been a faculty member at Tongji University, Shanghai where he lectures on urban design and housing. www.urbanlanguage.org

Suyun Hu has a Ph.D. in economics and is a Research Professor at the Institute of Urban and Demographic Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS). Her research interests include population aging and social security, health and health-system reform, and rural migrants and development. Prof. Hu has done dozens of research projects for China’s central government as well as for the Shanghai Municipal Government and is a member of various councils (including the China Health Insurance sub-association in the China Social Security Association; the Shanghai Social Security Association, and the Chinese Medical Association’s Shanghai Branch of Medical Ethics). Prof. Hu was a visiting scholar at Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania in 1999, Harvard University from 2001-02, and Yale University in 2007, and is currently on an UKNA fellowship in TU Delft.

Xiaolan Lin is TU Delft’s coordinator for the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA) and also works at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden for the wider programme. After receiving her B.Arch. from the Southeast University of China she got an M.Sc.Arch. (with a specialization in urbanism) from TU Delft in 2004. She then worked as an architect for several international architectural firms in the Netherlands, such as MVRDV and NACO, on residential, commercial, and airport projects worldwide.

Lichun Xiao is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Urban and Demographic Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) and is also a representative of the 14th Women’s Congress in Shanghai, as well as a member of the 10th Women’s Committee of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Her main research fields involve population economics and sociology, such as the issue of aging, women’s development, labour and employment, floating population, fertility, education, etc. Assc. Prof. Xiao has presided over many national, city, district, and academy-level research projects, including the National Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project ‘The Analysis and Forecast of the Employment Situations in Shanghai’ and the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project ‘Research on the Situation and Trend Changes of School-age Population and the Allocation of Education Resources in Shanghai’. She has also participated in many cooperation projects and published a number of papers in national publications. Assc. Prof. Xiao is currently on an UKNA fellowship in TU Delft.