Department of Geography's Colloquium Series
Lecture: Dancing at Dusk: Public Space in Chinese Cities
Speaker: Piper Gaubatz, Professor, Dept. of GeoSciences, University of Massachusetts
Abstract
Chinese cities are being transformed as a wide range of processes of urbanization, from migration to sprawl, have fundamentally re-arranged patterns of land use, social areas, and the built landscapes of cities throughout China. At the same time, there have been substantive changes in the lives of China’s urban dwellers and the nature of the “public” in China which are manifested in the ways people use, produce and re-produce public space. Transformations of public space are particularly relevant in China’s dense urban core areas, which are undergoing massive redevelopment as urban economies and societies mature. Much of this redevelopment is guided by three overarching discourses which might be characterized as developmental, environmental, and social. This talk analyzes new and evolving types of public space in Chinese cities as the loci for ongoing contestation and connection between these three discourses and the production of formal and informal public space in differing Chinese regional contexts.
Sponsor: Department of Geography's Colloquium Series
