This article contributes to the development of a reading grid for the globalisation of urban models and their hybrid forms through an analysis of the urban production and social construction of a district in the suburbs of an emerging Chinese metropolis based on a casestudy of Thames Town, located in the new city of Songjiang, to the southwest of Shanghai. First, this contribution gives an account of the circulation of internationalised urban planning models and practices and the local development of public-private growth coalitions, that is to say, the establishment of new configurations of players promoting "urban marketing" both at the level of the Shanghai Municipality and that of the District of Songjiang. Secondly, this urban creation with its borrowed architectural forms raises questions with regard to both its morphology and its social reception/construction. The "Town on the Thames" presents a meticulous English-style layout that crystallises the tensions encountered in Chinese urban peripheries: gated communities, the staging of Western architectural styles and their appropriation by the inhabitants, the identity enhancement they represent, and over and above this, relationship of the self to others and of others to the self. What do these districts with their Western-style architecture teach us about the way Shanghai, a metropolis that wishes to transmit its own model of Chinese urban planning, thinks, produces, and appropriates the Chinese city?
Quelle histoire pour les quartiers d'architecture étrangère en Chine ? Entrec... Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère, 15 | 2022 Quelle histoire pour les quartiers d'architecture étrangère en Chine ? Entrec...
Chinese middle and upper classes are moving into new neighbourhoods in
which the architecture, names, and atmosphere are inspired by Western
patterns, a new fashion that is intended to convey an exotic way of life
but which has received much criticism from commentators, both Chinese
and Western. This paper makes a detailed study of families’ living habits
in Thames Town, Songjiang to show that residents are not experiencing
an acculturation process, neither are they trying to imitate Western ways
of life, they are in fact generating new logics in managing their homes
and families, which enables us to better understand their aspirations. By
using Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia, the paper also establishes a
genealogy of Western postmodern contemporary thought on the concept
of utopia.
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