Chapter 4 The Tower and The Tower: Excess and Vacancy in China’s Ghost Cities

Ulfstjerne, Michael Alexander

doi:10.1515/9781785335815-006

Cited by 2 publications

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“…In addition to the speed of decay, emptiness and vacancy became structural elements in the rubble. Originally conceived and designed for mass tourism, the now‐deserted site, as shown in Figure 2, projects a spectacle of excess and “vacancy” (Ulfstjerne 2017). The renaturation process gives new meanings of the “green” vocabulary of the Shanghai World Expo.…”

Section: Alternative Spectacles: Ruination and The Emergence Of Criti...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Of Other Dreamlands: Vernacular Adaptation, Urban Exploration, and Alternative Spectacles in China's Abandoned Themed Spaces

Audin

2023

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This article studies social meanings and practices emerging from two abandoned themed spaces in China: disused theme parks and mega‐event sites. Theme parks first appeared in the late 1980s–early 1990s, in the emerging leisure economy and society. In the 1990s–early 2000s, mega‐event urbanism became a driver of China's urban development and a strategy of national and international legitimacy. Since their abandonment and disuse by official owners, themed spaces have become ruinscapes where workers and visitors produce agency through rubble and ruination. These spaces constitute sites of vernacular occupation through farming, urban exploration, or wedding photography. Abandoned mega‐event sites create alternative spectacles of dereliction forming a critique of the original spectacle. Based on urban exploration as an ethnographic method and on fieldwork in Chinese abandoned themed spaces between 2015 and 2019, this article analyses the spatial and social dimensions of abandoned themed spaces in their afterlives as ruins and rubble.

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Section: Alternative Spectacles: Ruination and The Emergence Of Criti...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Of Other Dreamlands: Vernacular Adaptation, Urban Exploration, and Alternative Spectacles in China's Abandoned Themed Spaces

Audin

2023

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“…When the coal industry slowed down and the real‐estate bubble burst, urban development in Ordos was strongly impacted. Ordos became the archetype of China's ‘ghost cities’, characterized by ‘excess’ and ‘vacancy’ (Ulfstjerne, 2017), and producing controversy (Woodworth and Wallace, 2017) over an urban ‘pathology’ (Sorace and Hurst, 2016). While Ordos constitutes an ideal‐type of mining‐led urbanization, the case of Datong is more complex, with a more diversified profile and heterogeneous layers of development.…”

Section: Extracting the Cultural City: Datong's Construction Boom … A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

BETWEEN CHAI AND QIAN: How Unfinishedness and Ruination Have Reshaped Urbanity in China's ‘Coal Capital’ after the Construction Boom

Audin¹

2022

Int J Urban Regional Res

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Chapter 4 The Tower and The Tower: Excess and Vacancy in China’s Ghost Cities

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Of Other Dreamlands: Vernacular Adaptation, Urban Exploration, and Alternative Spectacles in China's Abandoned Themed Spaces

Of Other Dreamlands: Vernacular Adaptation, Urban Exploration, and Alternative Spectacles in China's Abandoned Themed Spaces

BETWEEN CHAI AND QIAN: How Unfinishedness and Ruination Have Reshaped Urbanity in China's ‘Coal Capital’ after the Construction Boom

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