China: A Historical Geography of the Urban

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction

   • Yannan Ding

   Pages 1-14

3. Erratum to: Chapter 4: Changchun Across 1949: Rebuilding a Colonial Capital City Under Socialism in the Early 1950s

   • Yishi Liu

   Pages E1-E1

4. Nation and City

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15

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   2. Shanghai Parks in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: Architectural and Cultural Exchanges Between the East and the West

      • Hsiu-Ling Kuo

      Pages 17-39

   3. A City of Workers, a City for Workers? Remaking Beijing Urban Space in the Early PRC

      • Fabio Lanza

      Pages 41-65

   4. Changchun Across 1949: Rebuilding a Colonial Capital City Under Socialism in the Early 1950s

      • Yishi Liu

      Pages 67-88

5. Mediating History and Modernity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 89-89

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   2. Tunxi: Urban Sectoral Agglomeration in a Regional Centre of Tea Trade

      • Yi Zou, Xi Lin

      Pages 91-114

   3. What’s in a Name: The “New Village” in Shanghai, 1930–1980

      • Duan Zheng, Xiaohong Zhang

      Pages 115-135

   4. A Comparison of Politics of Street Names in Taipei and Shanghai

      • Wenchuan Huang

      Pages 137-161

6. Contemporary City Building

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 163-163

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   2. Disneyfication or Self-Referentiality: Recent Conservation Efforts and Modern Planning History in Datong

      • Shulan Fu, Jean Hillier

      Pages 165-191

   3. The Politics of Aesthetics in Tianjin Between Past and Present

      • Maurizio Marinelli

      Pages 193-224

   4. Living in the “Past”: The Effects of a Growing Preservation Discourse in Contemporary Urban China

      • Philipp Demgenski

      Pages 225-249

7. Back Matter

   Pages 251-255

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This book offers a unique contribution to the burgeoning field of Chinese historical geography. Urban transformation in China constitutes both a domestic revolution and a world-historical event. Through the exploration of nine urban sites of momentous change, over an extended period of time, this book connects the past with the present, and provides much-needed literature on city growth and how they became complex laboratories of prosperity.


The first part of this book puts Chinese urban changes into historical perspective, and probes the relationship between nation and city, focusing on Shanghai, Beijing and Changchun. Part two deals with the relationship between history and modernity, concentrating on Tunxi, a traditional trade center of tea, New Villages in Shanghai and street names in Taipei and Shanghai. Part three showcases the complexities of urban regeneration vis-à-vis heritage preservation in cities such as Datong, Tianjin and Qingdao. 

This book offers an innovative interdisciplinary and international perspective, which will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese urban studies, as well Chinese politics and society.

• Historical Geography
• Asian Studies
• Urban China
• Urban History
• New urbanism
• urban historical geography
• hybrid architecture
• Eastern China Industrial Architectural Design Institute (ECIA)
• Shanghai Street names history
• Beijing Urban Space
• Urban Sectoral Agglomeration
• The ‘New Village’ in Shanghai
• Disneyfication
• Modern Planning
• The Politics of Aesthetics
• Preservation Discourse in Contemporary China

“This collection of fascinating essays on Chinese urban historical geography provides profound reflection on the meaning of the urban and the evolution of urbanism in China. The book fills the gap between urban studies and historical geography and reveals how urban transformations and contemporary city building are embedded in national development, politics and modernity, preservation and aesthetics in different historical periods.” (Fulong Wu, Bartlett Professor of Planning, University College London, UK)

“This fascinating collection of urban studies ranges across China’s urban geography over the past hundred years, exploring urbanism as it is manifested in a variety of ways. Some chapters take readers into intimate spaces of home and neighborhood; others explain the shape of the urban system over time; still others situate Chinese debates about urban planning and heritage within a global economy and transnational exchange of ideas. As a whole, the volume serves as an excellent introduction to the state of the field of urban Chinese historical geography and opens up new avenues for approaching Chinese and comparative urbanism.” (Kristin Stapleton, Professor of History, University at Buffalo, State University of New York)

• Fudan University, Shanghai, China

  Yannan Ding, Xiaohong Zhang

• University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

  Maurizio Marinelli

Yannan Ding is a Swire - Cathay Pacific visiting academic at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, UK. 


Maurizio Marinelli is Associate Professor in East Asian History and Co-Director of the Asia Centre at the University of Sussex, UK. 


Xiaohong Zhang is a professor and the head of the Institute of Chinese Historical Geography at Fudan University, China. 

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