WUHAN, CHINA Collective Forms in China

Collective Forms in China is a study of how social projects, spaces, and realities shape three contexts critical to understanding urban design and planning in China: the history of collective forms and spaces in relationship to current community building agendas, socio-spatial changes in urban and rural development, and modes of governmentality.
The study investigates the instrumentalisation of spatial design by government to shape collective forms, collective spaces, and collective subjectivities, or, in today’s context, the building of communities. Examining both historical and contemporary case studies — from the people’s commune and work unit to new urban communities — a socio-political and economic need for urban constituencies brought together by concrete, shared social activities, interests, and benefits emerge, in order to provide new social networks of support and care. Driven by fundamental demographic changes rooted in the Maoist era, the changing social groups and their needs and values continue to defy traditional beliefs in the nuclear family, neighbourhood unit, and liberal models of governance that underpin much of global urban planning. Western-centric urban theories and practices based on notions of the public, public space, or place-making are in a context of different socio-spatial histories and challenges largely unproductive, whether conceptually or practically.