The Sage Handbook of Urbanization in China
- Lisa Hoffman - University of Washington, Tacoma, USA
- Jennifer Hubbert - Lewis & Clark College, USA
- Zhilin Liu - Tsinghua University, China
SAGE Handbooks of Modern China
The Sage Handbook of Urbanization in China is a pioneering handbook that reframes our understanding of China's extraordinary urban transformation—a demographic shift of unprecedented scale and speed that has seen two-thirds of its population becoming urban dwellers. Moving beyond conventional narratives, editors Hoffman, Hubbert, and Liu develop an innovative conceptual approach that emphasizes distinctiveness without exceptionalism, global connections without universalism, and complex interrelationships beyond binary oppositions.
Through twenty-eight meticulously researched chapters of critical literature reviews, leading scholars explore China's cities and urbanism not simply through top-down state directives but also through intricate negotiations among diverse actors, interests, and histories. Deploying the concept of "accompaniment," the editors argue the chapters reveal how state socialism and market mechanisms, rural traditions and urban aspirations coexist in dynamic tension rather than stark opposition.
From historic preservation to smart city technologies, from migrant experiences to environmental initiatives, from land use and architecture to housing and labor, this volume demonstrates how urbanization in China is simultaneously localized and worlded—connected to global currents while producing distinctive outcomes. By focusing on human experiences alongside institutional arrangements, the contributors illuminate how diverse actors actively shape urban spaces through their everyday decisions, creative adaptations, and sometimes resistance.
The Sage Handbook of Urbanization in China is essential reading for urban studies scholars, development practitioners, policy makers, and China specialists, this volume provides both literature reviews by scholarly experts and conceptual and analytical tools applicable far beyond China's borders, contributing to global urban theory while respecting local specificity.
Part One: Setting the Stage
Part Two: Land Matters
Part Three: Configuring Belonging
Part Four: The Creative and the Disruptive
Part Five: Negotiating Identities
Part Six: Generating New Geographies
This Sage Handbook disrupts the binary frameworks—state vs. market, urban vs. rural—that have long defined China scholarship. By compelling scholars to analyze China’s urban development through a comparative lens and situate its cities within a global context, the volume makes a vital contribution not only to China studies but also to global urban studies across the humanities and social sciences.
China’s dramatically increased urbanisation since the late 1970s has not surprisingly led to the growth of studies of its urban environment and development as a major sub-field of China Studies. This Handbook is more than an introduction to the literature and research on the topic. It challenges past dichotemies between socialism and the market, the state and society, the rural and the urban, and between tradition and modernity. Instead, it depicts a complex, diverse and constantly changing view of the processes of urbanisation and city life. Focussing on a largely social analysis of the city in China and urbanisation it provides both information and analysis that no one interested in social change can afford to ignore.