Flyovers, social constructs and uncertainty
(Un)covering the blind spots of urbanisation in Chongqing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10859444 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Qiwei Peng (0000-0002-4064-4092, The University of Manchester, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-20 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Urban Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-0980 • E-ISSN: 1360-063X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00420980251374925 |
| OpenAlex | W4415372316 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 36 |
This article conceptualises uncertainty as a generative mode of urban spatial formation that operates through ambiguity and unpredictability for both governing authorities and urban residents. Focussing on the case of riverside flyovers in Chongqing, it examines how urban transport infrastructure is a socially constructed site shaped by conflicting governance logics and complex social patterns. Since the 1990s, massive riverside flyovers have been built to overcome the narrow mountainous terrains and to improve transportation efficiency in the urban core of Chongqing. Based on empirical observations, I argue that these flyover spaces are shaped by uncertainty that is primarily produced by precarious authoritative negotiations, as well as universal tensions between capital and territorial governance logics. This reveals the unpredictable and uncertain natures existing in the ‘top-down’ conception and construction of transport spaces. This article also argues that the uncertainty in socially constructed aspects of such transport projects squeezes local lifestyles while also providing possibilities for local innovation to reshape transport and/or reaffirm residents’ imagination of urban spaces. This article embraces the uncertainty in transport infrastructure to understand a more diverse range of urbanisation imaginations
Ambiguity · Capital (architecture · Corporate governance · Social capital · Social constructionism · Spatial planning · Terrain · Urban planning · Urbanization · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Homelessness and Social Issues · Urban Planning and Governance
Rationality and power
The Great Urban Transformation
The Politics of Uncertainty
The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South
Splintering Urbanism
The Ludic City
Coping with Uncertainty in Planning
Doing Interviews
Spaces of Global Capitalism
Elite avenues
Rethinking urban metabolism
Towards a new epistemology of the urban
The gift of travel time
The hustle economy
What’s so new about New Municipalism
Promotion-driven local states and governing cities in action—re-reading China's urban entrepreneurialism from a local perspective
All transport problems are essentially mathematical”
Urban mobility infrastructures as public spaces
Planning centrality, market instruments
Thinking through heterogeneous infrastructure configurations
Towards weird verticality
Reimagining the physical/social infrastructure of the American street
Economic Freedom and Political Control in Post-Mao China
A Place and Space for a Critical Geography of Precarity
Engineering Formality
Affect and the dialectics of uncertainty
Ambivalent Governance and Slow Violence in Mumbai's Mithi River
Extended urbanisation and the politics of uncertainty
Extended urbanization in and from Brazil
The Mushroom at the End of the World
Cities of Uncertainty
Strategic unknowns
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |