Betweenchaiandqian
How Unfinishedness and Ruination Have Reshaped Urbanity in China's 'Coal Capital' after the Construction Boom
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4859112 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Judith Audin (0000-0003-1482-920X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 998-1015 |
| Publication date | 2022-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-1317 • E-ISSN: 1468-2427 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-2427.13140 |
| OpenAlex | W4307236586 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 44 |
Datong has for decades been known as China's 'coal capital'. In 2008 Mayor Geng Yanbo redeveloped Datong's city centre in order to hide the coal stigma and redefine the city's identity based on its cultural heritage as a centre for Buddhist historical sites and ancient architecture. The project was interrupted in 2013 when the mayor was promoted to another city. In parallel, the coal industry was impacted by restructuring, falling prices, and stricter environmental policies. The interrupted project opened a liminal space between demolition and construction. This article studies unfinishedness and ruination in Datong after the construction boom by following the last residents living within the interrupted project. Drawing on fieldwork carried out between 2015 and 2019 that records the discourses and socio-spatial practices of the last remaining residents, stuck betweenchai(demolition) andqian(relocation), it sheds light on their urban experiences as city dwellers in a landscape of ruins and unfinished architecture. The suspension of urban construction affects both these residents' representations of the urban space and their ambivalent feelings towards the past, present and future, opening new perspectives for research on the urbanity of booms and busts in Chinese cities
Archaeology · Boom · China · Demolition · Economics · Economy · Eviction · Political science · Restructuring · Sociology · Urbanism · Urbanity · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Engineering · History · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Architecture
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Authoritarian Environmentalism Undermined? Local Leaders’ Time Horizons and Environmental Policy Implementation in China
Images of Power
Building Globalization
Shanghai Gone
An awful mark
Slow construction
Seeing ghosts
Domicide, social suffering and symbolic violence in contemporary Shanghai, China
Ordos Municipality
The Right to the City and Critical Reflections on China's Property Rights Activism
Booms, Busts and Urban Variation Among ‘Resource-based Cities’ in China’s Northwest
Thugs-for-Hire
How to Build a ‘Beautiful China’ in the Anthropocene. The Political Discourse and the Intellectual Debate on Ecological Civilization
China's Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities
Ruins of Modernity
The Ghosts of Industrial Ruins
China's Urban Speed Machine
Post-Industrial Imaginaries
The Political Economy of Urban Ruins
Soviet Debris
Property rights, legal consciousness and the new media in China
The Breakdown of the Spanish Urban Growth Model
Exit, or Evict
Expectations of Modernity
Unbuilt and Unfinished
Remains of the Future
Bargaining demolition in China
When infrastructures attack
Mining, expectations and turbulent times
| Citations per year | 3.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |