CCCI: Urbanization as Environmental Change: Planning and Dispossession in Contemporary China

This talk will examine the rapid urbanization of Chinese cities. 

The Cornell Contemporary China Initiative Lecture Series, featuring interdisciplinary talks by scholars on issues in China today, runs every Monday this semester. Jia-Ching Chen, Assistant Professor of Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara "Urbanization as Environmental Change: Planning and Dispossession in Contemporary China" China's unprecedented urban growth has captured the attention of international media and scholars alike. However, contrary to widespread dystopian impressions of endless urban agglomeration, this talk will examine the city within a broader context of environmental change and governance. Drawing upon ethnographic and archival research and spatial analysis, professor Chen will argue that China's urbanization poses unaccounted-for social and environmental dilemmas. Moreover, the planned environmental change of this scale presents a puzzle about China’s current development transition. Namely, land dispossession is the single leading source of discontent in China today, and yet it is also the fundamental basis of national development policy. To examine this tension, the talk is structured around two perspectives. First, the increasing policy emphasis on spatial planning for environmental governance, from individual villages to the national territory. Second, the everyday experiences of dispossessed villagers reveals how environmental landscape change is itself a political tool of maintaining consent to party-state rule.