GLOSSARY

术语

Please edit glossary directly in this page, formatted like this example:

**// Archi-scrabble //**

Synonyms: 
terminotrash, glossary sprawl, word cluttering, word wise nosing, archi-nerdism, word masturbation:

The process of making up words for the sake of it (invented by architects that were about to lose 
a game of scrabble and tried to fudge their way out – see archi-scrabblers). Augmented by 
architect-writers as a (pretty) useless exercise to create an even bigger distance between 
architecture and its final users, representing the wannabe up-scaling of intellectuality and the 
show off of creativity in a way that is mostly obscuring the lack of actual quality design and clear-
cut plans and sometimes even compromises or prohibits the production of authentic content.

~ REM D. Koolhaas - www.unitednude.com

Index: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z New terms

~ A ~

#-shaped high-rise

or hash-shaped high-rise

Typical Asian residential tower with a floor plan that corresponds to the shape of a # symbol.

abtopia

n. a place whose primary and defining quality is that of not being somewhere else. —adj. abtopian
[L. abs, away, from, Gr. topos, place]

accessibility radius

The radius that describes the distance you can cover in a given time to the center of the circle.

adhocracy

noun. An organization with little or no structure; the opposite of a bureaucracy.

aerotropolis

A city in which the layout, infrastructure, and economy are centered around a major airport.

ageographic

(Sorkin), hermetically sealed from its actual locality, often inaccessible to its immediate vicinity, and yet connected to a vast network of “non-places” (Auge)

Arable PUC
noun. the area within PUC (see PUC) that is suitable for agriculture (38% of PUC’s total area). Every year on average 5,000km2 of arable PUC is lost as a result of urbanization, over-intensive farming and reforestation programs.

Artificial City

City that requires excessive amounts of resources to maintain its appearance. For example Beijing.

人造城市

离开接待室机动车扩大

~ B ~

BAU; Business as Usual

A scenario based on an extrapolation of current trends.
In China this is a harsh mixture of long-term top-down planning (such as stepping stone projects) and small irregular bottom-up insitu developments.

black hole
i. an area of space-time with a gravitational field so intense that its escape velocity is equal to or exceeds the speed of light:
ii. a great void, an abyss:
iii. center of urban gravity, a saturated and stagnant zone that triggers urbanization but doesn’t participate in it, often coinciding with the historic center.

big-box store

n. A large-format store, typically one that has a plain, box-like exterior and at least 100,000 square feet of retail space.
—big-boxing pp.

big hair house

n. A house that has a garish style and that is overly large compared to its lot size and to the surrounding houses.

boomburb

n. A suburb undergoing rapid population growth.

Boomburbs are defined as places with more than 100,000 residents that are not the largest city in their metropolitan areas and have maintained double-digit rates of population growth in recent decades. The United States currently contains 53 boomburbs: four top 300,000 in population, eight surpass 200,000, and 41 exceed 100,000 people. This Census Note follows these important but seldom recognized places, which accounted for over half (51 percent) of 1990s' growth in cities with between 100,000 and 400,000 residents. Boomburbs now contain a quarter of all people who live in such places.

—Robert E. Lang and Patrick A. Simmons, "'Boomburbs': The Emergence of Large, Fast-Growing Suburban Cities in the United States," Fannie Mae Foundation, June, 2001

Bootstrap Growth
Urban economies which manage to grow by using local resources rather than depending on a flow of migrants and cheap-labor from elsewhere in the country.

Brickification
noun. the low-level low-quality version of doorstep urbanization, where with limited money and minimal organized planning or architecture, an urbanized landscape is creating itself. Existing buildings are often enlarged simply by taking bricks and laying additional stories on top.

burb.tv
n. DCF created webplatform using wikicode to facilitate the online sharing of China-related ideas and information. Users are able to browse and create nodes, and explore and interlink content via tags.

~ C ~

carpet planning

n.planning models which are formulated without direct reference to specific areas and then rolled out indiscriminately.

checkmate real-estate

n. a situation by which rigid government zoning in combination with aggressive non-collaborative plot-driven development forces the urban dynamic into a static endgame position.

Chinese immobility

the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of a highly mobile workforce of migrants who on the national and regional level are very mobile, and yet on the local level, mostly confined to the cramped conditions of worker dormitories, are essentially immobile.

Chinese Modernism

n. mass modernization cut free from Modernist ideology. The Chinese version of the Modernist urban dream results in a landscape of cross-tower and mega-slab residential projects, only developed through the operation of market forces rather than utopian planning schemes. Chinese Modernism encompasses the anti-urban movement, attracting newfound wealth toward large-scale suburban residential projects with the promise of more green and greater space.

Chinese Moderni$m

n. an architectural style that stresses both its modern character as well as — often through the addition of excessive ornamentation — the affluence or status of its owner.

Chinese Sprawl

Concealed sprawl of intense urban conglomeration in diffuse and undeveloped surroundings.

Chengdu 1.5.

n. Chinese cities are like software packages: they are continuously being updated to keep up with the ever increasing processor speed of the economy and the ever increasing expectations of its citizens. Like software that is being rushed to the market, glitches and security risks only come forward after it has been widely distributed and installed, thus increasing the demand for patches and updates even further. Unfortunately, newer versions are not always backwards compatible with earlier distributions. (equally Shenzhen 2.0, Suining 0.7, etc.)

chiburb

n. a residential urban development in China, esp. one which seeks to offer “suburban” qualities while maintaining density and locating itself within a dense urban environment.

chiburban
adj.

chiburbanite

n.one who lives in a chiburb [agglutination Chinese + suburb]

city of zero liminality

n. a city in which there is no experience of transitional tissue — only locations, departures, arrivals, time lost in transit. In a city of zero liminality, the points at which things start and stop have no thickness. The thresholds have no depth, in fact do not exist. [L. limen, -inis, threshold]

coarseness

Crude urban texture resulting from the simultaneous but uneven stretching and enlarging of public space, architecture and infrastructure; gives rise to a pedestrian-hostile cityscape.

collagetecture

n. an assemblage of different architectural styles, whereby a single architectural composition will take motifs and elements from a diverse (often clichéd) historical palette and place them together, esp. in a crass and jarring fashion. Collagetecture is frequently deployed in order to conceal or mitigate what are essentially blunt concrete cuboids (e.g. the setting of traditional Chinese-style curved roofs on the heads of office towers) [agglutination collage + architecture]

Conversion

a form of migration by which the rural inhabitant moves into an urban settlement, is assimilated, and becomes an urbanite.

Consumers' Republic

an economy, culture, and politics built around the premise of mass consumption.

consumurbation

n. the conflation of consumerization and urbanization. Urbanization in China is not complete until it includes the socio-economic changes which increase inhabitants’ spending on consumer goods. This has become an imperative for China’s economic future. [agglutination consumerization + urbanization]

conversion

n. a form of migration by which the rural inhabitant moves into an urban settlement, is assimilated, and becomes an urbanite. The converted migrant’s spending is focused on the city, and thus drives urbanization.

cookie

i. a small sweet cake, typically round, flat and crisp:
ii. an urban phenomenon arising from the positioning of satellite towns (the cookies) in close proximity to each other, whereby each town expands, and the spreading fringes touch and fuse, like cookies growing together on a baking tray [urban application via analogy with the Chinese pancake or tandabing, see tandabing, donut, raisin bread]

cookie model see also raisin bread model, pancake model, doughnut model

Stemming from the analogy created by the pancake model of urban development, the cookie model represents the move of the city from a monocentric organization to a polycentric one, whereby development is pushed to satellite cities and sub-centers, each with their own gravitational pull and outward expansion. This is likely to increase the sprawl constant, particularly when relative distance is limited.

culture of the new

n. used to describe a sense that society is a completely open playing field, a tabula rasa on which a new way of life can be constructed, a life which forges a radical break with the past. The new is believed to be implicitly superior to the old; the motto of the culture of the new could be: “We don’t need history here. We are creating it.”

~ D ~

Demolition urbanism

n. a style of re-development based on the destruction and demolition of the previous built environment.

dayuan

n. danweis operated within dayuans — literally big yards. The dayuan was an area of land ascribed to a particular danwei in which it organized its production and community activities. Larger danwei (for example, the steel danwei, or the petrochemical danwei) would be responsible for the running of many dayuans, though for individual danwei workers, it was possible for all living activities to be played out within one dayuan. [Ch. dayuan, big yard]

donut

n. i. a small fried cake of sweetened dough, typically in the shape of a ring:
ii. an urban formation where, either because of building regulations or urban decline, the geographical centre of the city becomes a developmental hole, while new build (of residential, office, leisure and retail program) expands to fill a ring around the center. [dough + nut, urban application via analogy with the chinese pancake or tandabing, see tandabing, cookie, raisin bread]

doughnut pattern

n. Urban development pattern in which businesses and affluent residents migrate to surrounding suburbs and edge cities, resulting in a "hollowed out" downtown core consisting of mostly poorer residents.

Doorstep urbanization

a form of urban expansion. A process of economic and mental migration, but a physical stasis. Villagers are becoming urban in the organization of their lives and built environment without actually leaving their homes.

dormitory extrusion

n. the pre-reform Communist dormitory was extruded in the post-reform era of land values and larger roads, which both facilitated larger blocks in single spaces, and provided a commercial incentive to maximize the apartment yield of a single site. Dormitory extrusions are typically 1980s and 1990s tower blocks of twenty stories. Typologically they are often little more than the older dormitories extruded upwards, and create the same conditions.

Dynamic Density (DD)

a. a theory which outlines an optimum relationship between density of a city and its built footprint, and proposes that as a city grows its density should increase proportionally. Thus density is dynamic and requires flexible planning solutions. Applications of DD are especially well suited to fast changing contexts. The dynamic density methodology operates first as a tool to map the processes of expansion and contraction, and then to assess the quality of new growth and suggest market-oriented guidance measures within a conceptual framework for overarching city goals.

3-D stratification

a situation in which economic disparities between residents are expressed within the urban sphere on a vertical axis, with higher residencies corresponding to greater levels of wealth. Upper echelons enjoy enhanced light and air amenities. The various strata also feed into segregated transport networks: top levels correspond to car-ownership; meso-levels to public transport; lower levels to foot and bicycle.

~ E ~

Euro getto

n. an urban area architecturally dominated by eurostyle and characterized by Westernized ideals and lifestyle aspirations. [agglutination European + ghetto]

Eurostyle

n. a neo-classical decorative idiom composed of Greek, Roman, Gothic and rococo architectural ornaments, prevalent in China, esp. among higher end developments in the early 21st century. [agglutination European + style]

exurb

Low density urbanization; the furthest range of influence of a city, less developed but still strongly linked to the city because of relationships to the core metropolis by its inhabitants, such as migrant workers, farmers, etc.

~ F ~

FAR

n. acronym Floor Area Ratio — the area of floorspace within a building divided by its total footprint.

fact-free science

n. a seemingly scientific endeavor, such as the computer modeling of a physical phenomenon, that is performed completely without reference to experimental data.

FARMLAND PROTECTION ACT

In 1994 the State Council passed ‘Basic Farmland Protection Regulations’. These regulations prohibited basic farmland conversion to non-agricultural activities and mandated counties and townships to designate the basic farmland protection districts in accordance with provincial farmland preservation plans. (Ding, C., 2001. Land policy reform in China: assessment and prospects)

field of influence

n. the effective area across which forces exerted by an urban entity are reciprocally active. Those living within the field of gravity communicate with the city directly and influence its performance and direction; those living beyond achieve only mediated impacts upon the city.

Floating urbanism

n. forms of urbanism accompanying and proper to floating populations. Floating urbanism comprises a wide variety of sectors and spatial forms and conditions including:
i. an informal lending market, often operating on a village level, providing the necessary seed capital for aspirational villagers to embark upon floating migratory paths or pursue in situ entrepreneurial action;
ii. forms of quasi-urbanism engendered by in situ industrialization of rural environments through entrepreneurial activities;
iii. an environment of intense competition among extremely atomized production centers, whereby manufacturing can often be traced back to the individual entrepreneur;
iv. the clustering of production centers via product category, leading to button towns, sink towns, eiderdown towns, disposable lighter towns etc., to which the world comes for such products;
v. the generation of Brand urbanism, in turn acting as a magnet for migration.

floating village

n. barracks-like compounds for workers, esp. migrants within China’s floating population, often associated with construction sites. The architecture of the floating village is generally one or two story dormitories built from prefabricated modular parts (essentially making sheds of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., units long) with characteristic blue roofs. Living densities achieved via closely set steel bunk beds are extremely high (up to 300,000 p/km2). While the floating village is a temporary occurrence within the city fabric and free to move, the inhabitants of the floating village are largely confined within its perimeter. Thus the floating village presents a paradoxically (im)mobile condition.

Fluid control urbanism

The space of control is a product of a line of flight that escapes disciplinary entrenchment, but it has its own problems, turning the freedom of movement into a new form of sedentariness and immobility. The control society and its formless city do not consist of an undifferentiated fluidity. Control involves a moment of re-differentiation in terms of informational or cultural identities, which functions as an impetus for identification. This differential moment is followed by the management of differences through circuits of movement and mixture that replace the disciplinary enclosures of discipline society.

Flyover country

n. Pejorative nickname for Middle America, most often used by people on the east or west coast. A spatial disjunct also emerging in China.
Also: fly-over country.

footprint of mass transport

n. the area of a city which is covered by mass transport, defined by the network of subway, train and bus routes, with an accessibility circle around each stop or station, the radius of which is defined by the maximum convenient walking distance under prevailing local conditions.

Formal Economy

n. the sector of the economy officially authorized by the state, including SEZs and government-backed real estate. In China, because of a long standing divide between local and central government, and because of central government’s encouragement of local governments to act entrepreneurially in order to meet fiscal targets, enterprises and activities are often officially recognized (and even partnered) by the state on the local level, and yet exist in direct contravention of central government policy. Under such circumstances it is not always clear-cut as to what is and is not a formal economy venture (see informal economy). Corruption abuses, which facilitate and even encourage economic activity outside of the formal economy, have been identified by the Chinese Communist Party as one of the biggest problems facing China today.

formless space
Networked forms for the promotion of mobility and the organization of mobile subjects in formless space. In this space of control, inclusion and exclusion take place through continuous, mobile forms of control as is the case of “networks”, and of the city without walls. Whereas discipline worked as an “instrument of immobilization”, networked forms of control promote mobility and target the conduct of mobile subjects. These networks engage in anticipatory risk management.

Fortress urbanism

n. an urban condition in which public space assumes the status of hostile environment and security, achieved only within physically delimited private space, becomes a lifestyle objective.

~ G ~

gated community

n. a residential compound girt by walls with security protection at the gates ensuring those who enter the community are either residents, or invited by residents or the management. Gated communities vary in size and levels of sophistication, with higher end gated communities incorporating extensive leisure facilities within the compound (gym, bar, pool, outdoor courts etc.), and offering along with security a lifestyle package and carefully composed architectural aesthetic. The proliferation of gated communities leads to the privatization of formerly public space, with only arterial thoroughfares remaining in the public realm.

Gated commodity housing enclaves

Today China has embarked on a pattern of urban organization that recognizes a correlation between status and housing consumption patterns, and residential segregation In the post-reform era, the ‘gate’ has been rediscovered, forming the ‘gated community’ more similar to those in the developed western economies (new commodity housing enclaves in the form of ‘gated communities’).

Gated communities

Refer to particularistic orders (e.g. cultural, ethnic or class-based), where risks are sought to be minimized in secured zones of discipline, while outside, in the “urban jungle”, insecurity prevails

gater

n. A person who lives in a gated community.

golden ghetto

n. a high end urban area consisting of exclusively wealthy inhabitants who are brought together on the basis of wealth (as opposed to ethnicity, shared interests, activities etc.)

Ghost buildings

The bust that followed Shanghai’s last real estate bubble in the 90s left hundred of high rises around the city unfinished.
Golden Ghetto

green edge

n. the urban zone beyond the urban core yet still within the range of high end mass transport. The Green Edge aims to fulfill demands for both fast access to downtown areas and lower density suburban qualities. It also offer a distinct city limit for planners and developers.

Green Edge

The price of the constructing a green building is margin in comparison with the main investment.

Greenhouse gas emission

Defines the equivalent number of kilograms of greenhouse gasses resulting from the production and installation of one unit of this material. (Ecotect)

Grey Economy

The Grey Economy refers to the flow of goods through distribution channels other than those authorized or intended by the manufacturer or producer. They are not illegal. Simply the distributor doesn’t have a formal relationship with the producer of the goods distributed. (Wikipedia)

~ H ~

hash-shaped high-rise

n. typical Asian residential tower with a floor plan that corresponds to the shape of a hash (#) symbol.

household responsibility system

n. reform legislation introduced in 1980 under which Chinese peasant families were allowed to grow and sell crops for profit provided they met their quota responsibilities to the state.

Heat Islands or Canyons

A phenomena of heat locked between the built urban substances.

Hybrid-hutong

n. stacked suburban living operating as a mediator between the compact tower typology and the tightly-knit social environment provided by hutongs.

~ I ~

I Want generation

n. (also Gucci-generation, Cappuccino-generation) Chinese born after the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution who have come of age in an era of continuous economic growth. Members are strongly orientated toward international pop culture, like to set for themselves and work toward (usually material) goals, and like to indulge in symbolic action that shows they are truly modern: e.g. buying cappuccinos, wearing international brand name clothes, etc. The I Want generation has been accused of selfishness, and labeled little emperors and queen bees. This is due not only to the economic transitions that have taken place within China over the last 30 years, but also the one child policy, which produces a “4-2-1” family structure (one child receives the devoted attention of two parents and four grandparents).

I society

noun. A society in which people emphasize independence and individuality.

ideopolis

n. A postindustrial metropolitan area dominated by knowledge-based industries and institutions, such as universities and research hospitals.

Immobility

The seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of the mass deployment of a highly mobile workforce willing to live far removed from home and family; in reality, such migrant workers are confined to the crammed conditions of their workplace or lodged in barracks, tents and basements, rendering day to day mobility effectively nil.

Imperial overstretch

n. The extension of an empire beyond its ability to maintain or expand its military and economic commitments.

informal economy

n. the sector of the economy which is not officially authorized by the state, and does not feature on national accounts. In China, because of a long standing divide between local and central government, and because of central government’s encouragement of local governments to act entrepreneurially in order to meet fiscal targets, enterprises and activities are often authorized (and even partnered) by the state on the local level, and yet exist in direct contravention of central government policy. Under such circumstances it is not always clear-cut as to what is and is not a informal economy venture (see formal economy). Moreover, the rapidly changing and frequently obscure if not contradictory regulatory environment produces a business environment in which staying within the formal economy can be prohibitively difficult, while the path to the informal economy via bribes is well established. The lack of concrete financial data regarding China’s informal economy has led to wide speculation as to how much it is worth, and to what extent, were it to be counted, it would rebalance the relative sizes of the Chinese and US economies. The informal economy is generally believed to make up at least a significant fraction of the size of the formal economy. (see formal economy)

infrasprawl

n. i. infrastructure (road and highway network) that consumes more space than it can serve or generates more traffic than it can process:
ii. excessive use of infrastructure creating disruptions of spatial patterns and causing inaccessibility [agglutination infrastructure + sprawl]

Instant City

a city built almost overnight, without history or previous context.

~ J ~

jedao banshichu

n. offices administering public security, schools and childcare, health and family planning, maintenance of registered hukou records, conflict mediation, environmental quality, and social activities as well as implementation of diverse government campaigns. (cf. Whyte, M. K. & Parish, W. L. Urban life in Contemporary China, 1984 University of Chicago Press) [Ch. jedao banshichu, street or neighborhood office]

Jicen Danwei
n. Grassroot Work Unit
The lowest of the administrative hierarchy in Communist China. The jicen danwei in the rural environment is the village level administration. In the city the jicen danwei can be anything from a school to a small factory. [Ch. jicen danwei grassroots work unit]

Jing Hu

n. the capital of PUC — a continuous urban region of 485,000km2 roughly covering the triangle between Beijing, Zhangzhou and Shanghai. [acrotomous agglutination Beijing + Hu — Hu, name used for Shanghai in official applications, e.g. the Hu shi, Shaghai stock exchange]

Jumin weiyuanhui

n. residents’ committee which serves to integrate non-waged members of society, namely housewives, children, students and the retired, into the state system, transmitting state policy to the local level. (cf. Cartier, C. ‘City-space, Scale Relations and China’s Spatial Administrative Hierarchy’, Restructuring the Chinese City, 2005 Routeledge). [Ch. jumin weiyuanhui, residents’ committee]

~ K ~

K or U-Value

A measure of air-to-air heat transmission (loss or gain) due to thermal conductance and the difference in indoor and outdoor temperatures. As the U-Value decreases, so does the amount of heat that is transferred through the glazing material. The lower the U-Value, the more restrictive the fenestration product is to heat transfer (Reciprocal of the R-Value). (http://www.fireglass.com/)

~ L ~

Land Tenure System

n. land management system in pre-reform China under which all urban land was State and allocated free of charge to danweis (see danwei) by the central state.

Land-Use Fee

n. land-use fees were first introduced in 1979. China started to impose land-use fees on foreign enterprises and joint ventures. The State passed the Provisional Act of Land-Use Taxation on State Owned Urban Land in 1989. According to the law, all danweis and individuals were obliged to pay land-use taxes if they used land in cities, towns, and industrial and mining districts. The rate of land-use taxes depended on city size. In 1993, the State passed the Provisional Act of Land Value Increment Tax on State-Owned Land. It specified that parties or individuals that transfer land-use rights be taxpayers. The Act required that taxpayers should pay a land value increment tax if they gained a net profit through land-use rights transfer and the net profits exceeded more than 20% of total costs (including land improvement costs, construction costs, management fees, transaction fees and taxes). (cf. Ding, C. ‘Land Policy Reform in China: Assessment and Prospects’ 2001)

Land-Use Taxation

In 1989 the state passed the “Provisional Act of Land-Use Taxation on State Owned Urban Land”. According to the law, all work units (danweis) and individuals were obliged to pay land-use taxes if they used land in cities, towns, and industrial and mining districts. The rate of land-use taxes depended on city size and profitability:

- large cities (over 1,000,000) charge 0.50-10.00 RMB/m2
- medium cities (500,000-1,000,000) charge 0.40-8.00 RMB/m2
- small cities (200,000-500,000) charge 0.30-6.00 RMB/m2
- towns, industrial and mining districts (less than 200,000) charge 0.20-4.00 RMB/m2

- if the net profits are less than 50% of total costs, the tax rate is 30% or net profit;
- if the net profits are between 50-100%, the tax rate is 40%;
- if the net profits are in the range of 100-200%, the tax rate is 50%
- if the net profts exceeds 200%, the tax rate is 60%

Land Value Increment Tax

In 1993, the State passed the ‘‘Provisional Act of Land Value Increment Tax on State-Owned Land’’. It specified that parties or individuals that transfer land-use rights be taxpayers. The Act required that taxpayers should pay a land value increment tax if they gained a net profit through land-use rights transfer and the net profits exceeded more than 20 percent of total costs (including land improvement costs, construction costs, management fees, transaction fees and taxes). (Ding, C., 2001. Land policy reform in China: assessment and prospects)

Lockdown

n. The successful isolation of the different social strata of the entire urban community.
on fenced off vacuum-packed residential bubbles...
Urban privatization offensive: evacuate and cauterize

The urban tissue of a very localised area is sucked out and the surrounding edges cauterised or seared. This ensures the area to be worked on is not bled into by surrounding tissue. The implant is then inserted into the evacuated lot. This community, like a silicone implant, sits within the urban body and yet its composition remains alien. {not sure about the mastectomy analogy / also privatization of massive communal land idea should be introduced}

~ M ~

marketecture

n. i. architecture being marketed aggressively through computer renderings despite the fact that it doesn’t exist as a finished product:
ii. the architecture of a marketing campaign. [agglutination market + architecture, —also marchitecture]

mass customization

noun. the tailoring of a product or service to suit each customer on a mass level.

mega-city

an urban agglomerate with a populations of 10 million or more

Metropolitan gravity

see Urban Gravity

migrant enclave

n. an area within a larger developed region within which migrant workers are clustered, often for specific employment purposes.

micropolitan

adj. Relating to an area that has an urban center surrounded by one or more counties or regions, and that has a population between 10,000 and 50,000; comparable to a small city.

micro-territories

small autonomous regions

Micro Urban governance

community level governance

Mission from God

noun. A crucially important task that must not fail; often used ironically.

MUD

Market-driven Unintentional Development describes an urbanization characterized by organic growth patterns as a result of an accumulation of designed and orchestrated planning.

Mono-sprawl

i. Spatially or socially uniform area that encourages social segregation:
ii. An urban extension that is not necessarily inefficient, dispersed or suburban, but should be regarded as sprawl because of its monofunctional nature (enforcing frequent trips and thus compromising city accessibility). [mono + sprawl]

Monocentric City

Cities with one clearly defined spatial, political social or financial core. Usually where employment is focused and land prices and density all highest.

Monocentrism

See Monocentric City

MUD

n. acronym Market-driven Unintentional Development. In spite of slick planning and design at both city and project level, an uncoordinated slew of developments continues to upscale the existing city, and break ground in the suburbs. The invariable result: amorphous expansion within a field of urban gravity.

Municipality

n. in China the Four Municipalities refer to the four designated metropolitan cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqin. The Four Municipalities enjoy the same political power as the provinces, which are the second tier of the administrative hierarchy after the central government.

~ N ~

Nerdistan

n. an upmarket and largely self-contained suburb or town with a high proportion residences owned by hi-tech workers employed in nearby office parks which themselves are dominated by hi-tech industries, any large collection of nerds. [US Eng. nerd + stan, from the Iranian root sta-, to stand, stay, thus, place where one stays, home, country.]

Nomadic nation

The case of China’s farmers turned migrant workers who wander the country without the official permissions they need, or who have no permanent addresses suggest that, in this new social topology one no longer moves from one closed site to another (as it was the case above in the era of disciplinary enclosure) but is increasingly subjected to free-floating, nomadic forms of movement and of control. Perhaps these new nomads are construction workers who live in their job sites, shifting floors as work progresses, and moving on when work is done. The transient 100 or 200 or 300 million souls who now make up China’s floating population of nomads are all people who legally ought to be one place but are not, who ought to have one sort of job but have another, and who are in effect a nomadic nation that is potentially the most disruptive group in China, and the country’s least easily controlled

Nomadism

Nomadism is then the line of flight that crosses and escapes the walled city. Nomadism and large migration emerge in China as critical tools against disciplinary enclosure, as “lines of flight” out of disciplinary space.

~ O ~

over-planning

n. excessive planning reaching from zoning to the microlevel, effectively excluding the possibility for responsiveness on the part of users or future flexibility, and pushing informal grass-roots developments further out.

~ P ~

pancake model

from the Chinese tan da bing, whereby the urban model of the city is described as a flattened pancake, representing a monocentric mass, with continuous, circular expansion outwards, a congested center and extensive travel times to and from the center; common analogy for describing the current urban shape of Beijing.

panda-hugger

noun. an analyst or academic who believes that China poses no military threat, particularly to the United States (usually derogatory).

Panopticon

Bentham’s Panopticon Writings (1988) and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977) describe the production of life stripped of form and value (dependent labour) placing a spatial emphasis. The panopticon was invented as a universally applicable diagram of surveillance to be used in all institutions, e.g. schools, hospitals and workhouses as well as in prisons

Paradigm

An example, a single phenomenon, a singularity, which can be repeated and thus acquires the capability of tacitly modelling the behaviour and the practice in this case, of urbanists and planners. It is a concrete, singular, historical phenomenon, but at the same time it is a model of functioning which can be generalized.

paradigms of spatial order

a. The paradigm of immobility: In the mid-1950s, China turned from individual land use to Stalin’s Soviet model of collectivization (Soviet-style ‘iron rice bowl’ community). The most extreme of the communes moved people out of their homes into big dormitories where families could be separated. China’s rural labor was kept to the land where it could play the part of a reserve army to be called into action when needed by the party for industrialization projects. The era of collectivization was also an era of disciplinary spatial confinement for China’s rural population

b. The paradigm of disciplinary enclosure: While foreigners created Shanghai as a world port, the city then became a magnet for Chinese looking to work in factories. This large migration to Shanghai, and the foreigners fears that their city would be engulfed, helped lead to the system that divided the city into separate zones, gated sections of town for the colonialists, known as concessions, and the rest for Chinese.

c. The paradigm of control: The new society of control (e.g., post-Mao reformers under the lead of Deng Xiaoping) constitutes a new social topology, in which the geographical/institutional delimitation of discipline, that is, the binary logic of the inside/outside distinction has become obsolete. The city transgresses its limits, its inside/outside divide, and becomes a formless city. At this point space and the city start to be organized according to the principles of “control”.

d. The paradigm of fear and terror: The paradigmatic mode of Chinese urban development that combines official communist-style rule by fiat and market economic opportunism, has a major problem: it is demolishing districts in its rush skywards, displacing 2,5 million citizens in the process since 1990. The economic freedoms of the middle classes are feeding a culture of isolated individualism. The combination of demolition and eviction generates fear and suicide as the only line of flight and escape from the smooth space of control.

Paradigm urbanism

A territorial space and a city that are more or less organized to function as magnets for migrants and for capturing a floating population in a mobile space of control, becomes an example, a paradigm that is repeated everywhere in China.

penturban

adj. Relating to the residential area or community beyond a city's suburbs.
—penturbanite n.
—penturb n.
—penturbia n.
—penturbian adj.

People’s Republic of Change

n. the subjective sensation of density formed on the basis of building size, height, spacing, the ratio of public to private space, and the view. The intrusion of tall structures in a tight-knit framework can give the illusion of a densely populated area which may belie the real numbers, and vice-versa.

perceived density

a. intrusion of tall structures in a tight-knit framework, giving the illusion of a densely populated area. See also up-scaling.
b. the subjective sensation of the incredible density of a city that belies the actual calculated density; especially true of Beijing low-rise urban structures.

pericenter

n. a ring around the (esp. historic center) of a city which becomes the focal point for new development.

Periphery

transition zone between center and suburb; in the case of Beijing, a fluctuating area relatively between the Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads.

photoshop urbanism

n. the production of urban realms as derivatives of the production of slick computer renderings for presentations to officials and investors. Photoshop urbanism not only abstracts spatial production away from the physical realm in which it will end up, but shifts the goal posts from the production of 3-D space for users to the production of 2-D images for viewers. [derived from Adobe Photoshop, well known and widely used computer software for image manipulation, urbanism]

Plan-Extrusions

n. towers designed through extruding a floorplan, usually consisting of two or more residential units organized around a pair of elevators and supply shafts. The resultant buildings tend to lack three dimensionality or sensitivity to local climatic conditions.

pollutician

noun. A politician who supports initiatives and policies that harm the environment

privatopia

noun. A walled-in or gated community of private homes, especially one in which a homeowner association establishes and enforces rules related to property appearance and resident behavior.

Policy Sprawl
n.
i. the phenomenon by which China’s planning and building policies most often result in the opposite of their intended effect i.e. contribute to rather than minimize sprawl:
ii. the accumulation of unclear, often contradictory policies, creating an environment in which it is both difficult to follow planning laws for those who try, and easy to avoid them for more powerful developers with state partners.

pollutician

n. a politician who supports initiatives and policies that harm the environment [agglutination politician + pollution]

Polycentric City

n. a city where the population and programmatic cores are distributed among several political, social or financial centers.

post-reform era

n. the period of China’s communist history stretching from the accession to power of Mao Zedong in 1949 following the victory of the Chinese communist forces in the Chinese civil war to the death of Mao Zedong and subsequent accession to leadership of Deng Xiaoping in 1978.

privatopia

n. a walled-in or gated community of private homes, especially one in which a homeowner association establishes and enforces rules related to property appearance and resident behavior.

proletarian drift

n. The tendency for originally upmarket products to become popular with the working class and eventually come to be supplied under mass production to the mass consumer market.

Public Amenities

Use of natural and man-made goods shared with others or beneficial for all (or most) members of a given
community., e.g. air, water, energy.

PUC

n. Acronym People’s Urbanity of China. PUC represents the eastern third of the China in which 96% of the population, as well as 96% of economic activities, migration flows, and arable land are concentrated. It is China’s urban and semi-urban region.

~ Q ~

~ R ~

Raisin Bread

i. a sweet bread containing raisins:
ii. an urban phenomenon caused by the simultaneous upscaling of urban elements by which individual points become ever further away from each other, like raisins in an expanding loaf [urban application via analogy with the Chinese pancake or tandabing, see tandabing, cookie, donut]

real estate refugees

n. People who move out of the city and into the surrounding suburbs and towns in order to purchase a larger home on a bigger lot.

real suburbia

n. parts of the city used, often illicitly, as residential areas which, while being cartographically within the urban core, are physically beneath the dominant program, e.g. a shanty town underneath a flyover, or in the basement of a mall or tower block. [L. sub, under, urbs, a city]

regime of accumulation

n. processes of capital accumulation do not occur outside of a social regime of accumulation. In other words, a specific political and socio-economic environment is required that enables sustained investment and economic growth. This environment is created partly by state policy, but also partly by technological innovations, changes in popular culture, commercial developments, the media, and so on. An example of such a regime often cited is that of Fordism, named after the enterprise of Henry Ford. As the pattern of accumulation changes, the regime of accumulation also changes. The regime of accumulation responds to the total experience of living in capitalist society, not just market trade.

Reality Check

Projection for BAU in 2020

reverse commuter

noun. A person who travels against the normal flow of rush hour traffic, such as from their home in the city to their job in the suburbs.

ring city
see also peri-centric city , peri-center

a. The formation of
b. proposal for an urban organization of the city of Beijing whereby currently developing urban patches staggered around the centre agglomerate to form the basis of a huge urban ring roughly 100km in circumference,

ring model

loose term describing the urban infrastructure of Beijing based upon a series of circular highways surrounding the city center.

rollover migration

n. a form of migration by which the rural inhabitant moves into an urban settlement but is not assimilated. While the migrant stays in the city this is only on a temporary basis.
Engagement in the urban economy is limited as the bulk of earnings are likely to be sent in remittances to the migrant’s origin, either to repay loans taken to fund the migration, or to supplement weak rural family incomes. Without any permanent stake in the city, and with only compromised rights (due to the lack of an urban hukou), the migrant is unlikely to invest personal energy or funds into his urban living environment. Thus the product of rollover migration is often poorly constructed poorly maintained inhabitations through which rolling populations of migrants pass from the pool of China’s floating population.

rural rebound

n. The recent and significant population increases in rural and exurban areas following years of declining or stagnant population growth.

Rurban

adj. Combining aspects of both rural and urban or suburban life. [agglutination rural + urban]
—rurbanite n.
—rurbanism n.

rural urban syndicate

RUS

n. acronym Rural Urban Syndicate (Chinese Chenxiang Jehebu). RUS is a term used to describe the informal partnerships which develop on the urban fringe between new and often services-deficient planned expansions (see monosprawl) and the unofficial gray economy-driven urbanization of rural villages (see SUV). The SUV component of the RUS is highly responsive and rapidly reorganizes to cater to the needs of the stiff urban program produced by large developers (generally characterized by monolithic architecture and inflexibility to on the ground human concerns). Often the SUV will have been generated prior to the RUS as a village for construction workers during the building of the official development. Once the development is completed, the SUV transforms into a service provider, offering cheap restaurants, local transportation, and prostitution to the new inhabitants of the new homes. The RUS is both generated through and marred by its informal status. The low regulatory environment allows the RUS to develop in a very organic and ad hoc fashion through the low level flourishing of entrepreneurial activity, producing an extremely lively and dynamic relationship. However without proper infrastructure, any political status, or real legal rights, the SUV component is inevitably built to shanty town standards, and exists only under the permanent threat of demolition by unimpressed local government.

Regime of Accumulation

Processes of capital accumulation do not occur outside of a social regime of accumulation. In other words, a specific political and socio-economic environment is required that enables sustained investment and economic growth. This environment is created partly by state policy, but partly by also by technological innovations, changes in popular culture, commercial developments, the media, and so on. An example of such a regime often cited here is that of Fordism, named after the enterprise of Henry Ford. As the pattern of accumulation changes, the regime of accumulation also changes.

Similar ideas also surface in institutional economics. The main insight here is that market trade cannot flourish without regulation by a legal system plus the enforcement of basic moral conduct and private property by the state. But the regime of accumulation responds to the total experience of living in capitalist society, not just market trade. (Wikipedia)

Ringing

Ringing describes the way Beijing’s urban expansion has been in phases and each marked by a corresponding Ring Road. For example Historic Beijing is within the Second Ring Road while Maoist Era expansion was mainly outside of the Second Ring Road. Reform brought Urban Expansion to outside of Third Ring Road, and so on and so forth.

Rollover
a form of migration by which the rural inhabitant moves into an urban settlement but is not assimilated. The migrants stays in the city temporarily and does not become part of the urban economy; the temporary or floating migrant is much more likely to be sending money back to a permanent home still in the village than spending it in the city.

~ S ~

sear ’n’ seal
to reconfigure a city to conform to life in the vacuum-packed community. Within the new China everything is individually packaged. The streets are swept by discarded plastic. Development sites within the city are enclosed by corrugated sheet walls. The old hutongs are sucked out and the space is sealed off for the new urban community: self-contained, self-policed and serviced, wrapped up and packaged like a new snack.

Semi-urbanized village
SUV

a village on the urban fringe which has become semi-urbanized through an influx of migrants drawn to the urban center. Often high rents and restrictive building regulations within the official urban zone make the city a migrant attractor in terms of employment opportunities, but a migrant repeller in terms of accommodation. Villagers on the urban fringe have taken advantage of looser building regulations on land defined as rural and turned landlord, either constructing dormitory blocks for migrants themselves, or leasing the land out to migrant leaders who oversee the construction of such buildings and manage the direct letting themselves. The size of the village remains the same while the density explodes, and the village population frequently comes to be dominated by migrants from a particular province (migrants from different regions of China tend to stay together for reasons of language and ethnicity). However, as the developments are mostly informal, the village is only ever semi-urbanized (indeed the village relies upon maintaining its rural status in order to be able to pursue the highly profitable activity of renting accommodation to migrants), and remains rural in terms of paved and electrical infrastructure, communal water supplies, etc. The essentially poor state of housing in the SUV and the informal situation of the migrants breeds little incentive to stay or work to improve conditions. The migrant populations of the SUVs are mostly composed of rolling migrants from the floating population. (cf. Deng, F. & Youqin Huang ‘Uneven Land Reform and Urban Sprawl In China: the Case of Beijing’ 2004 where the term SUV was first introduced)

Shanghaism

A magic that other cities are trying to replicate. City leaders everywhere want to remake cities in order to reinvent themselves as players in the market economy. Cities like Nanjing, Beijing, and Guangdong and hundreds of other Chinese cities on the make, are trying to do nearly anything to replicate some of Shanghai’s magic.

Shanghai Fever

n. The massive inflow of investment, the meteoric rise in the number of skyscrapers, and the resultant property speculation in Shanghai, are collectively known as “Shanghai fever.” The construction explosion that grew out of the Reform Era has not, of course, occurred just in Shanghai. The amount of construction in China as a whole during the past 20 years exceeds the country’s combined total over the preceding few centuries. However, no city in the country has witnessed a greater change in its urban landscape than has Shanghai. Inspired by Shanghai fever, cities such as Suzhou, Kunshan, Hangzhou, and Ningbo all set ambitious goals for economic growth.

shift and shaft

v. to shift programs to a lower levels of government without providing the means with which to pay for those programs.

shift and shaft

v. To shift programs to a lower level of government without providing the means with which to pay for those programs.
—shift and shaft n.
—shift-and-shaft adj.

noun.
i. someone who violates the personal space of other people by standing too close during conversations, touching legs or arms when seated beside a person, and so on:
ii. a sudden intrusion in the urban realm, usually facilitated by a context in which planning regulations are so abstruse and bureaucratic as to be ignored completely, and your neighbor in the course of your day at work erects an entire new dwelling nine inches from your bedroom window:
iii. a monster from outer space who invades the planet, esp. for the purposes of munching the roofs off iconic buildings

Spare Space

n. design strategy that anticipates extensive future expansions.
special economic zone see SEZ

Spatial prototypes

a. The prototype of the camp: An exceptional, excluded space entrenched and surrounded with secrecy for the production of life stripped of form and value and dependent labour. In addition, to collectivization and the commune, Camps like structures in the People's Republic of China are also called Laogai, which means "reform through labor".

b. The prototype of the walled city: A system that divided the city into separate zones, gated sections of town for the colonialists, known as concessions, and the rest for Chinese. This is the city founded on the divide between its “intramural” population and the outside. The territory and the city are imagined as a disciplinary space entrenched by “walls”, originating in the act of inclusion/exclusion. Entrenchment establishes a clean-cut distinction between insiders and outsiders, between the subjects and the outlaws. The “outside” is distinct from the city, but it becomes so primarily through a sovereign act dividing the urban from the non-urban. This city is a diagram of discipline. Such disciplinary enclosure is an “anti-nomadic technique” that endeavours to “fix” mobilities

c. The prototype of the formless city: A city that is not characterized by an inside/outside distinction but by a multiplicity of cross-border flows in every direction for the production of mobility. This city is no longer founded on the divide between its “intramural” population and the outside; it no longer has anything to do with the classical oppositions of city/country nor centre/periphery. The city of control is a reticular ou-topia, sharing with all other networks a fibrous, thread-like capillary character that is not easily captured by the notions of levels, layers, territories, spheres, categories, structure, systems. Contrary to the disciplinary enclosures of the walled city, this city is a technological artefact for the promotion and management of nomadism and mobilities.

d. The prototype of the city as jungle: This city emerges out of the limitations of the society of control and its formless city. In here, the city assumes the status of an object “beyond control.” It becomes a zone in which the figure of the engineered middle class meets the evictee in a struggle for survival. In the emerging “urban jungle” the law is privatized, chaos is the rule, and city dwellers are forced into underground caves in search of safety. In the city as jungle you are made to disappear.

Speed-sprawl

n. beyond the urban core developments emerge at such speed that they defy the MUD logic of seeping expansion and break free from gravitational force of the urban core. The resultant spray pattern in effect reveals the scope of the field of urban gravity and vice versa.

splatter pattern

n. the formation, visible on satellite maps, of a splatter pattern of development resulting from the last three decades of expansion of the built environment on every scale. Urban regions, towns, fragmented networks and villages have all exploded in size over an already densely populated area, with little overarching rationalization or objective for the development pattern other than for each individual settlement (and individual) to maximize economic output.

Split City

a city consisting of a distinctly old and distinctly new part.

sprawl

v. sprawled, sprawl•ing, sprawls
v. intr. To spread out in a straggling or disordered fashion.
n. Haphazard growth or extension outward, especially that resulting from real estate development on the outskirts of a city: urban sprawl.
urban sprawl
n. The unplanned, uncontrolled spreading of urban development into areas adjoining the edge of a city.

Note: Definitions and measures of sprawl are heavily debated, but broadly accepted meanings concentrate upon the fringe development of rapidly expanding urban areas characterized by a declining of the (aggregate) urban density, as evidenced by:
a. decline in population density of built-up areas
b. decline in floor area in built-up areas
c. changes in quality, performance, etc.

sprawl constant

a variable that defines the surface area of the transitional between rural and urban zone. Its is linked to the mass, speed, radius and field of influence of a city.

sprawl-speed

Index for sprawl based on traffic assessment of new building projects considering the travel time to the CBD; urban density tends to drop with falling transportation costs and rising incomes.

Sprinkler City

n. A fast-growing outer suburb or exurb.

Stealth wealth

noun. a form of wealth in which a person’s or nation’s lifestyle and purchasing patterns do not reflect their net worth.

Stretch marks

coarse urban areas rendered completely useless. Aggravated form of coarseness.

SUV (Semi-Urbanized Villages)

~ T ~

tabula rasa

urban areas still to be demolished.

tail unit

it is standard practice among developers to retain a number of higher end units (typically around 5 to 10%) on a new development in order to be able to offer them to local officials, or keep them available for use by VIPs who may pass through. These leftover units are referred to as tail units.

Taikonaut

n. A Chinese astronaut.

Tandabing

spreading of the pancake. A popular term among Beijingers used to describe the formation of the city, suggesting it is flat, round and growing outwards. [Ch. tandabing, big spreading pancake]

teledensity

noun. The number of telephones per 100 people in a region.

Teletopia

a (hypothetical) place in which all interactions take place via telecommunications networks. As transportation concerns are effectively eliminated, residents of a teletopia are able to live wherever they please (with due consideration of other factors) so long as they remain connected to the telenetwork.

The Chinese Dream

1. aspirational drive for individual prosperity within a modern urban setting. Consumer desire, keyed into traditional family structures, focuses on home and car ownership (over political change).
2. Continuing assured Chinese Communist Party rule (preferably with moon landings).

The Cappuccino-generation

See also the Gucci-generation, or the I-want-generation .
Chinese born after the turmoil of the cultural revolution had cleared, coming of age in an era of continuous economic growth. Members are strongly orientated towards international pop culture, like to set and work towards their self defined - usual material – goals and like to indulge in symbolic action that shows they are truly modern: e.g. buying cappuccino’s, wearing international brand name clothes. { I feel these are really cool and should be defined separately. This will the stratification of the society. Couples saving up for a coffee are not the same as those buying Gucci shoes (even if they can be in two years time). Maybe we can come up with five or so. The I-want could be the overarching one! Love that… something describing spoiled single child also very interesting. }

The function of gating

Under socialism, gating reinforces political control and collective consumption organised by the state; in the post-reform era, the gate demarcates emerging consumer clubs in response to the retreat of the state from the provision of public goods. In the Chinese city, urban fragmentation is paving the way to a new urban experience of insecurity and fear, which has begun to appear in the discourse of 'community building' in urban China. The scene of demolition and eviction serves here as the spatial prototype of this paradigm of fear.

The Household Responsibility System

The system-instituted in 1980-, allowed Chinese peasant families to grow and sell crops for profit, provided they met their quota responsibilities to the state.

The landscape of mass consumption

Thermal Comfort

A method uses the upper and lower comfort band temperatures set for each zone. If the internal zone temperature is above the upper value or below the lower value, it is deemed uncomfortable. As standard is considered 21-24°C. People can be quite comfortable at internal temperatures in excess of 30°C with the right clothing, mean radiant temperatures and air movement. In case of Beijing a conservative range of 18-26 in a building in a continental monsoon climate of Beijing.

The scene of demolition

An area that is cordoned off by tape, the kind you get at a crime scene or a danger zone. What is cordoned off may be a house or a restaurant standing amid the rubble; the building has been trashed in a totally demolished area. This is the scene of the expropriated and of the evictee.

The time-space of the Special Economic Zone: the time of substitution

The blank condition (the tabula rasa) of the special economic zone represents the cleansing march of progress that renders passé the contradictory interests of people, the set of disorderly voices, contradictory interests and virulent claims.

to rearchitect

verb. To make fundamental changes to the design or structure of something.

Trans-sprawl

n. Additions to the city may exhibit sprawl characteristics but serve as a necessary phase within the transition to a larger city. Big official developments may initially appear brutal and under-serviced, but density and local entrepreneurialism may quickly supply the necessary life. Equally informal settlements lacking in basic infrastructure can be recognized and absorbed to become healthy tissue. Transprawl expressed the potential for change within new urban expansions. [agglutination transitory + sprawl]

transnational suburb

n. A suburb made up mostly of immigrants who maintain strong ties to their home countries.!!!!

tunnel advertising

n. Advertising consisting of a series of illuminated screens in a subway tunnel, each projecting one image from a sequence to create an animation effect as the train goes by.

TVE (Township or Village Enterprise)

n. Acronym Township Village Enterprise. In the reform era the easing up of regulations around entrepreneurial activity facilitated the formation of TVEs. Contrary to the popular imagination, many TVEs are not solely private ventures but are state mobilized, involving partnerships with local administrations (which frequently behave in an entrepreneurial fashion), and the collectively pooled resources of villagers. Usually small in scale, the flexibility and adaptability of the TVEs made them ideally suited to the rapid pace of change in both regulatory and consumer environments of the early reform period. The explosion of TVEs throughout the 1980s and 1990s was a major contributor to China’s economic “miracle”, with TVEs at one point accounting for two thirds of China’s manufacturing output (though this figure has fallen, it is estimated that SMEs still account for some 60% of China’s GDP). However after this initial success, in more recent years the TVEs have been condemned as under-regulated and over-polluting. The smallness of the TVEs tends to mean they operate using less sophisticated and more energy intensive technologies, and fail to benefit from economies of scale. Moreover, the atomized production networks formed by the TVEs not only inflict logistical expenses, but also problematize the widespread implementation of best practice, the sharing of knowledge, and the investment of pooled surplus in high quality research and development centers.

~ U ~

Upgrade

n. A form of urban expansion which does not need to justify itself against population movements or the relationship between rural and urban economies. It is simply people moving into bigger apartments, shared with fewer people and increased space for service and infrastructure bringing about a massive reduction in people per m2 of built area. Without anything having to change in terms of population numbers, the city is building itself dramatically upwards and outwards.

up-scaling

The push towards larger blocks, taller buildings and more luxury for a better market, often maintaining the same density as smaller-scaled typologies.

Update strategy

n. The policy for cities to keep renewing themselves, continuously updating their urban structure.

upgrade

n. A form of urban expansion which does not need to justify itself against population movements or the relationship between rural and urban economies. It is simply people moving into bigger apartments shared with fewer people, bringing about a massive reduction in people per m2 of built area. Without anything having to change in terms of population numbers, the city is building itself dramatically upwards and outwards.

upscaling

n. The expansion of the built environment via the enlargement of each individual element within it — i.e. the road, the block, the setback around a building etc. As the only the human being is not upscaled, the process results in a coarsening of the urban fabric.

urban hierarchy

from geographic center moving radically out in distance—
a. (city) center: A heavily populated city at the core of a large metropolitan area
- in the case of Beijing, from the center to Fourth Ring Road.
The term often refers to the CBD or downtown in that both serve the same purpose for the city. City centre differs from downtown in that downtown can be geographically located anywhere in a city, while city centre is located near the geographic heart of the city. In Beijing the CBD should be distinguished from the center as it is predomiantly residential.
b. periphery: transition zone between center and suburb; in the case of Beijing, a fluctuating area relatively between the Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads.
c. suburb: suburbia.
1. The term suburbia is frequently used to encapsulate the concept of suburbs as oddly picturesque slices of tract-home nuclear family life that harbour forces destructive of natural human impulses towards true community and concerns of communal welfare.
d. sub-satellite: planned development possessing the size of a satellite but lacking the distance, governance and / or infrastructural connection to the city core.
e. satellite: smaller municipalities that are adjacent to a major city which is the core of a metropolitan area, possessing their own municipal governments distinct from that of the core metropolis (wikipedia).
f. outskirts: moderately or non-urbanized area within the field of influence of urban gravity .

urban arrearage

urban heat island

n. A metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surroundings as a result of the density of built surfaces, waste heat, and high levels of unvented thermal mass. The urban heat island effect is commonly more pronounced at night. —acronym UHI

urban privatization offensive

n. The urban tissue of a very localized area is sucked out and the surrounding edges cauterized. This ensures the area to be worked on is not bled into by surrounding tissue. The implant then inserted into the evacuated area sits within the urban body and yet its composition remains alien.

urban lumberjack

noun. A logger who works in an urban environment collecting and selling wood retrieved from demolished buildings.

utopian

a. often Utopian Of, relating to, describing or having the characteristics of a Utopia: a Utopian island; Utopian novels.
b.
1. Excellent or ideal but impracticable; visionary: a utopian scheme for equalizing wealth.
2. Proposing impracticably ideal schemes.

~ V ~

village-within-city

n. A phenomenon produced by rapid urban expansion, whereby the urban fringe reaches and jumps over what used to be a surrounding village, thus creating a village within the city. The city may also encompass a number of floating villages (see floating village).

Virtual City

n. A city which exists in an imaginary space and which is uploaded to the popular imagination via advertising and media technology, esp. sophisticated computer graphics featuring fly-throughs of architectural renderings. The virtual city usually has a physical counterpart, the reality of which may be thrown into shadow or suppressed by the seductive power of the virtual city imagery.

~ W ~

Work-unit compounds

From its appearance, the work-unit compound is a diagram of control that conforms to the definition of a Panopticon –like structure

well-off society

Chinese: xiao kang, from the Chinese meaning “small well-being”, or ‘moderately well-off’; first mentioned as a goal of the Chinese state in 2002, xiao kang incorporates the ability to buy into the Chinese Dream, where everyone will achieve a moderately rich status, with a car and a modern house.

Westernization

n. The adoption, most often in parts and therefore with a degree of cultural incoherence, of certain aspects of Western culture, reaching from consumables to political and market models.

~ X ~

~ Y ~

yuppie slum

noun.
1. An upscale neighborhood populated mostly with young professionals and managers.
2. A neighborhood with older and slightly run-down houses that young professionals purchase and renovate.

~ Z ~

Zhejiangism

Zhejiang, although only a tiny province by Chinese standards, is a magnet to migrants. Migrant farm women who work hard in Zhejiang sock factories, are those who made the men’s dress socks that sell in department stores in the USA and Europe. Nine of every one hundred of China’s wandering workers make their way here.

Zone fever

n. The success of the SEZs in the 1980s seeded PUC with the widespread desire to replicate Shenzhen-style growth (a southern fishing village before the inauguration of the SEZ) through the creation of zones of their own. Local governments declared development zones, requisitioned farmland, and started to build infrastructure before securing foreign direct investment (FDI) or even undertaking detailed feasibility studies. The number of zones swelled from 117 at the end of 1991 to 2700 by the end of 1992. However, many of these zones were doomed to remain empty, and in the mid 1990s central government intervened, canceling 1,200 vacant zones and returning over 130,000ha of land to agricultural use.

new terms

CHANG - ( Chang's entire article needs to be coined )

Eminent Domain
Entrepreneurial State
Flash Motorisation
Floating Population
Floating Village
Household Responsibility System
Village-within-City
high-end mass-transit
Transit systems that can process .. XXXXXX
KATHY
Shapeless city
post-planning
over-planning
3D-stratification
dormitory extrusion (see kathy)
floating village
splatter pattern
D-rail
pull factor
black hole
danwei
TVE
HTDZ
stepping stones
dispersion
peri-centric city
peri-center
reason d'etre
dream scenario
doom scenario
density
critical mass
doughnut model
orthogony
dystopic
chiburb
Liminality
chiburbanite
Chinese density
Splatter pattern
....
....
....
....
in Green Edge chapter
green ambitions
Jing Hu
ESA
dormitory extrusions
grid
rurban
real estate refugees
over-planning
carpet planning
critical mass
split cities
cell pattern
the Strip
solar aquatic system
vista
L-building
compartmentalized
ping fang
hutong
L-building mediate

in L-building chapter
terrace housing

in Dynamic Density chapter
urban nodes
birch theory
post-planning

in Policy Sprawl chapter
siheyuans
1. Central state in Beijing.
2. Provinces (sheng*), the four municipalities (zhixia shi*) including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing and autonomous regions (zizhi qu*) which are autonomously governed areas of ethnic minority groups.
3. Cities (shi*), counties (xian*) and county level towns (chen zhen*).
4. Towns (zhen*) and townships (xiang*) or
5. Villages (they actually come under the jurisdiction of Counties or xian*)

On a sub-urban level, large cities are often subdivided by districts (qu*), which are in turn further divided into street or neighborhood offices (jedao banshichu*) and residents’ committees (jumin weiyuanhui*). They are the lowest effective reach of the state and state surveillance.

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