Entrepreneurial and modular urbanism in China: New cities and new areas in the 2000s

Abstract

This article assesses the recent trend in cities across China toward building new towns, new areas, new districts, new cities and other urbanizing projects in suburban areas. We refer to these projects under the generic term “new city and new area” following the Mandarin usage (xincheng xinqu) (hereafter NCNA). Such projects are commonly on the fringes of urban centers, have significant area size, and are multifunctional in character. Hundreds of NCNA projects have been undertaken in recent years, reshaping metropolitan regions and altering the nature of China’s urbanization. Overall, the NCNA phenomenon emerges within China’s broader transition to a market economy amid the persistence of state land tenure, a Party-based personnel assessment system motivating intense careerism among urban officials, and the need for local administrations to push land development further into metropolitan peripheries to sustain local accumulation. The paper offers two urgent contributions to the existing literature. First, it discusses a panoramic assessment of the pervasive NCNA phenomenon and proposes a four-part typology of projects: (1) new Alpha-cities, (2) middle-class enclaves, (3) techno-poles, and (4) themed cities. Second, we provide an analysis of the underlying political-economic forces driving their development and highlight the variegated development trajectories of so-called modular urbanism in the current day.