Spatialization of the Collective
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residential planning for Beijing. The buildings of a microdistrict were mostly generic and standardized, while the in-between space was much more articulated. The generic building blocks were replaced at various times by different floor plans that spatialized the change of life style. The transposition of architectural and urban debate to the microdistrict was largely a strategic maneuver to revive the neighborhood unit under a new and politically correct name. Dingzeng Wang, originator of the neighborhood unit, was an advocate of the microdistrict. He formulated the principles for microdistrict planning in China: integrating housing and service facilities; discouraging through traffic; grouping housing according to the “service radius,” or optimum distance between housing and services; basing the hierarchy and optimum number of community facilities on the number of residents served.19 According to Wang’s definition, the microdistrict recuperated several ideas from the neighborhood unit. The concept of the microdistrict is inclusive, dissolving the political tension between perimeter block and the neighborhood unit. The microdistrict was implemented in a flexible manner. A project in Beijing might be significantly different from one in the south of China. The spatial organization of the microdistrict was influenced more by immediate local context than by any overarching formal principle. The microdistrict was easily adaptable to and negotiated between political ideologies. In fact, both the idea and the space of the microdistrict carry weight in contemporary Chinese cities. A final collective form of this period was the danwei. A project-based development model had come to be the main mode of urban land development. These projects, including factories and institutions, advanced as work units, or danwei.20 It would not be an exaggeration to contend that it is the foundation of urban China. The danwei “is the source of employment and material support for the majority of urban residents; it organizes, regulates, polices, trains, educates, and protects them; it provides them with identity and face; and, within distinct spatial units, it forms integrated communities through which urban residents derive their sense of place and social belonging. The importance of the Danwei is further highlighted by the fact that any person who does not have a Danwei is considered to be ‘suspicious’ or even ‘dangerous.’”21 The physical form of the danwei might consist of a superblock or multiple superblocks. The
7 Individual and collective forms in Beijing, 1950s
8 Collective form in Beijing, 1950s