The Changing Urban Form of Georgia: The example of Tbilisi and the Belt and Road Initiative

The Changing Urban Form of Georgia: The Example of Tbilisi and the Belt and Road Initiative Xiaolei Cai, Lara Jaillon and Charlie Xue Abstract Georgia situates in the intersection of Asia and Europe, where opportunities and conflicts coexist.

Before the dissolution of Soviet Union in 1991, the rigid Soviet Union political system weakened the connecting function of Georgia between the east and the west by giving constraints on its economic development, while after 1991, Georgia entered the free market period with less external political interference. Its economy development mode changed from planned economy to free market economy, meanwhile, the urban forms of cities in Georgia transformed significantly due to the international investments attracted by its location advantage and policy supports. The Belt and Road Initiative stimulates the ongoing exchanges between China and Georgia, generating exciting yet unexpected outcomes in Georgian cities. Most research has viewed the B&R from perspectives of economy or politics, while little studies have been done from the spatial aspect. This research focuses on B&R and its spatial influence on the urban form of Tbilisi, investigating how the urban form interacts with the influential political and economic incentives. Through mapping the history and present urban fabric of Tbilisi, and detailed case study of B&R projects in Tbilisi, this research examines the urban form of Tbilisi from macro to micro scales, offering an in-depth view of the changing spatial attributes of Georgian cities, and the influence on people’s social life. This research seeks to find the underlying principles for the changing urban form, and contributes to healthy urban development of Georgian cities, or even cities in the South Caucasus.

Key words: urban form, Tbilisi, Georgia, China, Belt and Road Initiative (B&R), urban development.

Introduction Transcaucasia was historically unstable for centuries due to its strategic location which is the entering and existing passageways between the global east and west. The instability was mostly resulted from the historical conflicts within these countries, and with their neighbours, especially Turkey and Russia (previously Soviet Union). In the modern time, the controversial relations still exist, for instance, the long-existing hostility between Turkey and Armenia, and the recent Armenia-Azerbaijan War. The historical and ongoing geopolitical harmonious and conflicts have led to the constant changing urban forms in the Transcaucasian countries, Georgia is one of them. This research starts with literature review of cities and urban forms of Georgian cities, the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) and its influence in Georgia, also the relationship between urban forms and B&R in Georgia. In addition, research methods of mapping will be utilised to observe the historical, current and future Georgian cities, analysing the changing urban forms on macro (urban) and meso (district) scales. Meanwhile, detailed cases are employed to analyse the meso (district) and micro (building) scale changes. The changing urban environment, the process and the influential factors shall be discovered and analysed. Conclusion and indications for future common urban development are given in the end.

Literature review Cities are expanding on extremely fast speed presently. Urbanisation is the fundamental reason for this increasing share of people moving to cities, which would actually become an issue to the urban development, especially for the less developed countries (Angel, 2017). Urban areas will be

more than tripled in less developed countries by 2050, while these countries might not ready for the radical changes: streets and roads would become overcrowded; public space in city centres might be replaced as residential space; the streetscapes and cityscapes would be sacrificed for more high rise buildings. Cities in Georgia have become bigger and bigger in recent years because the urban population grows fast while its rural population drops down constantly, around 2.11 million and 1.66 million in 2008, while 2.19 million and 1.54 in 2018 respectively (World Bank, 2018).

The population is most densified in the largest cities, such as Batumi, Kutaisi and Tbilisi, and the largest city Tbilisi has a population of around 1.05 billion. The historical political legacy from the Soviet Union governance, various geographic and natural resource conditions lead big cities of Georgia towards similar urbanisation via their own approaches – Tbilisi, backyard of Europe and Russia, becomes a tourist destination and commercial centre based on its historical conservations and convenient transport connections (Manning, 2009); Kutaisi, the former Soviet Union industrial city, attracts more industrial investment based on its natural resources and industrial foundations (Gadrani, Tsitsagi, & Tielidze, 2019); Batumi, another industrial Soviet Union industrial city, builds as ‘Las Vegas of the Black Sea’ upon its beautiful seashore and favourable location (Humphrey, & Skvirskaja, 2014).

Cities are combination of physical constructs with social contents inside. There is never an absolute autonomy of physical urban form because the production of the city or the architecture cannot be separated with the underlying economic or cultural determinants (Panerai, Philippe, et al. 2004).

Urban changes mean not only changes in the spatial organisation of society, but also changes in the social organisation of space (Lefebvre et al., 1996). Key influential factors influencing the urban changes are economy, society and natural. Therefore, understanding the changes of urban form is an effective way of understanding the society (Walks, 2008). In other words, understanding the underlying factors – operational ideologies, economic development, social relations, and religious believes can reversely effectively inform the changes on the urban form. Similarly, in Georgia, urban forms have changed tremendously along with these influential factors – the Soviet Union Communism brought large amounts of communal public squares and dwellings (Hudson and Hugh, 2015); the intention of becoming part of the European Union brings western architectural forms and design practices (Storm, 2019); and the financial investment from China brings efficient Asian residential communities. These various factors have stimulated the urbanisation and have changed or shaped urban forms of Georgian cities in a fast pace.

B&R in Georgia The Belt and Road Initiative, abbreviated as B&R, was announced by President XI Jingping, at Kazakhstan in 2013, including the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ as the land belt and the ‘21 st Century Maritime Silk Road’ as the sea route. It is a development strategy that China plans to invest and collaborate with 152 countries crossing Asia, Middle East, Europe, Africa to the Americas in order to promote mutual development (Cai, 2017). Georgia is one of these collaborating countries which has connections to both the land belt and sea route of the B&R (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Part of the strategic B&R Routes. Drawn by the authors.

Economically, the B&R intends to improve the free flow of economic factors and improve the efficiency of resource allocations. The bilateral commerce between China and Georgia stands most evident compared with the other two Transcaucasian countries – Azerbaijan and Armenia, haing a total volume of foreign trade to 665,887 (National Statistics, 2018). This is mostly because Georgia is the first country in this region signed Free Trade Agreement with China in 2017 (Yidaiyilu, 2017), and also signed the Association Agreement with Europe in 2014. Politically, the relative intense relationship between Georgia and Russia promotes Georgia to seek support from China in order to get rid of Russia traces. Meanwhile, the relative political stability in this pivotal region draws China’s interests in competing with other international powers.

Spatially, the B&R constructions expand fast in involved countries, both the governmental and private companies play important roles in these international cooperative operations (Ferdinand, 2016). As the most cooperated country in the South Caucasus, Georgia has been influenced in various scales. Various urban or architecture projects are built across the country. For instance, the proposed Anaklia Deep Sea, which aims to promote communication between China and Europe (Ajeganov, 2017), would change the rural image of this underdeveloped resort totally due to its giant size and the its potential in gaining great investment internationally.

Method and analytic framework The research is a qualitative research, adopting document review, site observation, and interview as the key research methods. For document review, governmental reports, international websites, and local newspapers are referred to provide a holistic overview. For site observation, the authors visited Georgia in November 2017 for 8 days, during which they visited City of Tbilisi and the key B&R projects in Tbilisi. The interviews are done separately in November 2017 with local researchers and users in Tbilisi, Georgia, and in December 2019 with developers and designers in Xinjiang, China.

The authors use mapping and detailed cases to study the urban form of Tbilisi thoroughly. By reviewing the historical maps and important scholars’ thoughts on Tbilisi’s urban changes, studying the developing plan from the governmental institute, and mapping the B&R projects on Tbilisi urban map, the authors carefully examine the urban form of Tbilisi on macro (city figure) and meso (city image) scales, revealing similarities and differences between the developing ideologies and realities. Furthermore, to understand the developing trends in detail, the research studies two architectural projects, initiated by the B&R, in the city of Tbilisi – Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza and Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City. The two projects are designed and constructed by the same developer, Hualing Group, an active B&R participant from Xinjiang Province of China. Through site observation and interviewing the users, designers, and developers, the authors critically disclose the revolution

of urban form of Tbilisi in meso (city image) and micro (city face) scales and investigating the underlying incentives for the development. An analytic diagram is given as below (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Analytic Diagram. Drawn by the authors.

Mapping Lynch (1960) used mapping in a cognitive way to represent how people perceive spaces and their interrelationships. In social science, maps are used crossing disciplines of arts, geography and linked with larger social or political issues (Abrams & Hall, 2006). In this research, mapping is useful in understanding space formation and relationships, and also the strong political or economic incentive influences, the B&R especially. On the macro scale, mapping exhibits the silhouette, entrances and exits, and solid and void of the city figure, showing the horizontal and vertical changes of cities. On the meso scale, mapping investigates the composing elements of the city: landmark, route, edge, node and district, which reveal the city with legibility and manifestation.

Figure 3. The administrative expansions of Tbilisi. Source: Van Assche & Salukvadze.

Georgia was mostly under the political control of the USSR until the dissolution of Soviet Union in 1991, except a short independence from 1918 to 1921. In this period, the urban area of Tbilisi kept expanding, following the 1934, 1953 and 1963 masterplans (Van Assche et al., 2010), with strong inks of the Soviet Union continuously (Figure 3). The city was transformed from a compact medium settlement to a fast-growing economic and political centre of the USSR, having strong influence over the whole Transcaucasia. Accordingly, the planning and architectural development followed the USSR as well – rigid top-down development approach, which included minimum public involvement as indicated by the communist gesture. In the first half era of the 20th century, the city celebrated the Stalinism with construction of the neo-classical and national elements – the ‘Stalinist’ architecture was prevalent on main streets. While in the second half of the 20th, the policy shifted to produce mass housing to encounter the needs of the growing immigrants. The city held an image of a uniform-built environment – where mass-produced cost-efficient residential buildings were all over the city. Meanwhile, the old Tbilisi remained untouched or protected during the USSR governance. The traditional buildings and streets were kept, and the pre-Russian part was positively maintained.

After the dissolution of USSR, the urban environment of Tbilisi changed drastically because it shifted from following the rigid plan development to the spontaneous real estate market-oriented development. The internal and external conflicts, such as the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict and the Russo-Georgian War, weakened Georgia’s economy. The wealthy and educated moved out of the state, while the new incomers were mostly rural people, who were reckoned as internally displaced persons (IDPs). These IDPs occupied almost all Soviet Union hotels, leaving the city a slum-like image. Despite the real estate market in the 1990s was quite wild because Georgia sought to quickly get rid of the Soviet Union traces, however, the stagnant economy and poor governance of the market prevented investments in large projects. Developers did not have enough capital, or afraid of the market instability, thus they only interested in small projects for their fast returns. The city silhouette remained minimum changed and the city had a deteriorated city image (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Streetscapes in Central Tbilisi in 2017. Taken by the authors.

After the initiation of the B&R, the Chinese power becomes influential in Georgia gradually. As the economic and political centre, Tbilisi has attracted the most investment, becoming one of the most important trading and transit centres in Transcaucasia. Hualing Group, an influential private company based in Xinjiang and active on the B&R, received invitation from the government Georgia to invest in Tbilisi and Kutaisi, said Secretary Guo Xiangyang, a developer from Hualing Group. Hualing made its investment in the southeast of Tbilisi, which was an urban peripheric area where few constructs or activities were found. However, after comparing with the Tbilisi city future development plan, a wining project for revision of the Tbilisi Land Use Plan 2009, selected

by Tbilisi City hall, it is found that Tbilisi intends to make polycentric development, creating multiple urban centres with its existing transport network. Hualing Projects in Tbilisi are in consistency with Tbilisi’s future development ambition (Figure 5). Those fast-created B&R projects reconfigure the urban form of Tbilisi. The original city edge has been extended to the current vacant land; however, the existing urban texture has not been well considered. Connection between those B&R projects and current urban settlements is weak. Visitors can only reach the new area via private cars.

‘It is a Chinese town in Tbilisi. A replication’, an employee said in our visit.

Figure 5. Tbilisi city future development plan (Chinese invested projects in Tbilisi). Source: City of the Future Group. Modified by the authors.

Detailed cases Furthering to the details, the research chooses two distinct architectural projects – Tbilisi Sea Plaza, and Tbilisi Sea New City to investigate what are the changes on meso (city image) and micro (city face) scales (Figure 6). The city face includes all the observable elements, containing elevations, spaces, and furniture. The two cases were invested, designed, and constructed solely by the Chinese company, Hualing Group, and were supported by both Government of Georgia and Government of China. The current border area of Tbilisi has transformed into an integrated urban area, where various functional zones are grouped and connected via systematic transport system, promoting the maximised efficiency (Figure 7).

Figure 6. Maps of the two projects. Drawn by the authors.

Figure 7. Hualing International SEZ master plan. Source: Hualing Group.

Case 1. Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza, the largest shopping mall of the South Caucasus, is an example of maximising efficiency (Cai, Jaillon and Xue, 2019). The shopping mall had its opening in 2017, consisted of a main building (120,000 m2), warehouse (10,000m2) and a transferring warehouse (90,000 m2). Distance from the current urban prosperity does not disturb the popularity of Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza. It remains one of the most welcomed shopping malls in Tbilisi, selling products from China, Dubai, Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia. Success of the shopping mall can be linked with the following aspects. Firstly, the developer stated that they did not have a choice for site selection.

The government offered the site with cheaper price while asking for employment opportunity in return – 80% employees are Georgian. Secondly, compared with crowded city centre, development in urban boundary requires less investment, and the policy support reduced the rent because the project encounters the strategy of Tbilisi urban future development plan. Moreover, Architect Liu Renkai, the Chief Architect of this project, stated that the design of Sea Plaza followed his past design strategy – high flexibility and high controllability. Seeing on the plan, it is observed that shopping space occupies most of the mall, while little is left for social life. The shop owner can customise their shop size, as long as it follows the grid column plan and the circulation system.

However, despite Architect Liu said that they tried to provide social space in the atrium and the roof floor as much as possible, he admitted that commercial size restrictions imposed by the developer has limited the functionality for other purposes (Figure 8).

Same as the interior spatial organisation, the elevation of Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza reflects the same design ideology of the architect – the extreme centric and symmetric style –the worship for regulation and order. Beyond the shopping mall itself, the parking lot and warehouse follow the same strategy. They were planned and constructed in the efficient linear pattern, greatly facilitating visitor with vehicles and the transport of products, exhibiting the goal of this shopping mall, which is to promote economic communication between countries, or even continents (Figure 9).

Figure 8. Plan and elevation of Tbilisi Sea Plaza. Source: Xinjiang Renkai System City Complex Consultant Corporation Ltd.

Figure 9. Tbilisi Sea Plaza. Source: Hualing (left) and the authors (right).

Case 2. Hualing Tbilisi Sea New City Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza is a pioneer residential project that Hualing did overseas. With an occupation of 420 hectares of land, and 150-million-dollar investment, the project unveils a brandnew image of residence in Tbilisi. Sitting next to Tbilisi Sea, the project envisages a concept of embracing by sea and water, connecting concrete tower blocks with nature. In comparison with the Soviet Union residences, which are mostly in relatively bad status because of aging and lack of maintenance. The widespread ABE (apartment building extension) in central Tbilisi is an example of this (Bouzarovski, Salukvadze, and Gentile, 2011). Residents use cheap materials to make extra space of the flat, transforming living rooms and kitchens to bedrooms, or extending outwards of balconies, which harm not only the streetscape but also dangerous for people living in.

In contrary, the New Sea City project followed the Chinese design and construction codes (Figure 10). The clean and tidy building outlook, the rigid symmetric street patterns, the complete auxiliary social space and facilities contribute to a self-sustaining residential environment. Most of the apartments are in small to medium sizes, including 15, 50 or 68 m2 sizes, which match the urban lifestyle of young people. The apartments are sold out soon after the completion, and the residents can be roughly divided into three types – the Georgian talents from turbulent regions of Georgia, who are supported by the Government of Georgia; the medium class civilians, and the employees of Hualing, testifying the popularity of this B&R project to people with certain affordability.

Secretary Guo Xiangyang said, ‘We are Chinese, so we follow the Chinese way of doing things.’

Figure 10. Tbilisi Sea New City. Source: Hualing.

Discussion On macro scale After entering free market period, the city expanded with formal plans and informal extensions, blurring the city entrances and exits. The urban textures, solids and voids of the city, keep changing.

In the city centre, the voids are easily occupied by incoming investment because of the potential in bringing economic benefit return with least investment, while the solids in central area remain unchanged for its weak potential in bringing profits. However, the expansive void area in the outer city remained unchanged until large investment of the B&R entered, making the urban silhouette and skyline larger and taller.

On meso scale City edge could be reshaped when large investment arrives, for instance, the investment from Hualing of the B&R changed the city edge drastically, by giving a brand-new city image in the current edge area. The newly constructed architectural projects can become new landmarks when receiving political or economic supports, for instance, Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza, is a new destination for shopping activities. The new created transport network reorients human flows, changing the district development status. Hualing Special Economic Zone aims to become a sub-city centre.

On micro scale The newly built B&R buildings exhibit that Tbilisi has become an international platform for various international investments and constructions, changing the urban form in the most delicate details.

Hualing Tbilisi Sea Plaza brought the Chinese standard shopping mall to the Transcaucasia, showing its competency in order, efficiency and flexibility. Hualing Sea New City brought the ubiquitous Chinese residential community to Tbilisi, enhancing the living quality for Georgian people despite some scholars criticise it for the lack of design considerations.

Conclusion Urban form in Georgian cities is undergoing dramatic transformation, from micro to macro scales, especially on the current urban peripheric area. In the transformation process, cultural and social values play much less important roles compared with political and economic needs, which reveals the determination that Georgia has for its urban polycentric development. Influence from the B&R can be irresistible to some involved developing countries because of the attractive economic opportunities. The local policy makers and architects should take active roles in such projects instead of following Chinese design and construction codes thoroughly in order to preserve the traditional values on its architectural and urban forms. Meanwhile, the Chinese developers and

architects need to be aware of the contextual differences, the Chinese invested projects should include more local participation, and more considerations of local social and cultural values.

Therefore, the ultimate goal of the B&R, common development, could be reached.

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