Chongqing Internship Report

Derek Dauphin Chongqing, China 2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIP REPORT

PSU-CHINA INNOVATIONS IN URBANIZATION

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Beijing China Academy of Urban Planning & Design

Chongqing China Academy of Urban Planning & Design

Shenzhen Urban Planning and Design Institute of Shenzhen

Summer Internship Program Each summer interns are placed with planning institutes throughout China to work on projects alongside Chinese planners. Host institutions in China cover all in-country living expenses, work-related travel, food, and lodging in addition to a healthy salary. All 2012 interns were supported by travel grants provided by the Institute for Sustainable Solutions.

The China summer internship program is specifically for MURP students (those enrolled in the Masters in Urban Planning program) who are seeking an internship overseas, and who are open to new experiences and adventure. Any area of specialization will be considered. Chinese planning staff speak English and seek English speakers to work with.

During the summer of 2012 interns travelled to three cities working with staff at two different institutes: The China Academy of Urban Planning & Design (CAUPD) and the Urban Planning & Design Institute of Shenzhen (UPDIS). Reports from interns from all years of the program can be found at: http:// www.pdx.edu/innovations-in-urbanization/past-intern-reports.

Placements Name

Placement

Colin Rowan

CAUPD – Beijing

Shavon Caldwell

CAUPD – Beijing

Derek Dauphin

CAUPD – Chongqing

Jennifer Koch

CAUPD – Chongqing

Iren Taran

UPDIS – Shenzhen

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

Introduction to Chongqing

Chongqing at sunset across the Jialing River.

The People’s Assembly Hall of Chongqing.

Chongqing and Chengdu in the Sichuan Basin.

PSU-CHINA INNOVATIONS IN URBANIZATION

Chongqing (pronounced “chong ching”) is a municipality in Southwest China that can be described as China in the extreme. The municipality packs the population of California – approximately 32 million people – into same land area as the state of South Carolina. Yuzhong District, the city’s historic city center, with over 30,000 people per square kilometer is one of the most densely populated urban areas in Asia. Liangjiang New Area (LNA) was established as China’s only inland special economic zone in 2010 (other zones include Shenzhen and Tianjin). Combining Chongqing’s two northern districts, LNA is larger than the city of Los Angeles and will have multiple commercial, logistic, technology, and financial centers. Two airports have been completed with another two planned as well as a large vessel port. Planners expect 5 million new residents in the area by 2020, nearly doubling the size of the city proper’s current population of approximately 6-7 million. As the focus of the Central Government’s “Go West” campaign, Chongqing has received over $200 billion in funds in 10 years, much of which has been invested in an extensive network of high speed rail, subways, buses, shipping ports, and airports. Chongqing is also unique in that its economy is based largely on supplying domestic demand, such that in 2009, when the coastal cities saw their economies shrink as a result of the global recession, Chongqing’s gross domestic produce (GDP) grew 18% over the previous year. At the heart of the city’s economy is heavy and light manufacturing, with one of China’s the richest sources of aluminum and some of the country’s largest automobile and motorcycle manufacturers.

Within China, the history of Chongqing is famous. The capital of the ancient State of Ba during the 4th-century BC, Chongqing had many names during the tumultuous millennium that followed until the reign of Emperor Guangzong of the Song Empire, who become both king of the region and ruler of all China. He named his home city “double celebration” or ChongQing to mark the event.

The city was founded on a peninsula between the Yangzte and Jialing Rivers among the foothills of the Daba Mountains and has always served as a trading port for the Sichuan Basin. Chengdu to the west is one of China’s ancient and culturally rich cities and the capital of Sichuan Province, which included Chongqing until it was made a 1 / 10

Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

municipality. The Qifu Agreement of 1890 opened the city’s port to international trade causing the city to grow in the decades that followed as migrants from across the region poured into the city. By the 1930s, the city had grown to 600,000 people living not only in the 1-3 story wood buildings perched on the hilltops of the Old City’s peninsula, but also across the Jialing River to the north in what is now Jiangbei District. During the Second SinoJapanese War (1937-1945), the Guomindang Government (often referred to at Kuomintang or KMT in the West) moved the country’s capital to Chongqing further away from the front of the conflict with Japan. Japanese planes dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs on the city in three years. The wooden buildings were destroyed or burned in the fires that followed raids killing more than 10,000 people. Following the war, the capital returned to Beijing, and both the Guomindang and then Communist Party of China (CPC) focused on modernizing the city’s infrastructure and buildings. During the mid-20th century, Chairman Mao moved coastal manufacturing inland to protect it from perceived threats from American and other hostile forces, changing the nature of the city. When Deng Xiaoping began economic reforms in 1978, Chongqing was one of his laboratories and the city’s well-established manufacturing sector grew dramatically in the decades that followed. By 1997, the Central Government viewed the city as central to its efforts to spread economic development to Western China and the “Go West” program began.

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

The Old City (Yuzhong District) in 1886.

Source: Chongqing Planning Museum.

Wooden buildings of Yuzhong District in 1920. Source: Robert John Davidson, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Western Branch of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design (CAUPD.WB) CAUPD is headquartered in Beijing, with satellite branches in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and since 2009, Chongqing.

Whereas the Beijing offices take up multiple buildings with numerous departments, the branches tend to be smaller with fewer sub-units. In Chongqing, there were relatively few divisions and team members often worked in different roles depending on the project. The total planning staff was approximately 50 people, and only a small number had been with CAUPD.WB for more than one year. Many of the senior planners and managers were brought in from Beijing. For the most part, the office was very young and energetic, working together on projects from early in the morning until late into the evening hours 6-7 days a week.

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Japanese bombs falling on Chongqing during WWII. Source: History in Images.

PSU-CHINA INNOVATIONS IN URBANIZATION

Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

A few of our colleagues had traveled to Europe or Canada for graduate studies and the impact of international planning ideas on the branch’s work was clear. While we were there, we saw planners working on many land use projects, an eco-industrial park development, urban design projects, the development of new markets and other economic development functions, a regional green spaces project, and comprehensive plans for villages and towns within the municipality.

The offices of CAUPD.WB across Beilin Park.

The vast majority of our colleagues were from cities somewhere within Sichuan Province or Chongqing Municipality and a good number were from within the city proper. They wanted to work at CUAPD.WB to be close to their families and visited them often. The majority did their undergraduate and graduate studies or internships at Chongqing University and remained friendly with faculty there, involving them as experts on specific projects or consulting with them in less formal ways. Overall, the planners were expected to cope with very high numbers of projects and given very short timelines. The tremendous growth of the city has resulted in huge planning needs, resulting in overworked staff.

Projects Entryway to CAUPD.WB with staff portraits.

Foggy view from the CAUPD.WB offices.

PSU-CHINA INNOVATIONS IN URBANIZATION

During my time at CAUPD.WB I worked on two major projects: (1) The pilot study of a large collaborative quality of life study CAUPD is conducting with John Friedmann at the University of British Columbia, and (2) The 2020 Strategic Plan for Yuzhong District. Each of these projects is described below. In addition to this work, we were also asked to conduct case studies on various issues, and conducted a workshop on American planning research methods for the planning staff. The latter is increasingly important to Chinese planners who are beginning to engage the public in planning projects. Most planning degree programs in China are housed within universities’ architecture departments, and as such, planners receive training in drawing, illustration, urban design, and physical planning, with little or no instruction in the social science methodologies required by modern public participation processes. Our workshop provided a fast-paced 2-hour version of the training we received over the preceding year of graduate study.

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Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

Quality of Life Pilot Study CAUPD is currently in the early stages of a multi-year study being conducted in partnership with John Friedmann of the University of British Columbia. The study will develop an indicator system incorporating measures for the factors that contribute to “quality of life” which will be assessed either through interviews with city residents or through collecting data from existing resources. The study will analyze resident satisfaction in the cities where CAUPD has branches: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chongqing. Residents from neighborhoods throughout each city will be asked to rate their satisfaction on specific criteria with the following categories: Services and facilities, social structures, urban safety, ecology and environment, and public governance. Together, the project will be the largest and most detailed analyses carried out in China to understand living standards and levels of satisfaction for the country’s 700 million urban residents. We were asked to develop a pilot index and study to be conducted in Chongqing. A set of three neighborhoods from Yuzhong District were chosen for this pilot study. Data would be collected through interviews with residents, surveys of community service center staff and street level government, with site observation and geo-spatial analysis to rate the physical environment.

Some of the 39 buildings of Hua Yi Po.

Street level government officials responding to questions.

During our two months in Chongqing, we were able to develop the pilot survey tool, work with Chinese colleagues to translate it into Chinese, and collect and analyze data from one of the three neighborhoods selected for the pilot study. This community, called Hua Yi Po, was located in north-central Yuzhong District, and consisted of 39 17-story buildings with elevated walkways and public spaces connecting the buildings to a primary school and the street level government offices that administer the area. While Chinese colleagues conducted the interviews using our translated survey tool, a handful of the managers and I met with street level government officers who provided information about facilities available, schools, and opportunities for public involvement among other topics. During this discussion, we learned a great deal about the dynamics of the neighborhood.

The buildings in the community were built in the 1970s and 1980s and many of the retired residents living there today were workers in factories that have since been de4 / 10

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2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

Residents of Hua Yi Po doing their morning exercises.

A grandson and grandmother living in one of the homes we visitied in Hua Yi Po.

PSU-CHINA INNOVATIONS IN URBANIZATION

Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

molished to make way for residential and commercial towers. The apartments they live in were provided to them by their work committees and when the property market was established in the 1980s, they were able to purchase their homes. In many cases, their children have moved away to modern apartment buildings in more recently developed parts of Chongqing, however, there remains a strong sense of community within the retirees. The community faces two major problems: (1) None of the buildings have elevators and aging residents are finding it increasingly difficult to climb up to 10 flights of stairs to get in and out of their apartment, and (2) Because the housing is very inexpensive to rent, most of the new arrivals in the community are migrants with short-term work in the area and no family ties or interest in joining the community.

Older residents are distrustful of newer residents because they refuse to join community activities that are largely oriented towards the retirees who have lived there for three or four decades. In the face of these issues, the street level government is seeking permission to replace the 17-story towers with new 30-story towers with elevators and modern conveniences. While they focus on the benefits the residents will enjoy from the new buildings, it is also likely that the government will benefit substantially from selling leasing rights for the new buildings.

We were invited to visit one of the retiree’s homes and were welcomed in by a grandmother, grandfather, and grandson. Their apartment was surprisingly large and nicely built. Only later did we learn from the interview team that this family was receiving four times the pension the other retirees were receiving and therefore often received guests of the street level government. Our analysis of the data collected at the site showed that aside from two girls surveyed in a nearby noodle shop, only retirees were included in the sample. Overall, these retirees scored very highly for satisfaction with the environmental health of their community, the public spaces, and neighborhood overall. They were also very satisfied with their local government and opportunities for public participation. However, when asked about their biggest expenditures and fears, nearly all reported that they were very afraid of getting sick due to the costs. China’s national health insurance doesn’t cover serious illnesses prevalent in aging populations such as cancer and diabetes, so these costs must be paid out of pocket. The majority of retirees reported living in homes with three generations, 5 / 10

Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

and that much of their income was devoted to supporting their grandchildren’s schooling. The result is that on a day-to-day basis, the retirees were very happy, but with little in the way of a societal safety net, they were very anxious about the future.

For this project, the Western focus of graduate training on social science methodologies served us very well and we were able to make considerable progress on the project.

Many of our colleagues reported they had only administered a survey once before as undergraduates to a small sample. We were able to work with them to develop the survey and set of statistical tools they could employ after we were gone. By taking them through the process with one of the pilot communities, we were able to provide insights into more nuanced elements of social research.

One of the highlights of this project was a three-hour discussion I had with three planners about what the term “sense of place” meant in the Chinese context. Jennifer Koch and I had included this in our survey tool without considering that it would be wholly unfamiliar to our colleagues. As I began to explain it in terms of examples from Portland, it seemed very obvious how little of my understanding applied in a city most of which is barely 10 years old but already had a population three times that of the Portland Metro region. So we began to discuss different neighborhoods in Chongqing, new and old that seemed to lack or have developed a unique character. The result of this discussion was that in Chongqing, the areas that the Chinese planners identified as having a sense of place were those where the residents who lived there had shaped the way things developed, either through small locally owned storefronts, artwork, or street vendors with customer bases who depend on them everyday. These areas have a unique vitality and sense of community lacking in strictly residential communities such as Hua Yi Po.

Part of the research team reviewing responses.

Public art, public space, and mixed use development in Chongqing’s Shapingba District.

2020 Yuzhong District Strategic Plan Chongqing’s city center is Yuzhong District, what was once referred to as “Old Chongqing.” This long peninsula is where the city began, and during the last two decades of the 20th century, it accumulated most of the city’s financial services, business headquarters, and wealthiest residents. The success of the city, including the wealth pouring through Yuzhong District, led the Central Gov6 / 10

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Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

LIANGJIANG NEW AREA Jiangbeizui Jiefangbei Nan’an Nanping

Competing business centers in central Chongqing superimposed over the Planning Museum’s model city. ~3 MILES

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Buena Vista Alamo Square Cathedral Hill

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Dramatic elevation changes sampled from two slices across Yuzhong District highlight its unique urban form and the importance of the peninsula’s central spine (light red) as a gentle sloping corridor for transportation and tourism alike. Note: Elevation changes along both slices are compared with San Francisco’s hill neighborhoods.

PSU-CHINA INNOVATIONS IN URBANIZATION

ernment to establish the Liangjiang New Area (LNA; See Introduction to Chongqing), with its numerous business districts including Jiangbeizui across the Jialing River to the north. To the west and south across the Yangtze River lie two more business districts in Nan’an and Nanping, respectively. These new business districts and the tremendous capital pouring into them from the Central Government as well as other sources present a genuine threat to Yuzhong District’s dominance. The 2020 Strategic Plan is an effort to develop a long-range framework for how the district should develop in the 10 years ahead to maintain its economic and cultural vitality in the face of LNA’s new 5 million residents and jobs.

The contract for this project was being formalized during my time in Chongqing, so a great deal of work was required to establish a vision for the project. I produced much of this early work, establishing some of the concepts and basic elements I believed would best benefit Yuzhong District. The district planning bureau had specified six categories of urban policy they would like addressed: Economic development, tourism, urban form, sustainability, transportation, and harmonious communities. I conducted a number of surveys of the district itself, walking along the mountainous peninsula’s 3-mile long spine and familiarizing myself with some of the neighborhoods and major organizational axes of the district. I then sought out examples from Asia, Europe, and the US that could be adapted to meet the desires of the district government, as well as the peninsula’s unique urban form and existing economic organization. One component of this early work was to study how the industries of similar sized cities in the West were organized. US census data was used to create heatmaps for various industries in a number of cities including New York City (Manhattan) and San Francisco (American’s hilly city).

Finally, I made a number of recommendations for the six categories based on case studies and similar courses of action taken by other successful Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Chengdu, and Hong Kong. I found that using examples from the US and Europe was only successful if I could show that they had been done effectively in an Asian context, and preferably, in a Chinese city. Chinese planners do not take risks on untested policies or ideas, but instead prefer to find an example of a small-scale strategy or policy and expand it on a grand scale. This 7 / 10

Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

is how Guangzhou developed one of the world’s largest bikeway systems connecting much of the region. It also became apparent that there were a few Asian cities that seemed to be viewed by all my Chinese colleagues as exemplary. These included Seoul, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Drawing on examples and ideas tested in these cities was much more powerful than using examples from European or US cities, and in some cases, more powerful than using examples from Chinese cities with significant foreign involvement such as Shanghai and Chengdu.

In the end, my manager was pleased with my work and I presented it to the vice president of the branch who asked for more research on a few specific areas. As successful as this later work was, my initial attempts at grappling with the project showed me that there were significant differences in how American and Chinese planners work.

Following an initial meeting where I was assigned this project, I spent a week carrying out research and drafting a report of approximately 6 pages that I sent on to my manager. I continued adding to it and carrying out more research, but received no comment about the draft. When I sought out comment in person, I was told it was not the right product and needed to be more specific. Over the course of my time there, I struggled with this requirement for “specific” details. Often I had provided the breakdown of how a city had paid for a specific project down to which bonds at which rates and yet this was not what was requested by specific details. By the end of my time there, I tended to view this requirement as being more about showing a specific vision and making decisions about what should be done instead of providing options. When I produced long PowerPoint presentations instead of reports, and showed images of examples alongside tables of statistics, my ideas really connected with the Chinese planners. From presentations given by Portland planners who have worked in China, I later learned that it is often expected that plans be communicated in terms of cultural principles or stories. A park design that that openly draws on connections between the five elements of the Wu Xing (i.e., wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) may be understood and valued more readily than plans highlighting Western ideas of scale, proportion, and environmental impact even if the resulting park is the same.

Seoul (South Korea) is often a source of inspiration for Chinese planners. Source: PB&B Blog.

Shanghai’s historic Western influence makes it an outlier within the Chinese planning community. Pictured above is the Xintiandi Historic Redevelopment led by American developer Carolina Woo.

One lesson I learned during my time in China is that cities throughout the world face very similar problems during 8 / 10

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2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

Dense tenements in Manhattan in 1900. Source: Unknown.

Row houses in New York’s “Five Points” neighborhood in 1879. Source: Wikipedia.

Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

the course of their development. Chinese cities may seem different from Western cities today, but one need only look at New York, Chicago, or London at the turn of the 20th century to find similar images: Cheaply constructed tenement towers packed so densely that natural light is scarce, smog and smoke from nearby factories reducing visibility, families packed into individual rooms without proper sanitation, and water so contaminated that it has to be boiled to drink. Other problems China faces due to urbanization are the same we are currently facing, particularly in terms of cities transitioning from growth to shrinking in the span of a decade or less. The most unique elements of what is happening in China is the scale and the speed of these transformations; however, I would argue the actual processes are common to all industrializing nations at some point in their development.

Finally, working as a planner in China showed me that urban planning in the West often ignores one of its core functions – creating appealing visions of the future that cities can work towards. I am certainly not the first person to make this argument. When you visit a planning museum in any Chinese city and watch exciting images of what the city can become, you realize that their planners are involved in a very important sales pitch. They are selling the Chinese on an urban future. Due to a number of policies and historic factors, China is a country that is very underurbanized for its level of development and size. Economic development and progress are driving people to move from rural areas to the cities, to live in dense urban neighborhoods instead of farm villages, and in some cases, to leave families behind to follow opportunity. America went through these same processes, and had generations of visionaries to provide comforting portraits of what life would be like in an urban America. Chinese planners are doing that work today, but they must convince 1.3 billion people that they can find happiness in the cities. The more compelling their vision of the future, and the more they can work to establish policies that will realize some of those visions, the more stable their society will be.

The Shibati neighborhood of Yuzhong District today.

PSU-CHINA INNOVATIONS IN URBANIZATION

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Derek Dauphin ▪ Chongqing, China

2012 SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

Conclusion My internship in China was an eye opening experience.

I have lived abroad before, and traveled extensively, but this was my first opportunity working as a planner in another country. The projects I was involved with were large-scale and exciting, and happily my input was almost always well received by my manager and fellow planners.

I was also impressed by the warmth and openness of the Chinese people in general and our colleagues in particular. We were taken to dinner, movies, shopping, and on tours of the city throughout our first month. At the end of our second month, CAUPD sent us on a 4-day trip with the new hires from all of the branches. We were taken to the mountain village of Beichuan, which was destroyed during the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, and to the new city planned entirely by CAUPD up to the design of the street lamps and signs. We were toasted, taken out for karaoke, and midnight barbeques. The combination of the cultural experience and the opportunity to play an important role in large and exciting projects is truly unique to this program and I am very happy that I chose to go.

Yuzhong District’s north shore complete with highway, monorail, funicular, and cruise boats.

Acknowledgements This internship experience was the culmination of a great deal of work by staff at PSU and CAUPD. I would like to thank Prof. Connie Ozawa, Prof. Yiping Fang, Collin Roughton, and finally Dr. Jennifer Allen and the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, who supported our travels.

I would also like to thank our manager at CAUPD and friend, Xiaolu “Lynia” Yan, who ensured our working and cultural experiences were enriching and rewarding, as well as the director, vice-directors and planning staff of CAUPD.WB who were remarkably open and giving with their time and expertise.

Chongqing’s remarkable night lighting.

Note on Content All images and text were created by the author of this document unless otherwise stated and cannot be used elsewhere without express written consent.

Jennifer and I drinking full glasses of wine and baijiu surrounded by cultural dancers. We were part of a group of first year planners visiting the site of New Beichuan -- a city entirely designed by CAUPD following the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake that destroyed Old Beichuan.

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