City in Transition

CITY IN TRAN— SITION Urbanism in Postindustrial China [Tangshan]

LORENA BELLO GÓMEZ BRENT D. RYAN [eds.]

MIT/SA+P Departments of Architecture + Urban Studies and Planning

CITY IN TRAN— SITION Urbanism in Postindustrial China [Tangshan]

LORENA BELLO GÓMEZ BRENT D. RYAN [eds.]

MIT/SA+P Departments of Architecture + Urban Studies and Planning

STUDIO REPORT [Spring 2019] Instructors/ Editors Lorena Bello Gómez Brent D. Ryan TA/ Editorial Assistant Colleen Chiu-Shee Students Feiyue Chen, Joude El-Mabsout, Stephen Erdman, Zhuangyuan Fan, Melissa Gutierrez Soto, Dylan Halpern, Charlotte Ong, Tanaya Srini, Haoyu Wang Review Critics (Beijing, Cambridge) Eran Ben-Joseph, Joan Busquets, Peter Del Tredici, Jill Desimini, Kathryn Firth, Dennis Frenchman, Gary Hack, Sheila Kennedy, Marie Law Adams, Tim Love, Dennis Pieprz, Mao Qizhi, Peter Rowe, Andrew Scott, Susanne Schindler, Rafi Segal, Jim Wescoat, Sarah Williams, Zhang Lufeng, Zhang Yao, and Zhu Wenyi Proofreading Brent D. Ryan, Tanaya Srini Editorial Design Lorena Bello Gómez Editorial Advisor Melissa Vaughn Printed In China © 2021. All rights reserved.

The work in this book was produced by students as part of a studio course offered by MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning in collaboration with Tsinghua University. All images and text are the property of the authors and may not be reproduced in any format (print or digital), in any language, without permission in writing.

This publication and this Studio were funded by the MIT Paul Sun Fund. Printing was funded by Mr. Sheng Lin.

FOR TUNNEY LEE WHO MADE ALL CHINA STUDIOS POSSIBLE

Foreword:

Adèle Naudé Santos

The 2019 Beijing Studio in Tangshan marks an important next step in the long collaboration between the two Schools of Architecture and Planning at MIT, in Cambridge, US, and Tsinghua University, in Beijing, China. As this thorough studio book details in its pages, the collaboration started thirty-five years ago when the late Professor Tunney Lee, to whom this book is dedicated, had a casual luncheon with developer Paul Sun. The result was a gift that has permitted one of the longest interuniversity collaborations between the US and China involving almost 600 students and faculty as of 2021 when I write.

Over the course of my own longstanding relationship with China, I have witnessed the tremendous transformation that the country has undergone through industrialization and urbanization, ever since my first visit to Beijing in 2005. Since then, I have participated in numerous collaborations and intellectual exchanges, on the ever evolving architectural and urbanism scene of the country.

Today, issues such rural abandonment and regional and ecological decline are pressing in China. These are topics that MIT SA+P has addressed through design workshops, including some led by myself, and that will now be considered systematically through urban design studios such as that shown in the present book. I am very pleased that Professors Brent D. Ryan and Lorena Bello Gómez have led the Studio into this new era of collaboration.

This publication shows exemplary design work from the Studio, as well as a number of additional contributions testifying to MIT´s commitment in addressing challenging design problems such as postindustrial and ecological transition. Following the 2019 Tangshan joint studio, the MIT-Tsinghua collaboration is poised to continue into the future, and there is no better evidence of this renewed partnership for design than the book that you hold in your hands.

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Table of Contents

Foreword 04

Adèle Naudé Santos

Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Deindustrialization as Catalyst for Transition 16 + Cities in Transition: A New Approach for the China Studio

Lorena Bello Gómez/ Brent D. Ryan

24 + Tunney Lee: A Conversation About China

Lorena Bello Gómez/ Brent D. Ryan 36 + Resist the Earthquake and Rescue Ourselves: The Reconstruction of Tangshan after the 1976 Earthquake

Beatrice Chen

Part I: Tangshan in Transition: First Case Study 58 + Tangshan: New Challenges Ahead

Lin Peng. (Translated by Haoyu Wang)

66 + Urban Approaches to China’s Postindustrial Transition

Liu Jian 78 + A Second Reconstruction: Studio Pedagogy

Lorena Bello Gómez/ Brent D. Ryan

Part II: Housing in Transition: Surgical Upgrades 102 + Housing in Tangshan

Brent D. Ryan/ Colleen Chiu-Shee 109 + The Neo-Danwei: Retrofit Housing for an Aging Tangshan

Stephen Erdman/ Tanaya Srini/ Haoyu Wang 119 + The Urban Villages: Tactics Against Demolition

Zhuangyuan Fan/ Melissa Gutiérrez/ Dylan Halpern 8

Part III: Industry in Transition: Re-store, Reprogram, Re-use, Re-purpose, Re-cycle 134 + Ecological Urbanism

Anne W. Spirn 148 + Brown Earth-Work: A New Landscape Paradigm and Research Approach for Brownfields Regeneration

Zheng Xiaodi 164 + Industrial Urbanism: Exploring the City–Production Dynamic

Tali Hatuka/ Eran Ben-Joseph/ Sunny Menozzi 170 + Case Studies

Part IV: Designing a City in Transition 192 + Industry and Ecology: Radical Predictions

Lorena Bello Gómez/ Brent D. Ryan 201 + Redeeming Tanggang: Spectrums of Industries+Ecologies

Feiyue Chen/ Joude El-Mabsout/ Stephen Erdman/

Tanaya Srini 231 + Turning Point: Tangshan

Haoyu Wang/ Charlotte Xin Yun Ong 253 + Second Firing: Tangshan

Zhuangyuan Fan/ Melissa Gutiérrez/ Dylan Halpern

Afterword: Lessons from Tangshan 282

Lorena Bello Gómez/ Brent D. Ryan

Appendix 288 + Teaching Bibliography and Essay References 298 + Contributors 303 + Credits 9

Acknowledgments

This publication presents the work from an urban design studio run jointly by the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT-SAP) and the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University (SA-THU) in the Spring semester of 2019. This thirty-three year long collaboration between the two institutions has been made possible thanks to the generosity of Paul Sun, who started a fund to support the studio in the 1980s. At SA+P, we would like to extend our gratitude to our Dean, Hashim Sarkis, to DUSP’s Department Head, Eran Ben-Joseph, and ARCH Interim Head Andrew Scott for their support. Without the assistance of Ramona Allen, MIT Vice-President for Human Resources, and Ken Goldsmith, SA+P Assistant Dean for Finance, this book would not have been possible. Special thanks to Melissa Vaughn for her advice and recommendations while editing the presented material. At THU, we are truly thankful to Vice-Dean Liu Jian, new liaison for the collaboration, for her willingness to find a site and topic that supports research interests at both institutions, as well as for her hospitality during our visit in January 2019. Together with Tang Yan, former SPURS Fellow at MIT and co-instructor of the studio, our Tsinghua colleagues made the studio possible. We also thank Yubang CEO, Mr. Lin Sheng for supporting our visit and stay in Tangshan and for printing this volume in China.

A project of this scope would not have been possible without the generous contributions of a talented team of scholars, experts, and students and we want to use the opportunity to thank them for their work. Special thanks go to Eran Ben-Joseph, Beatrice Chen, Tali Hatuka, Tunney Lee, Peng Lin, Liu Jian, Sunny Menozzi, Anne Whiston Spirn, and Xiaodi Zheng for allowing us to either reprint their essays or for formulating new ones. We are grateful to Lawrence Vale, Tali Hatuka and Peter del Tredici for very insightful talks on social housing, industrial urbanism, and ecological restoration.

Studio critics in Beijing and MIT were Eran Ben-Joseph, Peter

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Del Tredici, Kathryn Firth, Dennis Pieprz, Mao Qizhi, Susanne Shindler, Rafi Segal, Zhang Lufeng, and Zhu Wenyi. Their remarks were fundamental to keep the projects moving forward. Some of the aforementioned also joined the final review together with Joan Busquets, Jill Desimini, Dennis Frenchman, Gary Hack, Sheila Kennedy, Marie Law Adams, Tim Love, Peter Rowe, Andrew Scott, Jim Wescoat, Sarah Williams and Zhang Yao. Thank you all for providing insightful and constructive feedback for MIT and THU students.

We also would like to acknowledge the contributions of PhD Candidate and studio TA Colleen Chiu-Shee in making the January trip possible. We thank Colleen and the MIT student cohort for their contributions to this publication’s first draft. We also thank Zhu He, PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant at THU, for his assistance during our visit and his fabulous drone pictures. Special thanks to PhD Candidate Paloma Francisca Gonzalez Rojas for helping the students polish their software skills with two semester workshops.

To end, we sincerely thank all the students in the studio for their patient quest in confronting a problem of this scope, and for their talent in synthesizing it through design with projects that embed a series of complex and hybrid programs to counterweigh the effects of postindustrial decline in Tangshan. This publication includes illustrations and original drawings from nine MIT students: Feiyue Chen (SMarchS), Joude El-Mabsout (SMarchS), Stephen Erdman (MCP), Melissa Gutierrez Soto (SMarchS), Dylan Halpern (MCP), Charlotte Xin Yun Ong (MCP), Tanaya Srini (MCP), Haoyu Wang (SMarchS), and Zhuangyan Fan (MCP). The illustrations included in this book from the workshop in Beijing were made by MIT students in collaboration with ten students from THU: Hao Enqi, Hou Yuqian, Liu Yi, Meng Xiangyi, Shao Xutao, Xu Ke, Yu Wangzai, Zhang Dongyu, Zhang Lu and Zhu Shida. To all, we extend our deep appreciation.

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Introduction

Deindustrialization as Catalyst for Transition

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Cities in Transition: A New Approach for the China Studio Lorena Bello Gómez/Brent D. Ryan Tunney Lee: A Conversation About China Lorena Bello Gómez/Brent D. Ryan “Resist the Earthquake and Rescue Ourselves”: The Reconstruction of Tangshan After the 1976 Earthquake Beatrice Chen

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Cities in Transition: A New Approach for the China Studio

Lorena Bello Gómez, Brent D. Ryan

1.

World Bank Group, 2019. https:// data.worldbank.org/ indicator/NY.ADJ. NNTY.PC.CD. 2. International Monetary Fund, 2019. https:// www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ weo/2019/02/weodata/index.aspx.

3.

Kevin Lynch, and Tunney Lee. “Nanjing”. 1980.

From City Sense and City Design, MIT Press. 226-232.

4. Zhang Jie, Shan Jun, Jan Wampler, Dennis Frenchman, ed.

Twenty Years of Student Work of Tsinghua-MIT Beijing Joint Urban Design Studio. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2009.

Since 1980, the People’s Republic of China has engaged in a historic process of economic development. What was in the 1970s the world’s physically largest, but one of the world’s poorest countries,1 has become the second-largest economy in the world as of 2019.2 This tremendous economic transition has brought with it tremendous social and physical change. Chinese consumers have today vastly more purchasing power, enabling a previously unknown middleclass lifestyle to spread throughout most of China. And Chinese cities have physically transformed in order to accommodate the economic engines and consumer-driven products of the new Chinese economy and society. In many places these cities are unrecognizable from forty years ago when observers like Kevin Lynch and Tunney Lee noted a city like Nanjing composed of “a maze of narrow lanes, solidly lined with one-story buildings”, and streets “lined with sycamore trees” and “great streams of cyclists”, and even “a few draft animals”.3 Today’s Nanjing, like most other Chinese cities, instead features landscapes of tall towers, wide roads filled with autos, well-developed metro systems, and a vastly expanded metropolitan cityscape, often densely developed itself.

When MIT and Tsinghua commenced their cooperation in 1985 with the first of the Beijing Urban Design Studios, China was at the beginning of its upward arc of economic development, urban expansion, social change, and landscape transformation. Accordingly, the first twenty or so years of the Studio concentrated on those urban areas undergoing the greatest degrees of transformation;4 in particular, the older hutong neighborhoods of Beijing that had suffered from decades of neglect and that were variably interpreted as slums or as heritage. Arguably, the ceaseless efforts of the Studio to argue for intelligent, creative preservation of Beijing’s neighborhood heritage in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s did in fact contribute to the growing sense, codified in the decade of the 2010s, that the majority of these neighborhoods should be upgraded and in large part preserved. That one can walk through Beijing today and experience 16

if not all, but a large number of hutong areas shows that the Studio’s heritage efforts were not misplaced, but in fact correctly foresaw Beijing’s growing heritage-driven urban rehabilitation.

As China’s cities grew and developed in the early 21st century, environmental concerns rose to the fore. The massive scale of China’s new economy introduced pollution, consumption of land, and greenhouse gas emissions as signal elements of urbanization, and as elements that strategic urbanization could not only address but mitigate. “Clean energy cities” became a new focus for the Beijing Studios, marking a new era in China’s urbanization.5 But pollution and the need for energy efficiency was not the only emerging facet of change in twenty-first century China. Within a relatively compressed period of time, China’s economy transitioned from one driven by agriculture (41 percent of gross domestic product in 19686) and industry (48 percent of GDP as late as 20057) to one dominated by the service industry, which rose to over 50 percent of China’s GDP between 2013 and 2015.8 Deindustrialization is a familiar economic transition: all industrial economies, from the nineteenth-century UK to the late twentiethcentury East Asian tigers, have gone through the “postindustrial shift”. The effects have been dramatic: some countries, such as Singapore or Japan, have shifted to services comparatively painlessly, and most former industrial areas have been redeveloped. But other countries, especially the US and former USSR with large geographies and comparatively isolated regions, have many cities that have never recovered economically. These cities’ resulting population losses and widespread physical abandonment of industrial plants and residential areas has given them the moniker of “shrinking cities”.9 At the end of the twenty-first century’s second decade, China is undergoing not only an economic but a demographic transition as well. China’s fertility rate dropped below replacement rate (2.1 children per woman) in 1991 and has remained at or below 1.6 since then, resulting in a sharp decrease in population growth that will transition to a nationwide population decline as early as 2023.10 This coming peak population, in tandem with a dramatic rural-urban transition that reached 59 percent by 2017, has led to dramatic population decline in just over one-third of Chinese cities, most of them in inland areas.11 This demographic shift is especially devastating in areas of China whose economies are dependent on heavy industry, particularly China’s Northeast provinces, an area that has been deemed “China’s Rust Belt”.12 The new reality of impending peak population and of concentrated demographic and economic decline in the country’s northeast and interior does not mesh with foreign expectations and understandings of China. Images of expansive urban growth, towering skyscrapers,

5.

Zhang Jie, Dennis Frenchman, Mao Qizini and Shao Lei, eds. THU+MIT Urban Design Joint Studio. Student’s Works (2008-2014).

Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2015.

6. The World Bank, 2019. https:// www.theglobaleconomy.com/China/ Share_of_agriculture/ 7. The World Bank, 2019. https:// www.investopedia.com/articles/ investing/103114/ chinas-gdp-examined-servicesector-surge.asp 8. China Daily, 2019. http://www. chinadaily.com. cn/a/201905/23/ WS5ce60fa8a31048422 60bd5d0.html 9.

Oswalt 2006, Shrinking Cities Volumes 1 and 2.

Germany: Hatje Cantz; New York: D.A.P. 10.

Nikkei Asian Review. 2019. https://asia.nikkei. com/Politics/Chinas-population-forecast-to-peak-at1.44bn-in-2029 11.

China Statistical Yearbook, 2017. http://www. stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ ndsj/2017/indexeh. htm 12.

South China Morning Post, 2019. https://www.scmp. com/economy/ china-economy/ article/3009213/ chinas-northeast ern-rust-beltstruggling-retain-population 17

TANGSHAN INDUSTRIAL TAXONOMY FIGURE GROUND

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and giant factories still dominate foreign media coverage of China, but these images do not tell the entire story. Many of China’s cities are facing a future of economic and demographic deprivation that will have more in common with post-industrial territories than with booming Shenzhen. Should population slowdown and deindustrialization continue, China may start transitioning into a shrinking country. This new economic and demographic reality forecasts a new physical reality, and establishes serious and longstanding challenges for designers and planners shaping Chinese cities. This new Chinese reality also shaped the thematic and pedagogical approach of the ‘third wave’ of MIT-Tsinghua Beijing (now China) Urban Design Studios that commenced in 2019 with City in Transition: Tangshan.

Tangshan, though located close to Beijing and Tianjin, has more in common with the cities of China’s three northeastern provinces than it has with the capital. Decades of resource extraction have wrought environmental degradation including subsidence and waste, and more recent shifts of industry away from the city core, either to the seacoast or to other parts of China, promise to leave many industrial sites vacant by the early 2020s. Tangshan was thus an appropriate site for the first MIT-China Urban Design Studio examining cities in transition. The projects explored in this volume provide promising design directions for future urbanism in a country where vast numbers of cities are just beginning to experience the population declines and degradation of their physical environment that many European, American, and ex-Soviet cities have experienced for decades. The challenge of China’s cities in transition is large, but the transformative capacity of China’s design and planning community is also substantial. Harnessing the power of design to improve the quality of life, sense of place, and environmental performance in China’s cities in transition is a challenge that the MIT-Tsinghua China Urban Design studio is eager to address in future studios to come.

Deindustrialization as Catalyst: A New Approach for the China Studio

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Teaching Assistants: Colleen Chiu-Shee (MIT), He Zhu (THU) THU Students: Ke Xu, Xiangyi Meng, Shida Zhu, Wangzai Yu, Lu Zhang, Yuqian Hou, Enqi Hao, Dongyu Zhang, Yi Liu, Xutao Shao

Instructors: Lorena Bello Gómez (MIT), Liu Jian (THU), Brent D. Ryan (MIT), Tang Yan (THU) MIT Students: Feiyue Chen, Joude El-Mabsout, Stephen Erdman, Zhuangyuan Fan, Melissa Gutierrez Soto, Dylan Halpern, Charlotte Ong, Tanaya Srini, Haoyu Wang 21

Tunney Lee: A Conversation About China

Lorena Bello Gómez, Brent D. Ryan

1.

Tunney provided a document with a complete list of contacts made by the U.S. China Exchange and compiled by David R. Godschalk. Included at the end of interview as Appendix 1.

2.

Kevin Lynch et al. Nanjing with Tunney Lee (1980), City Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch. Edited by Tridib Banerjee and Michael Southworth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 226.

I was part of the Kevin Lynch team of city planners that visited China in 1980. I had gone myself in 1975. Mao was still alive, but China was opening up. At that point I had been separated from my family for thirty-odd years, so I wanted to be back in touch. The so-called US China friendship association had an office in Cambridge. I was in that circle of people who knew China. But there was no consulate in the US, so I went to Canada and got a visa in Montreal. While it was a family trip, I also visited a university in Guangzhou where there were some MIT graduates. Other MIT graduates had gone to Tsinghua and Tianjin. But the most prominent architects in China had gone to Penn, not MIT. Going back to 1975, my family and I had remained in touch with letters! Plus through the Guangzhou networks, as my godfather was a teacher there. In China, the networks are family, relatives, and schoolmates. I traveled as “returned overseas Chinese”. They weren’t admitting just anybody—there were no tour groups. I was admitted on that basis. I went back to my village, to my hometown. My sisters had been sent to different parts of Guangdong Province. They seldom got together—it was very difficult to travel at that time in China— they got permission to travel together to Beijing. My sister had only one telephone on her block, you talk in a public place surrounded by busybodies so people know everything. Everybody knew when I was coming to visit. They formed street committees—these were the nosiest neighbors, keeping an eye on everybody!

In 1980 our connections were made by the friendship association.¹ It was an early organization—a little leftist—to help people in the US with travel to China. Kevin Lynch’s daughter had studied at Nanjing University and so she spent some time there. Kevin Lynch’s books had been pirated in China, so when he went to Nanjing, he gave them the copyright: “better you publish it than the pirates!” He was always very interested in China. That’s why he wrote about Nanjing.² We knew the friendship association, because they were in Cambridge. There were some initiatives on the China side, asking 24

Tunney Lee and Lorena Bello in conversation at MIT (10/16/2019)

if a delegation of planners could come. The majority of the group was from MIT, there was Kevin, myself, a PhD student named [Tridib] Banerjee who is at USC now, plus some MIT graduates, Rai Okamoto, Donald Appleyard, who was also a PhD student at that time, and then there was [David] Godchalk from North Carolina, Carol [Thomas] who was a planner in Boston and an adjunct at Harvard, and [Allen] Fonoroff was the leader of the group. Plus a few other people, some of who had some connection to MIT. MIT alone was 7 in the group, plus 2 more from the Boston contingent.³ We also had a connection to Wu Liangyong. He was a professor at Tsinghua who later spent a summer at MIT, plus other professors from Tongji and elsewhere in China. Tsinghua was a major connection because of the engineering concentration. Tsinghua was one of the first scientific schools and also the first architecture school was founded there by Liang Ssu-Chen. I’ve annotated all my slides from that trip, and they’re in Rotch Library.⁴ Wang Shifu helped me a lot to recall who everyone was, especially all the academics! He recognized them all and they are annotated. After that 1980 trip, Kevin [Lynch] and I wrote an essay, more impressions, of Nanjing.

These are valuable, right? And one of the other people on the trip had saved most of the records from this [1980] trip.⁵ When we visited [in 1980], we saw some cities where they literally were blowing dust off the plans—there had been no city planning since the cultural revolution. Tsinghua’s library was empty. Empty!

These images are from Beijing [referring to online slide images].

Nanjing was really amazing, the streets were filled with trees. The Americans said, “the Chinese are so polite!” I said, “I took the bus!

I got elbowed in the face!” This was in 1980. People got up and gave their seats to the Americans. It was a new experience at that point.

There were lots of bikes and buses, and Beijing had one subway line.

That’s one of the biggest changes—now there are 22 or something like that. All the big cities have metros. Shanghai in 1995 had no subway system. Fifteen years later it had a lot.

3. Tunney also provided the complete list of City Planners that went to China with him in 1980. Included as Appendix 2.

4.

Pictures can be found at: https:// dome.mit.edu/handle/1721.3/189002/ browse?type=dateissued 5.

The itinerary of the trip is included as Appendix 3.

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Tunney Lee´s Pictures from 1980´s Trip to China with Kevin Lynch source: www.dome.mit.edu/ ; search by: US China Peoples Friendship Association Planners Tour

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6. Lynch, K., Banerjee, T., & Southworth, M. “Kevin Lynch: His Life and Work.”

City sense and city design: Writings and projects of Kevin Lynch. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press., 1990), 21:“... On the evening of April 23, 1984, at his Watertown house, Lynch was happily talking to Professor Zhu Zixuan, making plans for Lynch to teach a course at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, that November.

He left the next morning to Martha’s Vineyard, where he died suddenly, alone, on April 25, 1984.“

Paul Sun was Taiwanese, and I knew him socially, as architects know each other, with their common interests. We became good friends, but unfortunately he died very young. When China started to open up in the late 1970s, nobody was interested in China. MIT was one of the only universities interested in working there. He was an architect for one of the big firms in Boston, and an excellent designer.

He had been helping us out with the studio, because he had been going to China. My job was to ask Paul for a few thousand dollars. So we had lunch in Chinatown. But he said, “I want to give fifty thousand to start the Paul Sun Fund”. If I could do that every time…! So the program started with that. And that kickstarted the first Beijing studio, which had been postponed because of Tienanmen Square.

At that time we just approached and looked at the situation in China, but when we started doing studios in China, I wasn’t the logical person to do it, because when I do studios, I have a clientbased studio, which I may have pioneered. In other words, when we work with East Boston, or Roxbury, or Villa Victoria, I work with a local group. I don’t want the students to have the usual experience where you impose a solution on a blank slate. Once I saw a student propose a flat platform with housing above and farmland below. I asked, how do you pay for that? And I got yelled at. In Boston it’s the same in some ways: the city planners don’t plan the cities—my colleague David Crane said the city has 10,000 designers, and you have to plan in increments. I also didn’t think I could do it [the studio]—I think I knew too much about how China worked, how planning worked, how corruption worked. Reality is not always good for studios. So even if I had taught studio with Lynch, I never did teach one of the Tsinghua studios, my approach wasn’t helpful educationally there. I felt that Gary [Hack] could do it better, and so Gary took the first studio after Kevin sadly left us.⁶ At the beginning, all the project [ideas] came from Tsinghua, they proposed them. I couldn’t see myself doing that—I am too interested in being able to work with a community. Tsinghua was not going to interview people. Tsinghua wasn’t interested in talking to people at that time! Over there, this was the standard studio—they did this all the time. You don’t talk to anybody. Besides, we didn’t know enough to pick the sites, or to say, gee, it would be nice to do ‘X’. There was no way for somebody over here to select the site. There were no Chinese students in the studios—later, in my studios, there were more. They [Tsinghua] had to select the site. So at that point all of the direction in the studios came from China.

All studios are valuable in some ways. What you DON’T learn is something else. That’s the problem with studios, including my later ones—you can only do so much with them. The major legacy of the China studios was that people were exposed to the place—some 28

learned a lot, some less. Some people went on to be closely involved in China, for example Tom Campanella, who wrote a book on China and spends time in Nanjing.

I made a bunch of later studios in China, most of them in Shenzhen actually. Most were sponsored by Vanke, because some of our alumni went to work at Vanke, and persuaded them. The boss came to MIT a couple of times, and he was very interested in some futuristic perceptions. Our studios were always about a neighborhood. I always work at that scale, sometimes the neighborhood around a project, since their project was already built. We made some proposals for urban villages, for example, “why don’t we take out every alternate road?” The problem with the urban villages is that there are fire hazards, all those things. The students proposed physical solutions, but realized that to implement it would be very difficult. This is OK. You have to discover how the villages are organized, what they are, the rights that the villagers have, how did it come about, how did it go from one story to eight, because of the migrant workers looking for housing. Some villages were kept intact, but the government took over farmland.

In Shenzhen there was a big import of workers from all over China, some factories built housing, many different. The villagers didn’t have farmland, so they became landlords! They would divide up parcels and built multiple story buildings. Maybe a mansion with a couple of towers, or you moved out. That was a way to learn about the urban villagers and that phenomenon, which otherwise you can’t understand. We did four or five studios in Shenzhen, one in Shantou, maybe two in Tianjin, and one in Foshan. The reports are all online.⁷ My later studios had definite projects where we worked with a developer. These studios were more limited in some ways. People learn things differently. People should learn design skills, but also about the place, and the people. We conducted lots of interviews with residents. If you go to a place, you should really talk to the people. For example, they were tearing down courtyard houses in Beijing, and studios can’t tackle that—you know city officials in China, if they want to tear something down they’re going to tear it down! At one point [in one of the studios] we asked China for a map, and they said, “no, we can’t give you a map”. It turned out a Boston firm had a map, and they were able to give us the data. Then they asked us, “how did you get that data?” and we said, “satellite!”

It’s difficult to work with people and place even in your home town. Even in Boston, at least you speak English, you can take the streetcar down to Allston, you can have a drink with people, but in China, wow! That hasn’t changed in China today but, as we did most of our [later studio] projects sponsored by a developer, they had data.

Other studio had connections to the Shantou government, which is Deindustrialization as Catalyst: A Conversation About China

7.

Tunney’s studios can be consulted and downloaded at: https://dusp. mit.edu/user/2082/ projects.

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8. Including: Gaoming Urban Planning Studio (2005); Vanke Vision: Sustainable Residential Development in Shanghai (2006); Shenzhen Futures (2007); Sustaining Shenzhen (2008); Sustainable Futures (2009); Sustainable Community Development (2010); Tianjin Studio (2012); Sustainable Neighborhoods in China (2013); The Density Atlas.

off at the edge of Guangdong province, and the city official was so happy to help us! They were happy to have a MIT group coming, they set up interviews, they were happy to let us pick a site.

One of the things that I started with Lynch, who was frustrated with studio reports, was that they came out six months after the studio was over. So when he asked me to take over the studio, I was coming from practice, I asked the students to present the report when they presented! There is no ‘later’. We would stop the designing three weeks before, and we would work on the report, we would write, and make a report that was coherent. This was part of the learning, to tell the story coherently and to make then accessible online.⁸ It’s difficult to recommend things that are actually buildable. Our purpose is to learn how to run a project at this scale, in a foreign place. Whether you can come up with something doable is very unlikely. We don’t have enough time—only three months! Our reports were all done by the students. And we presented the work. We would send two students back to report. The learning is more in the organizing of the vast amount of information, and it’s different every time.

Kevin Lynch understood that to do a real project, you needed to quantify. How many people are living here? What’s the demography?

How can you plan without that? Lynch was more a theorist, and he was pretty happy when I took over his studios, because I was more of a street guy. I came off the street! He was a great theoretician! What was most amazing about him was that he understood practice. He was amazing. He could intuit what needed to be. Site Planning was a very qualitative book, but he had numbers in there. He understood that you had to calculate runoff on a site. If you look at the original book, it has rough rules of thumb for calculations. It was also very practical. ¨Site Planning¨ was very different from ¨Image of the City¨.

The changes that have occurred in China since the time of the first studios is flabbergasting. What took fifty years in Spain or Italy happened in China in thirty years. The large scale of the sites sometimes makes them more regional planning studios—all of the scales are legitimate. I was looking at the neighborhood level, that’s the scale I understand really well.

>> Kevin Lynch and Tunney Lee's group picture during their visit to China in 1980.

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APPENDIX 1 LIST OF CONTACTS FOR U.S. CHINA EXCHANGE Regional Planning Education + Mr. Ma Yu Qiang Deputy Head of Geography Department, Hangzhou University + Prof. Cui Gong Hao Geography Department, Nanjing University + Prof. Chun Chang-Tu Geography Department, Beijing University Urban Planning Education + Mr. Feng Chi-Chung Architecture School Sih-Ping Road, Tung Ji University Sanghai (also contact Vice President Wang) + Prof. Wu Dean, Architecture Department, Qing Hua University, Beijing + Prof. Guan Zhaoye Architecture Department Qing Hua University Beijing (to visit MIT Fall 1980) Other Contacts + Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences +Mr. Wang Fan Deputy Head of Urban Planning Bureau National Administration of Urban Construction Baiwen Zhong, Beijing + Mr. Chin Jian Ming Vice Director of Envoronmental Protection Ofice of State Council, Beijing + Mr. Ko Yi Sun Deputy Director, Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, Beijing + Prof. Allan Fonoroff, Chairman, Department of Urban Studies and Planning Virginia Commonwealth University, VA 23220

APPENDIX 2 US CHINA PEOPLES FRIENDSHIP ASSOCIATION CITY PLANNERS Allen & Ruth Fonoroff Kevin Lynch Donald Appleyard Richmond, VA Watertown, MA Berkeley, CA

Beverly Causey

Hermann Field

David Godchalk

Geneva, NY Shirley, MA Chapel Hill, NC

Rai Y. Okamoto

Alan Canter

Edward & Dorothy Helfeld

San Francisco, CA

Denver, CO

Los Angeles, CA

John Noble Tunney Lee Alan & Andrea Rabinobitz NW. Washington, DC

Newtown, MA

Seattle, WA

Carol Sondheimer

Carol Thomas

Eugene Slater

New York, NY Boston, MA Chicago, IL

Tribid Banejee Mountain View, CA

Deindustrialization as Catalyst: A Conversation About China

31

APPENDIX 3 USCFPA CITY PLANNERS TOUR (Aug 12 - Sep 1, 1980) ITINERARY 8/12/80 Shanghai Met at Airport by two Youxie officials from Beijing

2:00 PM - Briefing at Hotel by Municipal Planning Bureau 3:00 PM - Industrial Exhibit

5:00 PM - Walk Along Bund

8:00 PM Puppet Show: “The Majic Red Stone” 8/13/80 8:15 AM - Children’s Palace

1:00 PM - Satellite City - Jai Ding - Briefing and Discussion 7:00 PM - Free 8/14/80 8:00 AM - Petro/Chemical Complex at Christian Bay - Briefing and Discussion

1:30 PM - Ming Han Ling, Workers Housing in Satellite City

8:45 PM - Train to Hangzhou 8/15/80 Hangzhou 9:00 AM - Tour to Hangzhou. Sightseeing - Lui Ho Pagoda and Jade Fountain

2:00 PM - Planning Symposium by U.S. Delegation for City Planning Boureau

7:00 PM - Movie “Love and Heritage” 8/16/80 8:00

1:30 3:15

4:30

AM - Sightseeing - West Lake, Plant Nursery and Ling Yin Temple PM - Tea Brigade - Briefing, Discussion and Field Trip to Dragon Wall PM - Town Walk PM - Train to Shanghai

8/17/80 Shanghai 8:00 AM - Harbor Boat Tour - Briefing and Discussion

2:00 PM - Planning Symposium by U.S. Delegation for City for Design

Institute for City Planning and Municipal Planning Bureau.

Walk Around City 8/18/80 Shanghai

8:00 AM - 3:00 PM -

Tonji University, Department of Architecture and Planning Train to Nanjing

8/19/80 Nanjing

8:00 AM - 2:00 PM - 7:00 PM -

Yangtze River Bridge and Boat Tour. Briefing and Discussion Sightseeing - Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum, Botanical Gardens, West Park Movie “American Pilot”

8/20/80

8:00 9:30 2:30 5:00

Rei Jin, Housing Proect, Briefing and Discussion Sightseeing - Purple Mountain Observatory Museum Briefing and Discussion, Nanjing City Planning Bureau Shopping Area of City - Walking Tour

AM - AM - PM - PM -

8/21/80 8:00 AM - Planning Symposium by U.S. Delegation for City Planning

Bureau and Dept of Geography - Nanjing University 1:00 PM - Taiping Museum

5:40 PM - Flight to Chengzhou

8:30 PM - Briefing and Discussion - Chengzhou City Planning Bureau 8/22/80 Chengzhou 8:00 AM - Textile Mill, Housing Bomb Shelter and Welfare Services Complex Briefing, Discussions and Field Trip

11:00 AM - City Planning Tour

2:40 PM - Visit Bai Zhu Ang Production Brigade in Zha Cheng Comune,

Agricultue and Housing Project. Briefing and Discussion 32

8/23/80 8:30 AM -

2:00 PM -

8:00 PM -

Discussion by City Planners, Engineers and Architects from Honan Province Construction Commission, City Departments of Urban Planning and Construction. Tour of City by Bus Yellow River Pumping Station and Exhibition Train to Loyang

8/24/80 Loyang 8:30 AM - Longmen Grottoes City Bus Tour

2:30 PM - Planning Symposyum by U.S. Delegation for Urban Construction

Bureau, City Planning Bureau, Environmental Protection Agency

8:00 PM - Acrobatic Show by Country Troupe 8/25/80 8:30 PM - Sightseeing - White Horse Temple, Museum of History, City Park and Shopping Area

4:00 PM - Train to Chengzhou 8/26/80 Chengzhou 8:30 AM - Planning Symposyum by U.S. Delegation for Planning Staffs from

16 Cities in Honan Province (approx. 160)

11:45 AM - Flight to Beijing Afternoon Free

8:00 AM - Briefing and Discussion - Beijing Municipal Planning Bureau

2:00 PM - Qing Hua University, Briefing and Discussion of Planning Education, Exhibit of Student Works

7:00 PM -

Musical, “ The Silk Road” by Coal Miners Troupe

8/27/80 Beijing 8:00 AM - Planning Symposium by U.S. Delegation for National

Commission on Urban Construction, City Planning Bureau, Quing

Hua University Faculty in Architecture and Planning, and Beijing Research Institute 8/28/80

2:30 PM - 6:30 PM -

Briefing and Discussion, National Urban Construction Bureau Youxie Banquet at Peking Duck Restaurant

8/29/80 8:00 AM - Sightseeing - Great Wall, Ming Tombs, and Summer Palace

6:30 PM - National Construction Bureau Banquet at Summer Palace Restaurant Morning Free 8/30/80 2:00 PM - Sightseeing - Forbidden City, Coal Hill 8/31/80 8:00 AM - Sightseeing - Temple of Heaven, Retail District of Chinese Art and Antiques. Subway Ride Afternoon Free 6:30 PM - Pekin Opera 9/1/80 9:00 AM - Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, Briefing and Discussion

4:30 PM - Flight to Tokyo 9/2/80 Tokyo (Narita)

5:00 PM -

Morning Free for Sightseeing in Narita Flight to Los Angeles

Deindustrialization as Catalyst: A Conversation About China

33

Tangshan’s Lunan District after the earthquake of 1976 34

“Resist the Earthquake and Rescue Ourselves”: The Reconstruction of Tangshan after the 1976 Earthquake* Beatrice Chen

* This essay was

first published as a chapter in: Lawrence J. Vale and Thomas J. Campanella, editors, in The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster, (London: Oxford University Press, 2005).

1. Hebei Province Bureau of Seismology, Tangshan Kang Zhen Jiu Zhai Jieu Che Ki Zhai, [Post-disaster Management of the Tangshan Earthquake] (Beijing: DI Zhen, 2000), 20.

2.

Wang TziPing, Di Zhen Wen Hua Yu Shu Hui Fa Zhan, [The Culture and Development of a Post-earthquake Society] (Beijing: SI Zhen, 1996), 6.

3.

It was not until June 1977 that Chinese officials disclosed the scale of the destruction. An estimated death toll was not given. However, they neither refuted nor agreed with the previous published

At 8:02 a.m. on the morning of July 28, 1976, approximately five hours after an earthquake struck Tangshan in northeastern China, a MIG-8 fighter jet landed at the People’s Liberation Army base nine kilometers from the sprawling industrial city of Tangshan. Two army officers quickly ran toward the plan and an officer named Lee asked, “what is the flight’s mission?” The pilot replied, “We are looking for the epicenter of the earthquake.” Without checking the identity or the credentials of the other passengers, Lee anxiously asked the pilot to fly over Tangshan and confirm his suspicion that the epicenter lay under the city. As Lee watched the plane fly toward Tangshan, he radioed the pilot, “Can you see Tangshan yet?” Through the speakers came the pilot’s shaky voice, “Yes, where it used to be!”¹ When the earthquake shook Tangshan out of its slumber in the early hours of that summer morning, nobody imagined that it would turn the city into a vast ruin. Not a single structure in the city of thirty-three square kilometers escaped unharmed from the earthquake, which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale. Fully 78 percent of Tangshan’s industrial buildings and 97 percent of its residential buildings were leveled.² The enormity of the physical destruction could only mean a comparable scale of human calamity. The official death toll stands at 240,000, but outside sources have posted much higher figures.³ Some current residents still believe that the death toll is at least twice that of the official tally. One third-generation Tangshan resident pointed out, “Not one single building escaped earthquake damage. How can the government officials say that only one quarter of Tangshan population perished in this disaster?”⁴ To this day, the true death toll remains a haunting unknown.

What is certain is that within three seconds on July 28, 1976, Tangshan was obliterated from the earth by a natural force roughly 400 times that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.⁵ It is conceivable that if the earthquake have not been detected by a number of seismological centers around the globe, the news of this great catastrophe would never have reached the outside world.⁶ 36

When pressed for details, the Chinese government remained reticent about the earthquake. Even a year later, the only thing authorities were willing to reveal was that the Tangshan earthquake was the deadliest in four centuries of Chinese history.⁷ They were so reluctant for the outside world to find out about the impact of the earthquake that they close the city to foreigners for the next two years.⁸ What happened during the year after the earthquake and why the secrecy and silence? This chapter will uncover the events in Tangshan following the earthquake and show that, beneath the shroud of secrecy, Chinese authorities were urgently recovering and rebuilding Tangshan under extraordinarily challenging conditions.

Despite foreign predictions that rebuilding Tangshan would require at least twenty years, a modern earthquake-resistant city rose from the rubble in a mere decade. Tangshan has been rebuilt into a fully functioning and populous city that continues to be dominated by the industries that existed prior to the earthquake. However, to conclude that the city is resilient by virtue of its complete reconstruction, however rapid, is perhaps too simplistic in the case of Tangshan.

An exploration into Tangshan’s recovery reveals how post-disaster urbanism can be driven by powerful political forces.

The Chinese Communist Party not only controlled the design and reconstruction of Tangshan but also the people’s behavior and perceptions about the recovery efforts. The reconstruction process mirrored larger changes in the Chinese political agenda. Without the Chinese Communist Party, today’s Tangshan would be a very different city, or might not even exist at all. Tangshan has been an important industrial center of Hebei province since the late Qing dynasty, blessed with an abundance of natural resources, including coal, iron, gold, oil, and natural gas. Tangshan’s growth into a densely populated city prior to the earthquake can largely be attributed to industrial development and the exploitation of these resources.

Hailed as the “cradle of China’s modern industry,” Tangshan was the home of China’s first modern coal pit, first standard-gauge railway, first steam locomotive, and first cement works.⁹ In 1953, Mao Zedong’s communist regime launched its first Five-Year Plan, which following the Stalinist model, placed a great emphasis on a centralized economy, collectivization, and extensive development of heavy industry. Many state-owned factories were established in Tangshan in this period. Until the earthquake in 1976, Tangshan’s industrial output grew steadily each year: the annual coal output alone increased from 3.3 million tons in 1953 to 26.9 million tons in 1975.¹⁰ The sociospatial organization of Tangshan in this period also reflected typical Maoist urban development. The principle units of urban form in the Maoist city where the work units, or danwei. Each

estimated death toll of 655,000. The officially listed death toll, however, stands at 240,000; Andrew Malcom, “Chinese Disclose the 1976 Quake Was Deadliest in Four Centuries“, The New York Times, 1 June, 1977.

4.

Zhang Tian, interview with the author, August 2002.

5.

Gang Qian, The Great China Earthquake: A Revealing Account of the Worst Earthquake in Recorded History (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1989), 53.

6. Jasper Becker, “Remembered with a Shudder”, South China Morning Post, 7 July 1996.

7. Ibid.

8. Patrick Tyler, “After Eating Bitterness, 100 Flowers Blossom,” The New York Times, 28 January 1995.

9. Li Chengzhen, “Tangshan Da Di Zhen”, The Great Tangshan Earthquake, China Business and Information News, 11 February 2003, 33.

10.

Gao Dao Sen, ed., Feng Huang Gong Huo Zhong Zai Sheng [The Rebirth of a City] (Tianjin: Tianjin Peopl’s Publishing, 1996), 12.

37

THE GROWTH OF MINING IN TANGSHAN

Kailuan Coal Mines 1878

A CITY FROM MINING

A CITY FROM MINING

1960S TANGSHAN DOUHE RESERVOIR

1988 TANGSHAN

1976

Earthquake Post Earthquake Coal Production (Kailuan): 2,563 ton (1975) to 1,935 ton (1976)

1878 Kailuan Coal Mines

1919

Kailuan Mines 1940s

1960s Douhe Reservoir

1988

A CITY FROM MINING

2008 TANGSHAN

A CITY FROM MINING

2018 TANGSHAN

1998

Kailuan Coal Mines after the 1976 earthquake

2008

2018

Kailuan Mines 1980s 39

11.

Piper Rae Gaubatz, “Urban Transformation in Post-Mao China: impacts of the Reform Era on China’s Urban Form,” in Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, ed.

Deborah Davis et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 30.

12.

Wang, Di Zhen Wen Hua Yu Shu Hui Fa Zhan, 416. Tangshan Da Di Zhen [The Great Tangshan Earthquake] (Hebei), 134.

13.

Tangshan Da Di Zhen [The Great Tangshan Earthquake] (Hebei), 134.

was a compound akin to a miniature, self-contained city with its own factories, residential areas, recreational and medical facilities, schools, and communal meeting and dining spaces.¹¹ While work and residential areas were housed in different buildings, these were typically adjacent to each other. Workers enjoyed the convenience of a short walk to their workbench or desk (few people commuted to work in the Maoist city). The majority of the housing stock in Tangshan prior to the earthquake consisted of single-story houses made of brick and stone. During the late 1950s and 1960s, new multistory concrete buildings for residential and administrative uses were added in the western part of the city. But even then, Tangshan remained a predominately low-rise city. An emphasis on low-cost construction also meant that none of the new multistory buildings had appropriately reinforced steel structures, nor were other measures taken to ensure resistance to tremors. Furthermore, the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution during the 1960s and 1970s led to the abandonment of any control over urban construction: buildings could be constructed on any available site, with virtually no supervision by relevant authorities.¹² Unlike Beijing, with its imperial complex and dense mat of ancient neighborhoods, Tangshan lacked the form or fabric of a traditional Chinese city. As Beijing was shaped by centuries of dynastic rule, Tangshan was crafted in the image of doctrinaire Maoist industrialization.

The Tangshan earthquake was an inauspicious event in an extraordinarily inauspicious year. That year, 1976, had scarcely begun when the Chinese people learned of the death from cancer of their revered premier, Zhou En-Lai. The so-called Gang of Four, fearful that Zhou and his chosen successor, Deng Xiaoping, were looming in popularity even above Mao, prohibited any public mourning for the expired premier. Meanwhile, Mao’s own health was failing fast, and rumors began to fly of the helmsman’s imminent passing. An internal power struggle among senior party members was already underway, pitting the Gang of Four and other Maoist ideologues against a more reform-oriented opposition. Despite Mao’s fading power and declining health, he and his followers were still affectively in control at the time of the earthquake and its immediate aftermath. Hua Guo Feng, whom Mao had designated as his successor, managed the Tangshan disaster largely in accordance with the chairman’s wishes, promoting national self-reliance and mobilizing the masses. Then, on September 9, only weeks after one of the greatest earthquakes in Chinese history, Mao Zedong was dead. The rebuilding of Tangshan would now proceed without him.¹³ To the astonishment of the world community, the Chinese government refused all foreign aid for earthquake rescue and recovery operations. Just three days after the disaster, the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a statement: 40

“Under the leadership of Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, the people of China are eagerly participating in the earthquake relief efforts. The Chinese have decided to rely on themselves to overcome this disaster.” Mao and his supporters believed that to accept foreign assistance in any form would ruin the dignity of the Chinese. Given China’s closed-door policy during the Cultural Revolution, it is not surprising that rescue and recovery efforts were conducted in such a highly secretive atmosphere.

The Maoists seized the opportunity to propagate the chairman’s ideology of national self-reliance by launching the recovery campaign: “Resist the Earthquake and Rescue Ourselves.” (Kang zheng Jiu zhai).¹⁴ The masses were sill Mao’s most potent political weapon. He had spent a lifetime finessing the art of manipulating the popular sentiment; his strategy of indoctrinating a population into scrutinizing each other and reporting on errant behavior ensured mass participation and self-regulation. Anyone who dared to stray from Mao’s ideologies would be exposed to public scrutiny and penalized.¹⁵ Under his rule, millions followed his orders.

Rather than seeking a new strategy to tackle a disaster of such great magnitude, the Chinese government continued using the effective party propaganda to exert Mao’s influence. In contrast to China’s guarded response to the international community, the postearthquake events on the domestic front were heavily publicized on Mao’s terms. He chose what to reveal and what not to reveal based on his political agenda of building a strong and self-reliant nation. What made possible the reign of fear during the Cultural Revolution also allowed Tangshan’s recovery process to develop efficiently.

The authority of Mao’s political leadership facilitated Chinese post-disaster management because it was essentially orchestrated from the top down. There was no lengthy discussion process to reach a consensus or develop a strategy; relevant parties were mobilized on command; and no disobedience was tolerated from below. The People’s Liberation Army was sent in as soon as the central government was informed about the extent of the earthquake damage; groups of physicians arrived the next day from Beijing and other cities in Hebei province. The Communist party issued a statement requesting all provinces to deliver medical supplies, food, clothing, and lights. It demanded that anyone participating in the rescue and recovery mission have his own vehicle and provide his own food.¹⁶ Even the distribution of aid was coordinated by the central government. Each province was directed by the Central Party Committee as to which supplies it should provide for Tangshan: Inner Mongolia donated 1.8 million yuan in food, Shanghai delivered 2.4 million yuan in medication, and Shanxi province sent thousands Deindustrialization as Catalyst: Reconstruction After the 1976 Earthquake

14.

Patrick Tyler and Lori Reese, “An Ominous Rumbling,” Time Asia, 27 September 1999.

15.

John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1998), 325.

16.

Tangshan Kang Zhen Jiu Zhai Jieu Che Ji Zhai, 38.

41

17.

Tangshan Da Di Zhen, 180.

18.

Fairbank and Goldman, China, 325.

19.

Xinhua News Agency, 9 January 1977.

20.

Tangshan Kang Zhen Jiu Zhai Jieu Che Ki Zhai, 49.

21.

Qian, The Great China Earthquake, 123.

22.

Li Jinfang, “Social Responses to the Tangshan Earthquake,” University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, Preliminary Paper No. 165 (1991), 7.

of cooking utensils.¹⁷ The efficient communication among Chinese Communist party members throughout China ensured that the orders were disseminated within a day. Without Mao’s legacy of organizing and mobilizing the masses, disaster relief would likely have been chaotic and slow. His supporters in the party were aware that the Chinese must present a united front if they were to overcome this disaster unassisted; thus, they continued to advance Mao’s doctrine of the “mass line” through “education”.¹⁸ Many of the stories that emerged from post-disaster Tangshan were about the strength and selflessness of the people. In one unlikely account, a man went to save the local Communist party official before he began to look for his wife among the rubble;¹⁹ a mother carted the body of her nineteen-year-old son to the airfield and asked the doctor, “Can my son be saved? If not, I’m going to go save the others.” ²⁰ The narratives often referred to the party as their savior: people who had been buried for days would declare, “Long live the PLA!” when pulled out of the rubble and would inform everyone that contemplating Mao’s teachings had helped them endure and survive.²¹ Many of the narratives present the Tangshan people as almost superhuman, endowed with such strength and forbearance that they could carry on with their lives unaffected by the physical and psychological trauma of a terrible disaster. These narrative s of heroic resilience were intended to be both inspiring and didactic, instructing the people on how a model Chinese citizen might cope with sudden disaster and underscoring the wisdom and glory of the Maoist way.

The narratives also attempted to cultivate what the Chinese call the ability to “eat bitterness,” or withstand great suffering stoically, a notion that Mao’s political regime believed to be crucial to the sustainability of China as a great nation. The underlying message was that the Chinese could survive this disaster only because they followed Mao’s teachings of self-reliance and resilience.

Since the government had the power to control the kinds of information disseminated to the masses, imposing particular strands of thought on the population was an easy task. The regime ensure that only approved party narratives dominated northeastern China immediately. Moreover, because the government was considered all-powerful, when it issued a command, the people generally felt obliged to follow state directives.²² It is not surprising that the only published account of the earthquake at that time was penned by People’s Liberation Army cadre, Qian Gang, who praised the Maoist regime’s disaster relief efforts: “When a disaster strikes,” wrote Qian of communist China:

42

Planning meeting during reconstruction years

Tangshan has continued to be planned over time

Deindustrialization as Catalyst: Reconstruction After the 1976 Earthquake

43

23.

After the Tangshan Earthquake: How the Chinese People Overcame a Major Natural Disaster (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1976), 4.

24.

Chen ZhuHao, Tangshan Di Zhen Tsing Li Ji [Journal of Tangshan Earthquake] (Beijing: Ming Tzu, 2001), 120.

25.

Tangshan Kang Zhen Jiu Zhai Jieu Che Ji Zhai, 38.

“... help pours in from all over the country. The people unite, get organized and conquer nature. Our socialist system has fully demonstrated its superiority. The people in the disaster area put it well: “The new and the old societies are as different as day and night. We cannot find enough words to express our gratitude to Chairman Mao and the Community Party! Earthquakes cannot subdue a heroic people. We’ll keep on working energetically in building socialism.”²³

The emergence of personal accounts published after the completion of reconstruction in 1986 provided a wholly different perspective on the aftermath of the Tangshan earthquake. Detached now from the political strategizing of the party, the new narratives put a more human face on the disaster and the recovery process. Chen Zhu-Hao, who lost his daughter in the earthquake, observed that the survivors mourned for the dead, but every day they would continue to dig through the rubble, hoping to find other loved ones, friends, neighbors, and compatriots. At night, they remained among the ruins, in tents built with wooden sticks and plastic sheets.²⁴ Chen never even mentions the Communist party in his narrative: “... It only took half a day to build our new home. We also found some pieces of timber and laid them on the ground so it would not be so wet. Since we didn’t have many things, we did not need the entire plastic sheet, so we left the unused portion on the ground. In about ten days, my neighbor Liu and his two daughters came back to Tangshan from the countryside. They only had one tent, so Liu used the rest of our plastic sheet to build another tent for his daughters. Alone in the tent at night, I forgot about the misery of recovering the bodies under the scorching sun but only to be occupied by other concerns.

This is my home. I’m going to be living here, my new home, a new beginning. Will my eldest daughter be safe in the countryside? We were a family of five, but now there are only four of us left. I’m all alone sleeping in the tent… and another one lying in the dirt.” ²⁵

Such personal reflection on trauma and loss had no place in Chinese society under the Maoist regime. If the people could recover from the earthquake, they would have achieved a great human triumph which serve to confirm the superiority of Mao’s leadership and the victory of his leftist ideology within the Chinese Communist party. Therefore, Mao sought to take advantage of his cult of personality and power of governance to ensure that the people would obediently follow his directives to overcome the disaster quickly despite the hardship.

44

During the recovery process, the succession struggle continued to escalate within the Chinese Communist party. The ensuing political transformation reinforced the concentrated power of political leadership in China and altered the course for the reconstruction of Tangshan. When Deng Xiaoping eventually consolidated power by 1978, following the legendary struggle between Premier Hua Guofeng and the Gang of Four, he abandoned many of Mao’s ideologically driven policies, such as promoting an egalitarian society and maintaining state control of the economy.²⁶ He encouraged the learning of Western science, technology, and economic methods but, at the same time, he believed in the importance of traditional Confucian values. His objectives for reform were to integrate the best from the East and the West so that China could become competitive in the international community.

Although both leaders wanted to prove China’s superiority, they chose opposite approaches to this goal. While Mao espoused the ideology of building power through national self-reliance, Deng believed that China could not improve without learning from more developed Western nations. Unlike Mao, whose ideology prevailed over other considerations and whose state intervened in all aspects of Chinese society, Deng was more concerned with the concrete results of policies rather than their symbolic nature. In fact, he was often criticized for prioritizing economic development above political ideology.²⁷ Compared to Mao’s politics, Deng’s regime was characterized by pragmatism and efficiency, as exemplified by his use of the famous parable of the two cats: “It does not matter whether the cat is black or white. As long as it catches the mouse, it is a good cat.”

As such, the planning for the new Tangshan was transformed from political football into an exercise of pragmatic science. The methodical approach toward the creation of the 1976 Comprehensive Plan of Tangshan was a dramatic departure from the slogans and heroic narratives of resilience that dominated the recovery process under Mao’s regime. For the first time in modern China, the central government seemed willing to delegate its political authority and leave the planning of the city to experts. As a result, the plan for the new Tangshan was created by experienced planners and academics more interested in building a city than in constructing a particular ideology. Instead of mobilizing the usual masses, the central government mobilized a group of urban planning experts that included academics from Tsinghua University, Beijing University, and Tongji University, and brought them to Tangshan in order to evaluate the possibilities for its reconstruction.

Before they even began to propose potential designs, the experts reviewed the reasons for the large-scale destruction of Tangshan.

One observer noted that in the Lubei district, the only thing standing Deindustrialization as Catalyst: Reconstruction After the 1976 Earthquake

26.

Tangshan Da Di Zhen, 180.

27.

Fairbank and Goldman, China, 325.

45

28.

Xinhua News Agency, 9 January 1977.

29.

Tangshan Kang Zhen Jiu Zhai Jieu Che Ki Zhai, 49.

30.

Qian, The Great China Earthquake, 123.

31.

Li Jinfang, “Social Responses to the Tangshan Earthquake,” University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, Preliminary Paper No. 165 (1991), 7.

was the pagoda on top of Phoenix Hill overlooking the ruins of the city. All but a few of the recently built multistory buildings had been leveled, and the empty spaces between the buildings were filled with broken bricks and debris. In the Lunan district, the rooftops of the one-story homes that had crumbled during the earthquake were all that was visible. Piles of debris blocked the narrow lanes and streets of Tangshan.²⁸ While the experts recognized that the magnitude and the timing of the earthquake contributed to the extensive damage, they also observed that the poor design of the old Tangshan may have increased the devastation. They concluded that the structures were of low quality and were not built to prevent earthquake damage. The high density of Tangshan made the earthquake even more deadly. In 1976, 70 percent of the area of Tangshan had a pre-earthquake population density of 15,000 people per square kilometer.²⁹ In addition, the most populous district of Tangshan was built on a fault line, which led to the complete collapse of all the buildings and a death rate that was twice the average of the city. The experts also pointed out that buildings were too close together, and the roads too narrow and irregular. Many T-junctions reduced the flow and connection throughout the city, making it difficult for people to escape in the event of a disaster. Furthermore, the consultants reminded the Chinese leadership that the lifelines of the city, including water, electricity, communications, and transportation, completely broke down after the earthquake because the infrastructure had been poorly designed.³⁰ The experts’ analysis made clear that the development of Tangshan was less than adequate for the contemporary era. In response to their official report, the vice chair of the State Council concluded: “... We cannot use the old Tangshan as a blueprint for the reconstruction; we must build a new Tangshan. This region is an important base for coal and steel production, therefore we must create a plan for Tangshan that integrates the development of the entire region. In other words, we must strive for a comprehensive plan for a new Tangshan by considering Tangshan as one entity.“ ³¹

The central government looked upon the reconstruction of Tangshan as an opportunity to improve the city through systematic planning, an exercise that was largely neglected under Mao’s leadership. Deng foresaw the potential of using a rationally reconstructed Tangshan to show the outside world of China’s ability to modernize and to affirm the superiority of Deng’s socialist regime over Mao’s outdated leftist ideology. The new design would correct the mistakes of the previous urban form of Tangshan and build upon 46

the principles of modernity espoused by the new political leadership.

The 1976 Comprehensive Plan aimed to transform Tangshan into a modern, earthquake-resistant city with an improved living environment. The plan sought to seize the opportunity of disaster to solve the problems of urban sprawl in pre-quake Tangshan, characterized by chaotic land use, a disorderly street system, and railway lines bisecting the city proper. The planners also aimed to improve the functionality of the city by increasing the number of streets, expanding public green space, and dividing the city into three parts: the central district, the eastern industrial district, and a new urban area in Fengrun.³² According to the proposed plan, the area of the city would expand from thirty-three to eighty-one square kilometers in order to allow the creation of more open space and to reduce the population density.

The new spatial design of Tangshan ensured that the urban population would not be concentrated in a single area of the city in the event of another deadly earthquake. Furthermore, the plan divided the city into residential and industrial zones separated by a green belt. With this single act, the government vastly improved the quality of life for the residents. No longer would they have to live literally next door to a factory or endure the heavy pollution that plagued the city prior to the earthquake. At the same time, the industries that were critical to the national economy could be preserved. Finally, the overall layout of the city was redesigned into a simple grid system with wider tree-lined roads and designated open space. The roads, however, were not widened to symbolize the power of the communist regime but to allow people more room to escape in the event of another earthquake.³³ In keeping with Deng’s objective of modernization, the new plan for Tangshan promoted the principle of efficiency. The reconstruction efforts would transform Tangshan into a functional city that would encourage further economic development. The ultimate goal of the reconstruction plan for Tangshan was to contribute to the national political agenda of economic development. Unlike Mao, Deng was much more concerned with the functions of the resultant design than with the design itself. His priority was to rebuild a city that would continue its pre-earthquake level of industrial output and could withstand another disaster with minimal damage. The symbols and values of urban design did not hold much meaning for Deng; it was the future of the city that mattered.

The Chinese had repudiated urban planning in 1960 during the National Economic Planning Meeting, and the urban reconstruction plan for Tangshan was one of the first efforts to bring planning back into favor.³⁴ The prepared scheme, however, was subject to challenging physical, political, and economic conditions of the time.

Deindustrialization as Catalyst: Reconstruction After the 1976 Earthquake

32.

After the Tangshan Earthquake: How the Chinese People Overcame a Major Natural Disaster (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1976), 4.

33.

Chen ZhuHao, Tangshan Di Zhen Tsing Li Ji [Journal of Tangshan Earthquake] (Beijing: Ming Tzu, 2001), 120.

34.

A. G. O. Yeh and F. Wu, “The Transformation of Urban Planning Systems in the Midst of Economic Reform in PRC,” Progress in Planning 51. No. 2: 167-252.

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Prefabricated Danwei housing being reconstructed after the earthquake

48

One major difficulty of Tangshan’s reconstruction stemmed from the experts’ recommendation (and the government’s preference) to rebuild on top of its ruins.³⁵ Tangshan could have moved to a new location but the natural resources available in the existing location were crucial to the survival of Tangshan’s and China’s economy. For this reason, Tangshan could not be altered too drastically from its preearthquake form if it were to regain its pre-quake industrial economic base.

The strategies adopted for the reconstruction of the city emphasized the restoration of urban life and industrial production in situ. In addition to rebuilding the factories, the regime prioritized residential construction and reconstruction of the city’s central business district. According to a news article published in 1979, Tangshan officials stated that “all 730,000 urban residents are expected to have new homes by the end of 1982.”³⁶ Faced with the urgency to build housing for the residents, the central government adopted a uniform typology of modern housing to speed up reconstruction.

Each apartment was composed of living and dining rooms, bedrooms, a storage room, a kitchen, a toilet, and a balcony. In addition, it was equipped with heat and running water. Since Premier Hua Guofeng insisted on architecture that reflected the building technology of the 1970s, concrete became the construction material of choice (“bricks,” it was said, “are for the Qin dynasty!”).³⁷ As a result, Tangshan today is filled with slabs of almost identical concrete housing. Ironically, this uniformity of housing has given Tangshan a distinctly socialist urban identity among modern Chinese cities.

Mao had successfully shaped a population that was willing to “eat bitterness” throughout the reconstruction period. For at least two years, the people of Tangshan had to make do with primitive living conditions before their permanent homes were rebuilt, while participating in the labor-intensive rebuilding process.³⁸ But by the end of 1979, 820,000 of the 2.76 million square meters of housing had been completed, and the city was well on its way toward renewal. ³⁹ Rebuilding the city on top of its ruins, however, proved costly, and the Chinese government was now suffering great financial hardship.

In 1982, the state council made the decision to scale back the scope of the reconstruction plan due to a shortage of funds.⁴⁰ As a result, several goals of the reconstruction plan were not achieved. The local government did not foresee the difficulty of relocating the residents and industrial enterprises out of the center of the city, especially since the new urban area was being constructed at such a slow pace that is was unable to attract many residents. The new urban area never attained the targeted population while the old city center quickly achieved a population density that was higher than recommended by the guidelines of the reconstruction plan. Also, nearly all of the Deindustrialization as Catalyst: Reconstruction After the 1976 Earthquake

35.

Interview with Mao Qizhi, professor of urban planning, Tsinghua University, 18 August 2002.

36.

“Construction of Housing Projects in Full Swing in Tangshan,” Xinhua News Agency 3 December 1979.

37.

Tangshan Di Zhen Zai Qu She Hui Hui Fu Yu She Hui Wen Ti Yan Jiu, 425.

38.

Tangshan Kang Zhen Jiu Zhai Jieu Che Ji Zhai, 133.

39.

“Construction of Housing Projects in Full Swing in Tangshan,” 3 December 1979.

40.

Mao, Wu, and Wu, 255.

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41.

Xinhua News Agency, 3 December 1979.

42.

“A New Tangshan Rises from the Rubble,” Beijing Review, 15-21 July 1996.

>> Tangshan factory being reconstructed after the 1976 earthquake.

industrial factories were rebuilt in the same places so the distribution of land use in Tangshan did not change much from the chaotic mixture of land use that had existed prior to the earthquake.

Even though the government had hoped for a bigger and better Tangshan, fiscal realities limited the options for expansion.

Nevertheless, the government was able to rebuild and restore the essential aspects of the Tangshan city within ten years after the earthquake. In total, the central government allocated 600 million yuan for direct disaster relief, 2.5 million yuan for reconstruction, and the city was exempted from contributing revenue to the central government until 1983.

The new Tangshan had undergone few dramatic changes since the reconstruction was completed in 1986. The result is an orderly built environment, which stands out in comparison to other contemporary Chinese cities, especially those that underwent rapid growth and expansion in the 1990s. The major axis of the city, which extends from the entrance of the new train station, is boulevard-like but not lined with grand, imposing architecture, as in Paris or Berlin. Instead, rows upon rows of slab housing no more than six stories in height are lined up equidistant from one another behind neat patches of green space. These residential zones also include schools, shops, restaurants, post offices, kindergartens, theaters, and bath houses.⁴¹ As one moves towards the center of the city, brightly painted blue and red roofs, similar to that often found on European houses, adorn the tops of buildings and break up the monotony of the slab housing.

In the distance, huge smokestacks disrupt the view of rolling hills. If not for a memorial at the center of town, one would never suspect a devastating earthquake had once destroyed the city.

Without help from the rest of China, Tangshan could have never been rebuilt into a modern Chinese city and its people might well have lost the will to go on. Tangshan’s significance in the national economy also accelerated its recovery. Under harsh conditions of limited technology and time constraints, the people of Tangshan worked to resume their city’s pre-earthquake production output, a goal they met within two years.⁴² While Mao dictated that the people rescue themselves, the enduring spirit of resilience was fostered by the nation’s support of Tangshan and the desire of the people of Tangshan to express their gratitude. Yet, without the rational objectives of Deng’s regime and the combination of communism, socialism, and economic reforms, Tangshan would not have become the city it is today.

Although many Chinese people believed that the Tangshan earthquake was an ominous sign (millions regarded it as a portent of the death of Mao and that he wanted to take many along with him), the political upheavals that followed positively and unexpectedly 50

Deindustrialization as Catalyst: Reconstruction After the 1976 Earthquake

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43.

“Reconstruction of Tangshan,” exhibition at the Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Museum, Tangshan.

China.

44.

Li Tian, personal interview, 12 August 2002.

affected the reconstruction. The change in political leadership shifted the focus from the recovery of the people’s spirit to the physical recovery of the city. Under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, the state became less involved with the daily lives of the Chinese people, but the reconstruction of Tanghsan was still dominated by state intervention. Deng made sure that the plan would transform Tangshan into a modern, earthquake-resistant city with an improved quality of life, while using it to his political advantage.

The reconstruction of Tangshan marked a departure from the old ways of communist China and became one of the first experiments in reforming modern China, part of the effort to construct a nation-state on par with the international community. The product of its country’s transformation, Tangshan was able to rise from its rubble and become a source of pride for China. When the central government announced the completion of reconstruction efforts in 1986, Tangshan was revealed to the world as the celebrated paradigm of modern Chinese urban planning.⁴³ Had Mao lived, Tangshan would have been designed by party cadres, rather than by experts in urban planning and design.

Correspondingly, as one resident pointed out, “ If China had accepted foreign aid, today’s Tangshan would be a modern city with skyscrapers.”⁴⁴ Similarly, Tangshan would look very different if it had been rebuilt during China’s current transition from a planned to a market economy. The recovery and rebuilding of Tangshan reinforce the inextricable link between planning culture and Chinese politics, and reveal the significance of urban reconstruction as an arena for the display of political authority in the communist regime.

>> Tangshan Danwei during studio visit in January 2019.

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Deindustrialization as Catalyst: Reconstruction After the 1976 Earthquake

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Part I

Tangshan in Transition: First Case Study

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Tangshan: New Challenges Ahead Lin Peng Urban Approaches to China’s Postindustrial Transition: The Case of Beijing Liu Jian A Second Reconstruction: Studio Pedagogy Lorena Bello Gómez/ Brent D. Ryan

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Tangshan: New Challenges Ahead

Lin Peng (Translated by Haoyu Wang) The history of Tangshan’s urban development As one of the birthplaces of China’s modern industry, Tangshan actively participated in initiating the country’s progress of industrialization. Since the 1880s, the city thrived with numerous industrial achievements including but not limited to China’s first modernized mine, the first railway, the first steam locomotive, the first bag of cement, the first piece of sanitary ceramics, and the first stock. Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Tangshan was already an important city in northern China for its heavy industry. As the industries of Tangshan established meaningful connections with Beijing’s cultural and educational industry and Tianjin’s port and financial industry, the economic, social, and cultural core of northern China was co-created between these three cities.

Although Tangshan remained its vitality as an industrial city in northern China after the founding of PRC, it suffered severe damages in the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake. Nevertheless, three decades of reconstruction works revived Tangshan upon its ruins and put it under the title of heroic city among media. At present, Tangshan has an industry-oriented economy with steel and energy production, machinery manufacturing, and port industry. These industries reveal great potentials to participate in economic development at a scale beyond the city, which offers Tangshan a crucial position in the nation’s ongoing project of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. A representative case of Tangshan’s industrial development in the 21st century is the Caofeidian port which has already become the largest industrial base for energy import and export, steel production, and power industry in northern China.

Opportunities for urban development As China becomes the second-largest economy of the world, the country aims to improve the quality of economic development in the new era with strategies to transform industrial, social, and urban conditions through industrial transformation and upgrading on a national scale. As part of China’s master plan, the integration of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in urban development and the objective to build a world-class urban agglomeration in the region offer new opportunities and driving forces for Tangshan’s urban development.

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Particularly worth mentioning is the regional high-speed railway network which will connect Tangshan to the rest of the region, and Beijing’s plan of delegating the non-capital programs to other places which has brought chances of introducing new programs to Tangshan.

Correspondingly, these opportunities put forward challenges and demands on future urban development that Tangshan has to consider.

-How to stimulate social and economic activities of a city and elevate the city’s vitality through the transformation and upgrading of conventional resource-based industries?

-How to create distinctive and attractive urban characteristics through protecting and reusing industrial and cultural heritage?

-How to make a city more ecologically livable through development?

Challenges that the city faces Challenges to the existing model of development - promoting urban development through real estate is not sustainable in the long run. In a future scenario where enterprises of the steel industry move out of the Tangshan riverfront area, the conventional model to redevelop the vacated land is to fill it with real estate developments. This model will inevitably create another ‘doormitory town’ with monotonous housing which can hardly bring long-term social or economic benefit to the place.

Challenges to the existing driving forces of development—the conventional model of government-oriented development lacks motivation and can hardly stimulate stakeholders for efforts. The existing adaptive reuse projects on industrial heritage, such as the ceramics museum and other cultural amenities, are found not wellpromoted within their neighborhoods and not attractive for people to visit. As a result, they cannot effectively contribute to the vitality of the city, nor to promote relevant development of the cultural industry. Their limitations can attribute to the mismatching between the top-down nature of government-oriented development model and the intrinsic logic behind the development of cultural and creative industries. The predominant model of spatial arrangement lack systematic planning for long-term objectives. The riverfront area of Tangshan needs long-term, systematic, and strategic planning which can be made possible only with persistent research and courage for experiments.

Conclusions In conclusion, Tangshan stands at a turning point in urban transformation. It is necessary to study further on strategies of urban development and change the developing model in response. The international resource in design brought by Tsinghua University and MIT offers a promising paradigm of practice on advancing sustainable urban development through long-term urban research.

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1920s

2019

Beijing

Tangshan Tianjin

JINGSHAN RAILWAY: THE FIRST RAILWAY IN CHINA

1. data.stats.gov.cn.

2. “China approves $36-billion railway plan for Jing-Jin-Ji megacity”. Business News. Reuters.

The Jing-Jin-Ji Metropolitan Region, also known as Beijing-TianjinHebei, is China’s national capital region. It is the biggest urbanized megalopolis region in Northern China, located along the coast of the Bohai Sea. In 2016 this region had a total population of 112 million.1 In 2018, Jingjinji produced around 10% (US$1.3 trillion) of China’s GDP. It occupies an area that is about the same size as Mexico or about twice the size of South Korea.2 61

g

INDUSTRIAL GROWTH IN TANGSHAN OCCURRED ALONG THE JINGSHAN AXIS

China’s first railway: construction begun in 1881

China’s first railway bridge: completed in 1884, by ZHAN Tianyou

The railway factory turned into a manufacturing factory in 1907

1881

1889

Tangshan First Cement Factory Railway 1901

1910

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First Power Plant Tangshan Building Huaji Power Plant Ceramics Factory 1958

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1941

Huaxin Tangshan Qixin Tangsh Textile Factory Yang Gray Company Steel W 1976

Industrial Factories

ailway

Since 1914

1920

Since 1941

Fenghuang Mountain in 1945

Tangshan in 1994

19201941

Nanhu Park, the site of Tangshan Horticultural Expo

2008 1941

2008 2014

Qixin Tangshan Tangshan Qixin Surplus Tangshan Surplus New Economic Company ctory YangSteel GrayWorks Company of Steel Steel Works Production of Steel Status Production

941

1985

2008

Since 1950s

Since 1950s

2016 2019

2014 2016

Tangshan Garden Tangshan Expo New Economic Garden Expo Garden Expo Status Horticultural Expo 2018

Present 2000s

Present 2000s

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Urban Approaches to China’s Postindustrial Transition: The Case of Beijing Liu Jian

As it does in developed and other developing countries, industrial development has played a significant role on China’s urbanization.

In a certain sense and to a certain extent, it has shaped China’s urbanism since the beginning of its modernization in the mid-19th century. The rapid industrialization in the mid-20th century under the circumstance of planned economy had led to the rising of industrial cities all over the country. Later on, the long-going industrial restructuring starting in the late 20th century under the circumstances of socialist market economy and economic globalization has resulted in the booming of new industries in form of development zones in many Chinese cities. China’s transformation from industrialization to postindustrialization is physically presented by Chinese cities’ transition from industrial urbanism to postindustrial urbanism.

Industrial urbanism based on productive cities China saw the starting of its industrialization process in the mid19th century when the new ideas of Industrial Revolution, as well as those of modern urban planning, were transferred from the West to the country along with the process of colonization. The treaty port cities such as Tianjin and Wuhan and the leased territories such as Qingdao and Dalian were the pioneering cities in terms of industrial development with thanks to international investment (Liu, 2014). In terms of city form, they were completely different from traditional Chinese cities due to the implementation of the western modern urban planning principles. Later on, industrialization flourished in the cities with rich natural resources, such as Tangshan and Taiyuan, as well as those with advantageous location and transportation, such as Wuxi and Nantong, where China’s national industry boomed.

However, generally speaking, the process of industrialization was slow at that moment, because of the interruption of frequent regime changes and continuous wars. By the end of the 1940s, China’s industrial development remained in the embryonic stage. Except a few on the eastern coast, most Chinese cities were in the status of pre-modernization and pre-industrialization. When the new regime 66

of the People’s Republic was established in 1949 China was still a rural and agricultural society, with the Primary Industry accounting for 68% of its national economy (Guo & Wu, 2018) and urban population accounting for 10.6% of its total population. Even in Beijing, the capital city of China for hundreds of years since the Yuan Dynasty, industrial development was hardly seen in its social, economic and urban development. The city remained a traditional walled city, highly relying on service industry and the support of the surrounding countryside. Although there were about 13,000 industrial enterprises of various kinds, less than 20 were scaled ones of over 100 employees and most of them were located in the outer suburban areas far from the city. Among the urban population of 1.65 million, 83,000 were industrial workers, occupying only 5% of the total (Wen).

In view that most Chinese cities were more consumptive rather than productive in terms of product output, the new central government of China advocated the idea of “turning consumptive cities into productive cities”, even before it took the regime, through a publication in the People’s Daily on 17 March 1949. It was believed that cities, instead of the countryside, should play a leading role in the country’s socio-economic development, thus priority should be given to the development of industries in cities to make them productive, as it was done in the then Soviet Union. In the early 1950s, China initiated the national strategy of industrialization and the first Five-Year Plan issued in 1955 proposed 156 large-scale industrial projects in 56 cities of 18 provinces, including Beijing, with strong supports from the former Soviet Union (Dong & Wu, 2004). In the five years from 1953-1957, 150 projects were actually realized, with an investment of 19.6 billion RMB which accounted for over a quarter of the total investment in the construction of industrial, cultural and educational facilities (Dong, 2008). Among them, 32 were located on the coast and the other 118 in the hinterland. Together with other over 900 affiliated industrial projects, they, at the national level, formed the foundation of China’s industrial system and defined the distribution of industrial cities all over the country; while at the local level, they became the center of urban development and shaped the urban pattern of the cities where they were located. By the end of 1978, the Secondary Industry accounted for 48% of China’s national economy, while the proportion of the Primary decreased to 28% (Guo & Wu, 2018). Comparatively, the urbanization rate of 17.9% in the same year was much lower than the level of industrialization.

Two instruments were applied in order to facilitate the industrial development in cities, which were the key factors shaping the unique industrial urbanism of China in the period of the planned economy.

One was Danwei, as the unit of a city’s socio-economic development, and the other was urban planning, as the tool to support a city’s socio-economic development. On the one hand, before the initiation 67

of the enterprise system reform in 1978, Danwei played a significant role in Chinese cities in terms of both industrial production, social management, and spatial organization. Being physically territorialized into a gated compound, the so-called Danwei community, a kind of self-contained community integrating working with living, it played both the role of industrial production and that of “micro-government” responsible for all the social welfare of the employees, including public services and housing allocation (Bonino & De Pieri, 2015; Liu, 2019). In some sense, it was the cell of the city as organic entity. On the other hand, urban planning was intentionally conducted since the 1950s at the national level for purpose of laying out the 156 industrial projects all over the country, as well as at the city level for purpose of laying out the affiliated urban functions to support the development of the industrial projects. As a result, a number of industrial cities were planned in the country and industrial areas were planned in the cities.

For example, after Beijing became the capital city of People’s Republic of China in 1949, it was designated to be “not only a political center, but also a cultural, scientific, and artistic city, as well as an industrial city” by Beijing Urban Design Commission, a municipal organization in charge of planning studies on Beijing’s urban construction. According to the planning scheme issued in 1954, 35 new manufacturing factories were built up from 1953 to 1957 in its urban area, in a pattern of multi-centered concentration, and the proportion of Secondary Industry in its national income increased from 39.5% in 1952 to 47.4% in 1957. By the end of 1957, there were already 14.9 km2 construction lands for industrial use and 67 scaled industrial enterprises with over 1,000 employees. Meanwhile, residential areas were built up nearby the factories to form Danwei communities. Till then, Beijing was completely transformed from “consumptive” to “productive”. The industrialization process was further accelerated by the Great Leap Forward Movement in 1958.

According to the planning scheme issued in 1958, about 800 new factories were built up from 1958 to 1960, leading to the remarkable increase of construction land for industrial use by 36.1 km2. Among them, 60 were located in 31 towns in the outer suburban districts, while all the others in the urban area in a pattern of wide dispersion, in both the industrial areas and the city center. This large-scale construction of industrial projects successfully transformed Beijing into an industrial city, accommodating a wide spectrum of industries, including metallurgy manufacturing, mechanical engineering, building material, electronic manufacturing, textile, chemical engineering, light industries, and so on. By the end of the 1970s, there were ten industrial areas in Beijing which were characterized by various key industries respectively.

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Industrial restructuring leading to postindustrial urbanism During the thirty years of the planned economy from the 1950s to 1970s, industrialization advanced much faster than urbanization in China due to the strong orientation of the national policies, giving the country a feature of industrial urbanism. In spite of that, China’s industrialization level was still lower than that of developed countries.

Moreover, when it was undergoing the process of industrialization, some developed countries already saw the beginning of postindustrialization under the influences of the third Industrial Revolution (Rifkin, 2013) since the 1950s, which is characterized by the rising of new sciences and the advancement of new technologies, such as nuclear energy, spaceflight, computer science, biological science, etc. The quick transformation of new technologies into actual production resulted in the booming of new knowledge-based industries, in particular high-tech industries, which was accompanied by the declining of traditional resource-based industries. This process was strengthened by the first Oil Crisis exploding in 1974 as result of the breaking-out of the fourth Middle East War. Therefore, when China adopted the policy of reform and opening-up in 1978 and decided to establish a socialist market economy afterwards, it was faced up with the challenges of both industrialization and postindustrialization under the circumstance of economic globalization. In the 1980s and 1990s, accompanied by the system reform on state-owned enterprises, industrial restructuring became the key of its economic development, when the country was continuing the process of industrialization. A part from the critical reforms in many aspects of socio-economic development to facilitate the transition from the planned economy to the socialist market economy, special policies were also implemented to facilitate the industrial restructuring, which highlighted the development of new industries, in particular high-tech and service industries, and the participation to the global economy. The “Development Zone” policy was one of them, with particular focus on international trade, new industry incubation, and import and export. In consequence, industrialization and postindustrialization took place simultaneously in different areas of the country, or even in different areas of one city, which can be seen from the juxtaposition of rural industrialization in the countryside and new industrial development in cities.

Development Zone is an economic policy designated within a city zone, to which special policies of finance, taxation and so on, related to industries and enterprises, are applied for purpose of experimenting innovative industrial development by attracting international investments, facilitating exports and trades, and fostering new industries (Liu & Xu, 2019). It was initiated by China’s central government in 1984 and was implemented respectively by Tangshan in Transition: The Case of Beijing

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the Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Science & Technology, and General Administration of Customs through different programs, such as Economic & Technological Development Zone, HighTech Industrial Development Zone, Tax-Protected Zone, Border Economic Collaboration Area, etc. By the end of 2016, there were more than 500 national-level Development Zones of various kinds all over the country, regardless those of provincial, municipal and even county levels. Located in both the top-tier cities in the coastal area and the second-tier cities in the central and western regions, they played a significant role in the country’s economic growth and made a remarkable contribution to the urban development of the cities where they stand (Feng, 2015). As part of a city’s urban areas, they are primarily industrial areas characterized by a high proportion of industrial land use, as well as the land use affiliated to industrial activities, such as storage and logistics. Although this land use featured them similar to traditional industrial areas, the disappearance of Danwei communities due to the enterprise system reform and the prosperity of commodity housing communities due to the housing system reform made them different from traditional industrial areas.

The urban planning towards the market economy and new industries helped bring them with the features of postindustrial urbanism.

The result of industrial restructuring was remarkable by the end of the 20th century, as showed by the statistic figures. From 1981 to 1998, the proportion of the Primary in China’s GDP decreased from 33.4% to 17.6%, while that of the Tertiary increased from 21.8% to 36.2%. Regarding the Secondary whose proportion in GDP appeared almost stabilized, from 44.8% to 46.2%, the industrial structure was also updated to focus more on new knowledge-based high-tech industries, which, together with the rapid increase of export, made China become the world factory of manufacture. The proportion of industrial product in China’s commodity export rocked from 48.3% in 1980 to 88.8% in 1997 (Guo & Wu, 2018). In the same period, China also saw the acceleration of its urbanization, with the urbanization rate rising to 30.4% in 1998. While new Development Zones were built up in cities to incubate new industries, many old factories of traditional industry in urban areas, in particular the polluting ones, were either shut down or relocated, leading to the possibility of redeveloping the brownfields into either new industries or other urban functions, which promoted the transition to postindustrial urbanism. This development trend took place first in the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai in the 1990s and slowly expanded to other industrial cities like Tangshan and Shenyang in the new millennium, along with the proceeding of the nation-wide industrial restructuring.

In Beijing, the official approval of the Master Planning Scheme for Urban Construction of Beijing by the central government in 1982 marked the start of its industrial and spatial restructuring after the 70

reform and opening-up of the country. While confirming its role as “the political and cultural center” rather than “the economic center and industrial base” of China, it proposed the principle of “renovating the city center, restructuring the inner suburbs, and developing the outer suburbs” by way of shutting down small and low-efficiency factories, relocating polluting factories, upgrading manufacturing factories, and developing new and high-tech industries. The City Master Plan of Beijing (1991-2010) approved in 1993 reaffirmed these objectives, while clarifying the new principles of industrial development, i.e. high technology, high added-value, low energy consumption, low water consumption, low polluting emission, low transport demand, and low land consumption. According to the two city master plans, from 1985 to 2000, about 150 factories were either shut down or relocated from the city center to the suburban areas, releasing 3.3 km2 brownfield to be redeveloped into tertiary industries such as finance, commerce, and service, as well as public facilities and houses (Shi et al, 2010). From 1990 to 2000, over 200 disadvantageous factories were acquired by another 100 advantageous ones for upgrading, releasing another certain amount of brownfield for redevelopment. Typical examples of brownfield redevelopment included the conversion of Beijing No. 2 Watch Factory into a commercial center in 1992, the transformation of 798 Factory for electronic production into an art district in the late 1990s, and the redevelopment of Beijing No. 3 Textile Factory into a commodity housing real estate in the early 2000s.

At the same time, many manufacturing factories underwent technical upgrading for higher production efficiency and lower environmental impacts and 19 development zones of various kinds and different levels were established in the suburban areas to host new industries. Among them, two are of national level. They are Beijing Zhongguancun New-Tech Industrial Development Experiment Area established in 1988 with an area of 133 km2, which was renamed as Zhongguancun National Self-Dependent Innovation Area and enlarged to an area of 488 km2 in 2009, and Beijing Yizhuang Economic and Technological Development Area established in 1994 with an area of 46.8 km2. Both the redevelopment of brownfields for urban functions and the construction of development zones for new industries greatly changed the city image of Beijing from industrial urbanism to postindustrial urbanism.

Postindustrial approaches for urban transformation The industrial restructuring of China continued even faster after it successfully got the official position in WTO in 2001, which brought it with more opportunities to join the international division of labor amid economic globalization. Two years later in 2003, China’s central government listed urbanization as one of its national strategies, Tangshan in Transition: The Case of Beijing

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together with industrialization, marketing, and internationalization, which further promoted the process of postindustrialization along with the acceleration of urbanization. Since then, China underwent a series of significant changes in its social, economic and urban development. It became the world’s biggest export country of hightech products in 2004 (Guo & Wu, 2018), the second largest economy in 2010, and an urban society in 2011, all of which demonstrated both the great achievements of industrialization, urbanization, and postindustrialization trends.

In 2012, the 18th National Congress of the CPC proposed the new national strategies of industrialization, urbanization, informatization, and agricultural modernization, based on which the policy of New Urbanization was implemented through the National Plan of New Urbanization 2014-2020 issued in 2014. Aiming at tackling the problems of the traditional urbanization and improving the quality of urbanization, the New Urbanization policy highlights the peopleoriented development to ensure equity and sharing, the synchronous development of informatization, industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization to ensure the balance between urban and rural areas and among various regions, the reasonable city layout to ensure intensive and efficient land-use, the ecological civilization to ensure green, recycling, and low-carbon development, and the cultural continuity to ensure local identity. It implies the overall transitions from economy-oriented to human-oriented, from quantity-oriented to quality-oriented, from environment-regardless to environment-friendly, from increment-based to inventorybased, and from city-oriented to region-oriented. Under the new circumstance, two new trends of urban development appeared. One was urban renovation for purpose of promoting land use efficiency and the other was coordinated regional development for purpose of fostering city clusters.

In view of the requirement of inventory-based development of high quality due to the limitations of resources and environment, the traditional industrial urbanism characterized by urban expansion through “building the city on virgin lands” does not work anymore for sustainable urban development. The postindustrial urbanism featured by the recycling use of constructible land through “building the city on the city” becomes a new option. Hereby, “building the city on the city” mainly refers to the redevelopment of disused brownfields and the renovation of dilapidated urban areas, as well as the densification of existing low-density built-up areas. Among them, brownfields, as legacy of traditional industrialization, are comparatively in priority because of its advantageous potentials, such as the considerable account in existing construction land reserve, the strategic location in cities, the rich architectural legacy of high value, and the less burden of relocating residents. As a result, deindustrialization has 72

become an important measure for many Chinese cities, in particular the big ones, to promote not only industrial restructuring but also land redevelopment, for higher comprehensive benefits of social, economic and urban development. During this process, the rising of cultural and creative industries helped replace the traditional industries with the new ones, while the implementation of the coordinated regional development policy facilitated the relocation of traditional industries from one city to others with more favorite conditions.

In Beijing, since 2000, brownfield redevelopment became an urban development policy of the city due to both economic and environmental considerations, along with the Olympic Games venue. During the 10th Five-Year-Plan period from 2001 to 2005, 142 factories were moved out of the city’s urban area, releasing 8.8 km2 of brownfields for redevelopment (Shi et al, 2010). The City Master Plan of Beijing (2004-2020) approved by the central government in 2005 reconfirmed the orientation of Beijing’s industrial development to modern service industries, new- and high-tech industries, and modern manufacturing industries which are all characterized by high technical contents, low resource consumption, and low environmental impact, with more focus on the quality and benefits of industrial development. In line with the plan, another 76 factories were either shut down or relocated since 2005, releasing another 13.5 km2 brownfields in Beijing’s urban area for more efficient redevelopment. Among them, there were a number of large-scale industrial enterprises, such as Shougang, i.e. the Capital Steel & Iron Group, and Beijing Coking Plant. For them, the brownfield redevelopment concerns no longer only the change of land-use, but also many other things like the depollution of contaminated soil, the building of modern communities instead of traditional Danwei community, the protection and re-use of industrial heritages, the reemployment of traditional industrial workers, and so on, demonstrating a comprehensive transformation from industrial urbanism to postindustrial urbanism.

Hereby, Shougang can be taken as a unique example. Located in the west of Beijing’s urban area on the Chang’an Avenue, it was built up in 1919 as a representative of China’s national industry. It gradually developed into a steel and iron production base in the northern part of China. Covering an area of about 8 km2, it once hosted an employment of about 100,000 and dominated the city image of Shijingshan District. It is physically characterized by rich industrial heritage such as, furnaces, oil tanks, cooling towers,and coal storage bunkers. Colorful architectural types such as, workshops, warehouses, offices, dormitories. Also, old military facilities, and diversified natural elements such as, a hill, large water surfaces, and quite good plantations, apart from its important location on the Tangshan in Transition: The Case of Beijing

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western end of the city’s modern axis. Along with the coming of Beijing Olympic Games and the proceeding of the city’s industrial restructuring, its production was transferred to Tangshan Caofeidian, a new port city to the east of Beijing starting in 2001, and completely stopped in 2010.

A series of planning studies on redeveloping the site were carried out after the production relocation, achieving a general agreement between Beijing Municipal Government and the enterprise that the site would be redeveloped into a comprehensive cultural and recreational district to accommodate the activities of finance and business, research and development, conference and exhibition, commerce, and residence etc. However, in reality, the action of redevelopment took place slowly with unpredictable difficulties.

The flag-ship project of China Animation & Game Town was inaugurated in 2011 at the planned Shougang Ertong Industrial Park with thanks to the strong support of governments to cultural and creative industries, but it was closed several years later because of the uncertainty of the market demand. The moving-in of Beijing Winter Olympic Games Committee in 2016 is undoubtedly a great impetus to the redevelopment, but it covers only a small area of the site. The depollution of the soil, the reemployment of the industrial workers, the rehabilitation of the existing buildings, the protection of the industrial heritage, and the creation of new communities are still big challenges for shaping a postindustrial urbanism.

Conclusions Urbanization is a natural development process of human society and no one can stop its pace until it reaches the stage of stability.

During the process of urbanization, industrial development has always been the key factor to shape either an industrial or a postindustrial urbanism. The transformation from industrialization to postindustrialization is also a natural development process of human society along with the advancement of sciences and technologies and industrial restructuring seems the only active measure to deal with this transformation to replace the old industries with new ones. Along with the rising of new knowledge-based industries and the declining of traditional resource-based industries, brownfield emerged as an inevitable result of the transformation from industrialization to postindustrialization and brownfield redevelopment became an important way to reshape a postindustrial urbanism. As brownfield was once used for industrial purposes and may be contaminated by hazardous wastes or pollutions to some extent, brownfield redevelopment is more than often a comprehensive project that concerns not only physical reshaping, but also ecological and environmental restoration, social restructuring, heritage protection, cultural identification, and community building.

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Environmentally, it may concern the depollution of water and soil and the ecological restoration of the local environment, mostly in a natural way such as phytoremediation. Physically, it may concern the readjustment of land use and the reuse of industrial buildings and structures for any possible urban functions, the equipment of any necessary public utilities, and the creation of new urban communities within a new urban tissue. Economically, it may concern the replacement of traditional industries, such as mining, manufacturing, and heavy chemical engineering, by new industries, such as cultural and creative industries, high-tech industries, and service industries.

Socially, it may concern the transformation of traditional blue-collars to new grey-collars for handcraft or modern white-collars for services and management, as well as the building of new communities.

Culturally, it may concern the protection of the industrial heritages and the identification of the local culture.

Taking that into consideration, urban planners and designers should build up the long-term, dynamic, and comprehensive views when working on brownfield redevelopment for postindustrial urbanism. A long-term view means to view urban development as a sustainable process and constructible land as a kind of resources that should be used in a recycling way. A dynamic view means to structure a flexible spatial framework through the reasonable layout of infrastructures and public spaces which can function as a skeleton to accommodate the dynamic evolution of urban development and possible changes of land use. A comprehensive view means to rely on multi-disciplinary collaborations when dealing with the tough task of brownfield redevelopment.

Professor Liu Jian showing students Shougang (the Capital Steel & Iron Group, and Beijing Coking Plant), during studio visit to Beijjing in January 2019.

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A Second Reconstruction: Studio Pedagogy

Lorena Bello Gómez, Brent D. Ryan

1.

Read Beatrice Chen’s article in this publication for a full undertanding of the 1976 earthquake, the process of reconstruction as well as its consequences for the city of Tangshan.

China, is the world’s most populous country and has been associated for decades with rapid urban growth, but China is also a complex landscape with cities in economic and social transition.

Deindustrialization is rampant, particularly in Northeast China in areas associated with resource extraction and processing. The resulting “transitional cities” struggle with abandonment, pollution, and the challenges of reuse and reactivation. While these issues are long familiar to urbanists in European and North American contexts, the design of postindustrial space is an emerging and newly pressing issue in China. With its economic slowdown and rising social disparities, China, a country where urban design and planning has confronted only rapid industrialization and growth for the past four decades, has already started a new post-industrial transition.

The MIT-Tsinghua Urban Design Studio, a historic collaboration which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2016, will now focus on transitional China—those cities, regions, and settlements experiencing abandonment and needing repurposing for future activities. The Spring 2019 China Urban Design Studio examined the city of Tangshan, an important industrial city in transition in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (jing jin ji) city-region. Tangshan is the cradle of China’s modern heavy industries, known for China’s first mechanized coal mining, first standard gauge railway, first steam locomotive, and first barrel of machine-made cement. Tangshan also has a history of science and technology development, rich folk cultures, strong educational institutions and a port for foreign trade.

Tangshan is best known, however, for its tragic vulnerability to seismic risk. As well explained by Beatrice Chen, in 1976, a massive earthquake hit Tangshan, killing more than 240,000 people. After this devastating disaster, China pooled resources across the country and quickly rebuilt the city, mostly as five-story housing blocks interspersed with factories and extraction sites.¹ Today, Tangshan faces new challenges. Many factories have moved out or closed down and left the city with environmental and 78

ecological problems. Together with the abandoned areas caused by seismicity, subsidence, and relocation, Tangshan awaits ecological restoration, industrial development, and urban revitalization. Our district of interest is located in the east of the central urban area of Tangshan, part of the post-earthquake reconstruction area. It covers an area of 11 km² and sits between the Dou River and the future Dong Hu Forest Park. The Park, still a coalmine in some stretches and currently a subsiding area, is projected to be converted into the largest “ecological park” in Tangshan, in tandem with the already designed Nanhu Park. The district is a complex of intermingled residential areas, industrial facilities, and urban villages. In the south of the district, the Tangshan Steel Factory, Tangshan Power Plant, and Qixin Wharf await reuse and repurposing. To the north, ceramic factories have already moved out, leaving abandoned buildings and land. Some of the kilns are an important industrial heritage.

These kilns are projected to become the landmark of “Tangshan Porcelain Culture Park”, an area of 6.4 hectares that is already under construction. According to Tangshan City Master Plan, our district of interest is designated as an extension of an urban core located to its south. Planned activities mainly consists of residential areas and comprehensive services in order to accommodate 120,000 people by 2030.

Tangshan’s envisioned future is consistent with most other growing areas in China, with wide roads, tall towers, widely segregated activities, and few, if any, visible remnants of previous activity, whether housing, extraction, or industry. Our studio examined, documented, analyzed, interrogated, and ultimately reimagined the futures of Tangshan’s five patches of urbanization: extraction landscapes; socialist housing; green and blue infrastructure; industrial architecture; and urban villages.

China Visit: IAP 2019 Our studio traveled to Beijing from January 17 to February 2, 2019.

During this period, we visited exemplary postindustrial developments in Beijing, met Chinese scholars and experts in planning, and worked closely with faculty and students from Tsinghua University. We also visited our site in Tangshan twice. During our first visit (1/21-1/24), local officials and the planning authority introduced the city and our site and we gathered data for our initial analysis. A four-day workshop and review followed in Beijing after the first visit. During our second visit (1/31-2/1), we revisited the site to collect additional information building on our initial analysis. The goal of this trip was to develop an in-depth understanding of the site and to gather data following findings from the initial workshop.

Through our field research, we gathered as much data as possible on a range of aspects on the past, present and future of the city and Tangshan in Transition: Studio Pedagogy

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6.8 km 2.5 km

Tangshan studio site dimensions (11km²)

Tangshan studio site vs. Forbidden City, Beijing

Tangshan studio site vs. Central Park, New York

Tangshan studio site vs. Fresh Kills Park, New York

Current Extraction Sites Previous Extraction Site Water Bodies

Tangshan

Major Extraction Sites

Liquification Fault Line Water Bodies

Tangshan

Seismic Terrain: Fault Lines

Subsiding Terrain Water Bodies

Tangshan

Subsiding Terrain

Existing Green Space Potential Green Space Water Bodies

Existing Green Space Potential Green Space Water Body Tangshan

City-Scale Recovered Open Spaces 81

the site. These aspects include, but are not limited to, the historical transformations of the built environment, the population, the ecosystems, the industries and the socioeconomic and cultural conditions at the scales of the site, the city and the region. Due to the lack of transparency regarding city data in China, we worked collectively with Tsinghua students to develop vector-based maps, 3D models, and drone photography.

The IAP visit analyzed Tangshan’s five “patches” of urbanism.

These patches are crucial components of the site, and collectively they make up much of our site’s surface area. The site, in other words, is a collective agglomeration of patches that are interconnected.

Students first toured the overall site and then selected a patch for further elaboration during the workshop period. The five patches are: 1) extraction landscapes; 2) socialist housing: the Danwei (work unit); 3) urban villages: China’s “informal”; 4) factory architecture and industrial heritage; and 5) green and blue infrastructure.

First visit to Tangshan, MIT and THU students January 22: MIT-THU sudents visited the “overall” site to get a sense of the place and to introduce everyone to the range of conditions presented by the site. Following dinner, we convened and asked students for their “patch preference”. Instructors took patch preferences and group of students into teams of two MIT students each (+THU students) (five patches, ten MIT students total.)

Students focused, in teams, on a single patch for the remainder of the field visit. On this first day we did also meet with Tangshan officials and tried to obtain as much data as possible on the spot, since online data is extremely limited.

January 23: MIT-THU student teams surveyed their selected patch in greater detail for the entire day. Extensive photography, conversations, walk throughs, experiences, and drone photography were useful. As we only had a single drone, we used it judiciously to photograph each patch. Instructors accompaigned different teams during the day.

January 24: Additional site visits and meetings provided opportunities for additional documentation and obtaining of data. Students were sure to document all presentations carefully in case that we did not receive copies of this valuable information later!

Workshop MIT and THU students January 25, 26, 27, 28 (work days), 29 (presentation day). The principal aim of the workshop was to construct an analytical cartography (not just descriptive), and to arrive at a draft diagnosis and potential program for each patch. The team work was used to document, interrogate, and unveil the site’s challenges and its potentials to be further designed during the spring semester.

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January 25 and 26: Map Hackathon: Construct baseline digital site map/model using available data sources, drone photography, aerial photography, and any other available data sources. This should be a collective MIT-THU studio effort and should be as intensive, and productive, as possible.

January 27 and 28: Program Hackathon: with the baseline map complete, each team should construct analytical maps showing the relationship of their patch to the overall site and site surroundings.

Each team should generate several analytical maps and propose initial diagnosis and programs for each patch based on initial data gathering, analysis and critical cartoghtaphies.

January 29: Teams should prepare presentations showing analytical maps of patches as well as proposed program diagrams.

With the workshop complete MIT students will revisit the site.

The second visit provides an opportunity to capture site information that was missed during the first visit and to investigate initial feasibility of program ideas. The group will visit all sites, either collectively or in two-student teams from January 31st to February 1st.

Patch One: Extraction and Landscape Tangshan’s long history of coal mining and processing of industrial products using coal-driven energy has left strong marks on its landscape. Beyond the studio site in the Tangshan region are rows of hills deeply quarried, presumably for coal but perhaps for other resources as well. On the studio site itself and just adjacent to it are coal storage and processing yards that have literally stained the earth black. In some cases, these “landscapes” of extraction are directly adjacent to agriculture and small-scale settlement. Other patches of industrial architecture and infrastructure intimately interleaf this extraction landscape. Many patches of what were presumably former storage or processing sites have become landscape, formal parks and natural spaces with varying degrees of design intention, picturesque or seemingly wild. True to Tangshan’s patchy character, these “parklands” are scattered over the studio site.

Tangshan’s extraction landscape, past and present, offers great opportunities for urban design. Though untouched nature is almost nonexisting, there are great opportunities for returning elements of nature to spaces with robust and often still-present industrial properties. Other open areas may arise from current building sites that are no longer needed. Ornamental? Ecological? Restorative?, or just Recreational? Tangshan’s extraction landscape, vast in scale, fragmented yet ubiquitous, raises a variety of questions for the urban designer. We visited Nan Hu Park, a good example of post-extraction ecological restoration and reconversion in Tangshan.

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Patch Two: Socialist Housing: the Danwei Compound Much of the Chinese cityscape is characterized by “patches” of unifunctional, monocultural enclaves of housing for specific economic and social groups or activities, often segregated by walls and gates. Much of this monofunctionality emerged during the “early” socialist era (1949-78), when spatially and/or socially segregated residential enclaves called danwei (work unit) compounds emerged.

These were succeeded in China’s post-reform era (since 1978) by privatized residential developments, known as Xiaoqu or Shequ.

Xiaoqu indicates an individual gated community while Shequ could entail multiple gated communities in a residential neighborhood. The “work units” (danwei) of the socialist “city of production” (shengchan chengshi) were physically enclosed, usually gated, and organized and administered through “work units” with the goals to reducing consumption and securing lifelong (and often multigenerational) employment and housing. One lived where one worked, and one was part of a self-sufficient, self-enclosed community.

Danwei compounds were centers of industries and services, replacing the traditional productive, political, service and trading activities of cities. The rationale underpinning such organization was the aim of a socialist, egalitarian livelihood, with equal distribution of resources, housing, and social welfare. Such social organization was also intended to reinforce patriotism, since workers and their families were assigned housing and other life support dependent on, not only their family composition and work duties, but on their political performance as well.

Much of the studio site consists of danwei, or danwei-like, housing complexes. As result of the “all at once” reconstruction after the earthquake, the housing typology is monotonous in design and non-gated: almost all run east-west and the older units are just a few stories high as Beatrice Chen explains in her essay in this volume.

True to Tangshan’s patchy nature, many danweis or danwei-like complexes directly adjoin industrial buildings or processing sites.

Others are entirely surrounded by industry. Such complexes, aging and inhabited by aging populations, raise a range of questions for the urban designer. Is this housing fully populated? Should residents be shifted, and housing removed, opened up, or otherwise altered?

What other types of rehabilitation are desirable? Shouldn’t this reconstruction housing be considered heritage?

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Patch Three: The Villages: China’s “Informal” Beijing’s old city is a carpet of dense housing that is only one story high but is horizontally extensive. They are named Hutongs and previous studios have explored them. Similar one-story village territories once covered China, and in older or rural areas, much of this housing survives. The scale of this housing is quite intimate: tiny streets are packed with equally tiny businesses and services, as well as small-scale manufacturing and, of course, much housing, including community services like restrooms and baths. This type of urban fabric is not much appreciated in contemporary China, and current patterns of city-building tend to eradicate and erase this housing entirely, rather than rehabilitate it. Our studio site in Tangshan contains a substantial amount of “village”-type housing at its northern and southern ends. Given Tangshan’s patchiness, this village housing is often interspersed with industry and small-scale industry, into which this housing often merges imperceptibly.

Whether or not Tangshan’s village fabric comprises true “urban villages” remains to be determined. Rural communities within urbanized areas are called urban villages (cheng zhong cun, “villages in the city”) in China. They provide affordable (sometimes informal and extralegal) housing and amenities to residents of the city, and are a crucial component of the city that accommodates numerous migrants who propel the industrial development of the city and its region. In expensive areas like Shenzhen, urban villages have become the informal affordable housing that allows low-income population in China to join the urban economy at large. Their collective land tenure also enables collective governance within urban villages and grants these communities bargaining power in urban development.

But many cities view urban villages as an eyesore of the city due to the poor quality of their built environment. By the end of 2015, the Chinese central government announced the elimination of all urban villages by 2020.

Tangshan’s village fabric represents genuine post-1976 emergency housing stock, representing precious historic survivals. Are they equivalent to Beijing’s hutongs, today a precious historic resource?

Or is this housing in need of substantial renovation? What qualities of this urban fabric are to be appreciated and accentuated, and what parts to be removed or rejuvenated? Coping with such housing represents a major challenge for China today and the studio had the opportunity to engage with this pressing issue.

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RIVER INFRASTUCTURE CITY AND SITE SCALE Park Water River Site Boundary

Industrial mix Residen�al zones around water Residen�al mix park zones around water Residen�al zones around water Water & River Site Boundary

SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE URBAN SCALE

Community hall Waste water plant Museum Kindergarten School University Site Boundary

Inbetween Network Infrastructure Spine Connec�on Nodes

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Views of Dou River and river banks from Tangshan bridges

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RAILWAY NETWORK CITY AND SITE SCALE Cargo Railway Tradi�onal Passenger Railway Highspeed Railway

Tangshan North Railway Station

Train Sta�on

2 Cargo Train from Tangan to Fengrun Suburb

1 Tianjin Qinhuangdao Railway

Tangshan Railway Station

3 Passenger Train from South of Tangshan to Guye Station

Housing around railway Industrial zones around railway Railway Elevated Railway Railway and road intersec�on Site Boundary

INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE CITY SCALE

Ceramic Culture Expo Park Sixth porcelain factory

Dou River Line Old oil depot & Former airport

Tangshan power station

Airport Line

Tang Gang factory Historical pavilion Huaxin Textile Factory

Dachengshan Line

Hans Villa

Tangshan museum

Heritage at downtown Heritage along Dou River Future Heritage Dou River heritage zone Downtown heritage zone Railway Site Boundary

Core Industrial Culture Ring

Kailuan Mine Park

Hill Line Tangshan South Railway Station

Jiaotong Line The first mine pit

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Heritages in the downtown sp Heritages along the Dou rive Poten�al Her

Train infrastructure traversing Tangshan Steel Manufacturing plant

Tangshan in Transition: Studio Pedagogy

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ROAD NETWORK CITY AND SITE SCALE Motorways Primary roads Secondary roads Site Rivers

Highways Primary roads Secondary roads Service or residen�al roads Pedestrian

Social Infrastructure (Ameni�es)

Green Infrastructure

Road Network

Railway Network

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Tangshan Road Taxonomy: From elevated expressways and wide avenues that segregate neighborhoods, to more human-scale streets in the urban villages

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Patch Four: Factory Architecture and Industrial Heritage The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century arrived late to China. In 1949 the country was overwhelmingly agricultural, though northeastern China, including Tangshan, had already begun extracting and processing coal, iron, and steel under the Chinese republic. Tangshan and Beijing thus represent some of China’s oldest “modern” industrial heritage. Crash industrialization programs under early Communism expanded industrial activity, turning Tangshan into a sea of factories interspersed with extraction sites, processing, and housing. Much of this industrial fabric survives today in the form of what appear to be steel mills, coking plants, and other forms of heavy industrial buildings. But Tangshan has a variety of smaller industrial facilities as well. The studio site is suffused with industrial buildings and sites of all forms.

Industrial buildings represent significant opportunities for reuse.

While the United States typically destroys such buildings in order to repurpose their sites for office parks or other contemporary employment, more creative reuses can be found around the world, including in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and China. We visited two such reuse possibilities in Beijing. Once obsolete, industrial buildings face abandonment and demand ecological restoration and transformative revisioning. Industrial heritage is one of the mediums that best reflect the duality of a post-industrial city. The remaining structures for work, technology, production, circulation of goods manifest a history of urban growth; they also exhibit flexibility, scope, and ability to shape landscapes. Cultural activities flourish in industrial sites; the buildings often spur creativity and provide home for activities not found elsewhere. What cultural capital in Tangshan could be stimulated by its radical, active, yet partially obsolete and seemingly mostly intact industrial landscape?

Patch Five: Infrastructure: Infrastructure is critical to urban transformation today. While urbanization has increasingly been produced by private capital, infrastructure is often public authorities’ primary focus of investment.

It can ensure mobility and transport and create a structure within a territory. It can provide accessibility and fundamentally enhance the quality of the public realm. Infrastructure is often considered to be a human made element of cities, but the first infrastructures were natural, and natural infrastructures like waterways, greenways, and other ecosystem connectors often persisted throughout even the heaviest eras of urbanization. Today, with industrial activities reducing in intensity, infrastructure can be reborn, reactivated, or repurposed. The High Line is only the latest and best known example, but there are hundreds of cases worldwide.

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Tangshan is an infrastructural city. It contains a dense railway network designed mostly to ferry industrial materials to and from extraction and processing sites to the capital and to port facilities in Tianjin. Many railways cross the studio site in various states of activity and repair. Highway infrastructure, on the other hand, is comparatively limited on the studio site, though this is scheduled to change with the construction of a typically massive north-south road along the studio site’s eastern edge (see Tangshan master plan).

The western edge of the studio site is comprised of the natural infrastructure of the Tanghe River, flowing south toward Bohai Bay. Infrastructure is a patch that connects all other patches on the studio site, and it is also perhaps the most heterogeneous patch, comprised of many different fabrics. Does the site have a surplus of infrastructure, or not enough? What is the future activity and texture of infrastructure in this post-industrial landscape?

Back at MIT Both the field work in Tangshan and the workshop in Beijing helped find paths that students continued exploring during the Spring semester. We divided the semester into two design exercises.

The first one can be found in PART II of this publication entitled, Housing in Transition: Surgical Upgrades. This exercise was framed to respond to Tangshan’s aged housing and population. The second exercise responds to the challenge posed by deindustrialization and pollution in Tangshan and can be found in PART IV of this volume entitled, Designing a City in Transition. Case Studies, lectures and a bibliography on the topic were provided to help frame the design strategies. Following Martina Baum and Kees Christiaanse’s inspiring example City as Loft, students were asked to collect their own assemblage of projects. PART III, Industry in Transition: Re-store, Reprogram, Re-use, Re-purpose, Re-cycle brings together all these cases with major readings during the semester.

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Tangshan Xinming Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hebei East Cement Co. Ltd Tangshan Boyu Ceramics Creative Culture Co. Ltd. Tangshan Huamei Ceramics Company Tangshan First Ceramics Company Tangshan Xinde Boiler Group Co. Ltd Tangshan Renshi Cement Co. Ltd Tangshan Ceramics Group Co. Ltd. Tangshan Xingyuan Porcelain Industry Co. Ltd Tangshan Lightbulb Factory Tangshan Coal Mining Machinery Repair Factory Shijiazhuang Fan Factory Tangshan Branch Tangshan Xieli General Machinery Factory Tangshan Boiler Installation and Repair Factory Tangshan Kaier Heat Exchange Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Hebei Metallurgical Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Donyi Auto Repair Factory Tangshan No. 6 Ceramics Factory Tangshan Meishu Ceramics Factory Tangshan Leather Products Factory Tangshan Ceramics Group Mechanical Factory Tangshan Guohua Ceramics Co. Ltd.

Tangshan Fourth Acid-Resistant Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hongming Boiler Technology Co. Ltd. Tangshan Kaiping District Longyuan New Model Brick Factory Baoye Group Xiyao Storage Company Tangshan Metallurgy Mining Machinery Co. Ltd Tangshan Debote Machinery Co. Ltd. Tangshan Power Supply Company Tangshan General Auto Repair Factory Tangshan Taifa Auto Repair Co. Ltd. Tangshan Steel Co. Ltd. Hebei Datang International Thermoelectric Co. Ltd. Tangshan Vehicle Scale Factory Tangshan Lipin Meishu Ceramic Factory

Tangshan Huaxincheng Ceramic Products Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longying Ceramics Co. Ltd. Tangshan Xinyu Bone China Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longhua Ceramics Oil Supply Co. Ltd. Tangshan Lubei Shengtao Carton Factory Tangshan Second Rubber Integrated Products Factory Tangshan New Development Company Metal Packaging Factory Tangshan Taijie Hoisting Equipment Co. Ltd Tangshan Guanda Insulation Materials Co. Ltd Tangshan Metal Gift Box Factory Tangshan Lubei District Non-Ferrous Casting Factory

CERAMICS MECHANICS MISC. PRODUCTS AUTO REPAIR CEMENT STORAGE METAL PRODUCTS ENERGY RESOURCES

Tangshan Non-Ferrous Metals Foundry

Tangshan Studio Site. Factory Types Tangshan Studio Site. Factory Year of Establishment Tangshan Xinming Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hebei East Cement Co. Ltd. Tangshan Boyu Ceramics Creative Culture Co. Ltd. Tangshan Huamei Ceramics Company Tangshan First Ceramics Company Tangshan Xinde Boiler Group Co. Ltd Tangshan Renshi Cement Co. Ltd Tangshan Ceramics Group Co. Ltd Tangshan Xinyuan Porcelain Industry Co. Ltd Tangshan Lightbulb Factory Tangshan Coal Mining Machinery Repair Factory

Tangshan Fourth Acid-Resistant Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hongming Boiler Technology Co. Ltd. Tangshan Kaiping District Longyuan New Model Brick Factory

Shijiazhuang Fan Factory Tangshan Branch

Baoye Group Xiyao Storage Company

Tangshan Xieli General Machinery Factory

Tangshan Metallurgy Mining Machinery Co. Ltd

Tangshan Boiler Installation and Repair Factory Tangshan Kaier Heat Exchange Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Hebei Metallurgical Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Dongy Auto Repair Factory Tangshan No. 6 Ceramics Factory Tangshan Meishu Ceramics Factory Tangshan Leather Products Factory Tangshan Ceramics Group Mechanical Factory Tangshan Guohua Ceramics Co. Ltd.

Tangshan Debote Machinery Co. Ltd. Tangshan Power Supply Company Tangshan General Auto Repair Factory Tangshan Taifa Auto Repair Co. Ltd. Tangshan Steel Co. Ltd. Hebei Datang International Thermoelectric Co. Ltd. Tangshan Vehicle Scale Factory Tangshan Lipin Meishu Ceramic Factory

Tangshan Huaxincheng Ceramic Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longying Ceramics Co. Ltd. Tangshan Xinyu Bone China Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longhua Ceramics Oil Supply Co. Ltd. Tangshan Lubei Shengtao Carton Factory Tangshan Second Rubber Integrated Products Factory Tanggang New Development Company Metal Packaging Factory Tangshan Taijjie Hoisting Equipmet Co. Ltd Tangshan Guanda Insulation Materials Co. Ltd Tangshan Metal Gift Box Factory Tangshan Lubei District Non-Ferrous Casting Factory

RANGE OF STABLISHED ERA 2010-2018 2005-2009 2000-2004 1995-1999 1990-1994

Tangshan Non-Ferrous Metals Foundry

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Tangshan Xinming Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hebei East Cement Co. Ltd Tangshan Boyu Ceramics Creative Culture Co. Ltd. Tangshan Huamei Ceramics Company Tangshan First Ceramics Company Tangshan Xinde Boiler Group Co. Ltd Tangshan Renshi Cement Co. Ltd Tangshan Ceramics Group Co. Ltd. Tangshan Xingyuan Porcelain Industry Co. Ltd Tangshan Lightbulb Factory Tangshan Coal Mining Machinery Repair Factory Shijiazhuang Fan Factory Tangshan Branch Tangshan Xieli General Machinery Factory Tangshan Boiler Installation and Repair Factory Tangshan Kaier Heat Exchange Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Hebei Metallurgical Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Donyi Auto Repair Factory Tangshan No. 6 Ceramics Factory Tangshan Meishu Ceramics Factory Tangshan Leather Products Factory Tangshan Ceramics Group Mechanical Factory Tangshan Guohua Ceramics Co. Ltd.

Tangshan Fourth Acid-Resistant Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hongming Boiler Technology Co. Ltd. Tangshan Kaiping District Longyuan New Model Brick Factory Baoye Group Xiyao Storage Company Tangshan Metallurgy Mining Machinery Co. Ltd Tangshan Debote Machinery Co. Ltd. Tangshan Power Supply Company Tangshan General Auto Repair Factory Tangshan Taifa Auto Repair Co. Ltd. Tangshan Steel Co. Ltd. Hebei Datang International Thermoelectric Co. Ltd. Tangshan Vehicle Scale Factory Tangshan Lipin Meishu Ceramic Factory

Tangshan Huaxincheng Ceramic Products Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longying Ceramics Co. Ltd. Tangshan Xinyu Bone China Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longhua Ceramics Oil Supply Co. Ltd. Tangshan Lubei Shengtao Carton Factory Tangshan Second Rubber Integrated Products Factory

FACTORIES AIR POLLUTION -HIGHLY POLLUTIVE

Tangshan New Development Company Metal Packaging Factory Tangshan Taijie Hoisting Equipment Co. Ltd Tangshan Guanda Insulation Materials Co. Ltd Tangshan Metal Gift Box Factory Tangshan Lubei District Non-Ferrous Casting Factory

-SLIGHTLY POLLUTIVE

Tangshan Non-Ferrous Metals Foundry

Tangshan Studio Site. Factory Air Pollution Tangshan Studio Site. Factory Soil Pollution Tangshan Xinming Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hebei East Cement Co. Ltd.

Industrial Pollution

Tangshan Boyu Ceramics Creative Culture Co. Ltd. Tangshan Huamei Ceramics Company Tangshan First Ceramics Company Tangshan Xinde Boiler Group Co. Ltd

Tangshan Renshi Cement Co. Ltd Soil pollution Tangshan Ceramics Group Co. Ltd Tangshan Xinyuan Porcelain Industry Co. Ltd Tangshan Lightbulb Factory Tangshan Coal Mining Machinery Repair Factory

Tangshan Fourth Acid-Resistant Ceramics Factory Tangshan Hongming Boiler Technology Co. Ltd. Tangshan Kaiping District Longyuan New Model Brick Factory

Shijiazhuang Fan Factory Tangshan Branch

Baoye Group Xiyao Storage Company

Tangshan Xieli General Machinery Factory

Tangshan Metallurgy Mining Machinery Co. Ltd

Tangshan Boiler Installation and Repair Factory Tangshan Kaier Heat Exchange Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Hebei Metallurgical Manufacturing Co. Limited Tangshan Dongy Auto Repair Factory Tangshan No. 6 Ceramics Factory Tangshan Meishu Ceramics Factory Tangshan Leather Products Factory Tangshan Ceramics Group Mechanical Factory Tangshan Guohua Ceramics Co. Ltd.

Tangshan Debote Machinery Co. Ltd. Tangshan Power Supply Company Tangshan General Auto Repair Factory Tangshan Taifa Auto Repair Co. Ltd. Tangshan Steel Co. Ltd. Hebei Datang International Thermoelectric Co. Ltd. Tangshan Vehicle Scale Factory Tangshan Lipin Meishu Ceramic Factory

Tangshan Huaxincheng Ceramic Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longying Ceramics Co. Ltd. Tangshan Xinyu Bone China Co. Ltd. Tangshan Longhua Ceramics Oil Supply Co. Ltd. Tangshan Lubei Shengtao Carton Factory Tangshan Second Rubber Integrated Products Factory

FACTORIES SOIL POLLUTION -HIGHLY POLLUTIVE

Tanggang New Development Company Metal Packaging Factory Tangshan Taijjie Hoisting Equipmet Co. Ltd Tangshan Guanda Insulation Materials Co. Ltd Tangshan Metal Gift Box Factory Tangshan Lubei District Non-Ferrous Casting Factory

-SLIGHTLY POLLUTIVE

Tangshan Non-Ferrous Metals Foundry

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TANGSHAN INDUSTRIAL TAXONOMY ELEVATION AND AXONOMETRICS

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Part II:

Housing in Transition: Surgical Upgrades

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Housing in China Brent D. Ryan/ Colleen Chiu-Shee The Neo-Danwei: Retrofit Housing for an Aging Tangshan Stephen Erdman/ Tanaya Srini/ Haoyu Wang The Urban Villages: Tactics Against Demolition Zhuangyuan Fan/ Melissa Gutiérrez Soto/ Dylan Halpern

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Housing in Tangshan

Brent D. Ryan, Colleen Chiu-Shee

Our site visits and media exposure in China clearly revealed the currently envisioned future of housing in China. Site planning is characterized by division into large superblocks; typically 500 meters on a side (or 1700 feet). Within this superblock, the housing type, normally designed as a tower or slab, is apportioned in rows or other symmetrical formal arrangements, allowing the remaining site facilities (retail, parking, community services, etc.) to fill in the space between. Open space is occasionally monumental and generous, more often remedial and/or leftover in between space required for the other uses. Beyond the gates or boundaries of the housing, wide roads, including poorly-defined sidewalks and parking, divide the housing superblock from the next one. This planning pattern is in part a legacy of Soviet Modernist thinking, but it is also a pattern that has been attuned and adapted to the Chinese context; even rural villages feature housing in rigid rows, all facing the same way, as do the hutongs of Beijing. Uniformity, modularity, and regimentation are longstanding patterns in China’s housing. Tangshan is in the midst of constructing legions of new housing in multiple areas of the city; in the Nanhu area and the “Phoenix district” in particular. A projected population of 5 million, according to the current planning model, show that much more housing will be needed in the future if this projected need is to become real.

Whether or not these projections are real is something that should be seriously questioned. At the same time, new housing is likely to be constructed on the studio site, and the existing patterns of Chinese housing are not necessarily to be replicated further without interrogation. New housing on the studio site should examine a variety of issues ranging from scale, orientation, new working patterns, individual and collective uses. The form and landscape conditions of new housing are also open to investigation. Should housing take the form of a slab? A tower? High density? Medium, or even low density? There are precedents for all three density arrangements already on the studio site. Chinese housing is often 102

typological in nature, and investigating the typological dimensions of housing, including variations on a theme, multiple themes, or other variations, is of interest, as is thinking about the relative disposition of unit sizes and unit densities within building arrangements. Ultimately, future housing in China, particularly Tangshan and specially in the studio site area, should both upgrade existing conditions and project housing futures that take into consideration the fragility of its ground —subject to seismic activity and subsidence—as well as the city´s socio-economic and ecological transition.

The studio took as sites of investigation two of the prevalent housing types of Tangshan: the “danwei”, or work unit, and the “urban village”. Both of these housing types, which are found in extensive districts within the city, reflect the product of reconstruction efforts following Tangshan’s vast 1976 earthquake.

As Beatrice Chen notes in her article in this volume, 97 percent of Tangshan’s residential buildings were “leveled”, meaning that effectively no housing now standing in the city predates 1976. The reconstuction program for Tangshan projected “uniform typologies of modern housing” with “heat and running water ... a kitchen, a toilet, and a balcony.” Much of this housing, built in “the construction material of choice” concrete, was indeed constructed, producing a city of “slabs of almost identical concrete housing” closely associated with employment centers. This danwei housing was constructed in great quantities, but as is almost always the case in socialist housing programs, such housing did not constitute the entirety of the rebuilt city’s residential districts. Reimagining the future of such danwei housing comprised the first of the studio’s housing design investigations. Meanwhile, at the city’s outskirts, many non-core districts, originally built up with one or two-story brick structures, were reconstructed almost as-is. These settlements were in essence villages within the city, similar in building type to rural housing if not all endowed with collective ownership of their land in the manner of true rural villages. Reconstructed as rows of one-or two story ‘emergency housing’, these non-danwei reconstructed homes have only recently begun to be removed for Tangshan’s third generation of urban housing, the tall towers described earlier. Yet many village districts also remain, and their reimagination sparked the second of the studio’s housing design investigations.

Stephen Erdman, Tanaya Srini, and Haoyu Wang’s “Neo-Danwei: Retrofit Housing for an Aging Tangshan” recognizes the danwei for what it is today: not an avatar of modernity, but a treasured resource that preserves great value for its residents, many of whom are aging and of the lower income brackets of Tangshan. The great extent of danwei developments in Tangshan offers an opportunity to rethink the future of this typology in the Chinese city, and an approach of Housing in Transition: Housing in Tangshan

103

Danwei Housing in Tangshan reconstructed after the earthquake awaits upgrading

Urban Village being demolished during our visit

104

“critical conservation” was adopted by the students. Overall, the project approach was the following: Danwei were the direct legacy of a catastrophic past overcome with great effort, and a “symbol of heroism and rebirth” that should be retained and updated to enhance the future of living in Tangshan. The variety of positive qualities possessed by this housing, such as a sense of ownership, a human scale, and a neighborhood community, could be retained, while numerous obstacles, such as walk-up buildings, underused facilities, and inefficient heating and cooling, could be overcome through ideas like the incorporation of elevators and balconies; the densification of housing cluster edges with additional development for purposes of revenue generation; and the construction of civic buildings in underused spaces for purposes such as greenhouses, schools, and health care.

Zhuangyuan Fan, Melissa Gutierrez Soto, and Dylan Halpern’s “Urban Villages: Tactics Against Demolition” acknowledges these “emergency” settlements as another special legacy of Tangshan’s postearthquake reconstruction. The existing pavilion-like structures, while modest in scale and in amenity level, contain both “attractive and aversive” qualities, as the students noted, in a manner analogous to that of danwei housing. Having moved in quickly in anticipation of eventual danwei construction, many urban village inhabitants in Tangshan never left, as an elderly resident recounted. Similar to other parts of China, Tangshan’s urban villages have become harbors for the city’s ‘floating’ population of non-hukou migrants, who otherwise cannot easily find housing. China is in the midst of a large-scale, state-sponsored demolition program of urban villages, but solutions for the low-income elderly, and for the floating population, remain underdeveloped. The studio approached the urban village as an exceptional, if imperfect, built environment providing a rural-urban condition with a high quality of life, including affordability, flexibility, and accessibility as chief values to retain. Students proposed an acupunctural approach to urban space, upgrading extant services and providing missing ones in order to enhance everyday life in the urban village. A second stage of studio work reincorporated an urban village with an employment center in a renewed ceramic factory , and projected a new ‘rurban’ housing development on the site of a just-demolished (2019) urban village, incorporating moderate-density housing, agricultural land, and a nursery to promote reforestation on some of Tangshan’s ecologically recovering terrains.

Housing in Transition: Housing in Tangshan

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108

The Neo-Danwei: Retrofit Housing for an Aging Tangshan

Stephen Erdman, Tanaya Srini, Haoyu Wang

Beyond being the predominant housing fabric found in Tangshan, the danwei are a way of life. Providing steady housing, health care, recreational amenities, and a lasting community, was once the common standard for housing across the city, but vacating industries and market forces have sent many danwei compounds into states of disrepair. After years of harmonious living, Tangshan’s aging workers are now subjected to neighborhoods that are poorly maintained, with insufficient waste removal and scattered parking. Inaccessible apartments and community spaces are now characteristic of historic danwei communities.

Despite these challenges, the danwei also offer opportunities not found elsewhere in the city. Their human scale, the sense of ownership afforded by their open spaces, and the symbol of heroism and rebirth they represent provide a canvas that is ripe for upgrading.

The neo-Danwei project uses these features as a starting point from which to innovate incremental housing upgrades for an aging population. By adding an infrastructure and service skin to preserved danwei buildings, while demolishing some units to provide new community amenities and better circulation, we generate a blueprint for the future of danwei housing in Tangshan.

109

Pre-car ownership design

Walk-up housing

Underused facilities

Inadequate waste removal

Inefficient heating & cooling

Underused open space

Human Scale

Varied use of open space

Sense of ownership

Neighborhood community

Bottom-up amenities

Symbol of heroism, rebirth

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Danwei DanweiHousing HousingRemnants Remnants Sustained SustainedDanwei DanweiHousing Housings Contemporary ContemporaryHousing Housings Industrial IndustrialStates Estates

Housing in Transition: The Neo Danwei

111

Community assets - Production, green - Social interaction - Education

Building renovations - New skins - Handicap access - Communal space - Rooftop production

Street-front - Regulated parking - Elevated gardens - Retail - Storage

Building demolition - Shrinking population - Creates space for new interventions

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58sqm

48sqm

34sqm

80sqm

80sqm

63sqm

63sqm 34sqm

Reduced density and new ‘skin’ to better serve elderly residents

Danwei streetscape: before & after

Housing in Transition: The Neo Danwei

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= 100 people

Currently, 4,000 adult residents

When power plant closes, half leave

Nearly 70% will live alone

25% will be disabled

Many newcomers will also be elderly

16% 3-gen

33% 1-gen

51% 2-gen

16% 3-gen

33% 1-gen

51% 2-gen

12% 3-gen

40% 1-gen

48% 2-gen

12% 3-gen

16% 3-gen

40% 1-gen

48% 2-gen

51% 2-

Household Composition Household Composition

Household Composition

49% Working Age49% Working Age

Age Breakdown

Age Breakdown

Tangshan

Tangshan

49% Working Age49% Working Age

29% Elderly

Urban China

Tangshan

Elderly 25% Youth Elderly 20% Youth 25% Elderly 25%25% Youth Youth 29% Elderly 20%29%

49% Work

Age Breakdown

Urban ChinaUrban China

Tangs

Tangshan has a disproportionately old population, as compared to the rest of China. Additionally, its households are more likely to be multigenerational. With this demographic context in mind, we applied the danwei upgrade strategy to the danwei cluster associated with the Tangshan Power Plant as a model for danwei communities across the city. While this danwei currently houses 4,000 adults, more than half are expected to leave when the Power Plant closes. Many of those who remain will be elderly, disabled, and lack caretakers. The upgrade strategy seeks to address these challenges.

Through a series of deletions and insertions, Danwei across Tangshan could be reprogrammed to enhance community spaces and amenities, including private and communal gardens, food precessing facilities or senior housing. In some Danwei, the possibility of riverfront developments, could become an economic device to retrofit housing and provide new senior living and care facilities.

In others, when the riverfront is not available, the edges of the site could be upzoned for commercial development to achieve the same economic boost towards the upgrade.

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Axonometric view of the neo-Danwei housing

View from a communal balcony of the neo-Danwei housing

Housing in Transition: The Neo Danwei

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118

The Urban Villages: Tactics Against Demolition

Zhuangyuan Fan, Melissa Gutiérrez Soto, Dylan Halpern

China’s urban villages represent a stark contrast to the prevailing posture of city development. Where the land within city’s boundaries is owned wholly by the state, the urban village maintains collective ownership. Where the 500x500 meter blocks of the contemporary block are dotted with 20+ story high-rises, the village fabric is varied and dense, being in Tangshan’s case a low-rise building typology of one to two stories. Where purchasing land in the city demands hukou, China’s household registration, the urban village houses a large informal renting system for migrant workers. These migrant workers make up around 10% of Tangshan’s population, coming from across the nation. But the value of the urban village is not seen as enabling affordable housing; rather, it is an obstacle to be overcome.

In Gangyaoli, the urban village in our site within Tangshan, the struggle for ownership and housing is happening before our eyes.

The western half of the village, closest to the urban core, has been demolished to make way for more contemporary housing. The eastern portion, shielded by a cargo rail that divides the site, is already being incised by a major-east west corridor. The land has been urbanized, meaning that the municipality now holds decision-making control over Gangyaoli. Located adjacent to the site of an incoming ecological park , the village is vulnerable to demolition and redevelopment for a luxury segment.

But the village homes house many of the workers who made Tangshan what it is today, their labor forming the city’s industrial identity in recovering from the earthquake. The name of the village, Gangyao, derives from this origin: gang refers to a large ceramic urn and yao translates to a place of production—literally the village where gang are produced. The study of this site seeks to understand the fabric of the village and envision a way to conserve its attractive qualities for a new and growing audience. Through thoughtful openings created in the urban village together with conservation of villagers’ way of life ask us to consider the role of the village moving forward and how to argue for its relevancy.

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URBAN VILLAGE ERASURE OVER TIME

TANGSHAN

STATION

唐山

2002 N

0

2018 1: 25,000

Stage 1: Rural Village Fabric: Low-Rise Settlement Surroundings: Agriculture Ownership: Collectively Owned Stage 2: Urban-Adjacent Fabric: Low-Rise Settlement Surroundings: Industry, High Rise, Agriculture Ownership: Collectively Owned Stage 3: Urban Village Fabric: Hybrid Low-Mid-High Rise Surroundings: More Industry, High Rise, Less Agriculture Ownership: Collectively Owned Stage 4: Former Village Fabric: Village Remnant Surroundings: Industry, High Rise Ownership: Municipally Owned Stage 5: Former Village Site Fabric: Market Rate Fabric Surroundings: Industry, High Rise Ownership: Municipally Owned

4 KM

Informal market at Gangyao village using strategic location at village’s gate

Housing in Transition: The Urban Village

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GANGYAOLI’S ATTRACTIVE & AVERSIVE QUALITIES

HOUSE SCALE FLORA

Vegetation/Greenery

STREET SCALE Vegetation

Vegetation

Small Scale Ag

Connection to Ag

Retail

Economic Network

Affordability

ECONOMY FLEXIBILITY COMMUNITY

URBAN FABRIC

LIFESTYLE

Suitability to Needs

SPACE BUILT STRUCTURE TRANSIT WASTE LOCATION & ACCESSIBILITY

Inclusive Economy Small Scale Industry

Location

Flexible Transportation

Flexible Economy (Informal)

Communal Living

Neighbor/social Interaction

Social Network

Appropriation of Space

Appropriation of Public Space

Flexibility of Space

Flexible/Self-modify

Social Scale

Less Isolation

Diversity of facade

Different Fabric / Experience

Historic Significance

Architectural Value Architectural Material Pet Friendly

Scale of Experience

Urban Experience

Walkability

Location (Access to Work)

Multimodal Slower Pace

Heating

SANITATION

VILLAGE SCALE

Access to Light

Health/Hygiene

Sewage System

Limited Space

Limited Public Space

Structural Issues

Infrastrcture Issues

Communal Governance

Trash Disposal

Trash Collection/Storage

Limited Parking Solid Waste

Limited Public Transit Stark/Hard Separation from City

Proximity to Amenities

Hard to Navigate / Traverse

Quality of Road Network

High Walls / Isolation

Location (Access to Services) Location (Pollution) Accessibility (Ability)

Gangyao village possesses unique traits that separate it from the city.

Its challenges are likewise singular. Where a single house and street scale reflect the deep sense of freedom and traversal or expression present in the area, village scale infrastructure issues like solid waste, access to education, and road pavement pervade the fabric. The strong social and economic networks—both formal and informal— that make up village life are ultimately what make Gangyao village a compelling place.

The vibrant rhythm of the urban village is immediately recognizable against the rest of the city. Street markets and narrow alleys, personalized homes, and informal commerce together with strong social networks create a web of tangible and intangible attributes. Housing units in the village are made up of morphologically repeated units, connected and merged over time.

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Housing in Transition: The Urban Village

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base unit

2 units + courtyard

1 unit + extra room

1 unit + extra room

second level additions

Unit Growth Taxonomy

ED S O CL S N E IO T PA

CO

D AR Y UR

S/

SI U HO

PU TO

IN

G

ILT U S B F- ION L SE DIT AD

C LI S B U ET L OI

AL M R CE FO ER M M O C

S ET K A R OF M N AL TIO M R IA FO OPR ACE N I PR SP AP BLIC PU E R URT TE T C A RU ET P T S E L RA STR RIA F IN AD/ ATE RO D M AN

NS

GANGYAO LI Gang - a large ceramic urn ; Yao - a place of production ; Li - a village

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CONNECTIONS Bridging Tangshan and Gangyaoli with minimal erasure and enhanced connections

Nursery

Acupuncture village node

Healing Major connection

Phase 1 Commuter rail Affordable housing Village street network Ceramic studio business

Phase 2

New development

Tree transplant Place making

Phase 3

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Housing in Transition: The Urban Village

DAY CARE

AGRICULTUREAGRICULTURE

DAY CARE DAY CARE

STORAGE

Phase 2: Community program and close relocation COMMUNITY GATHERINGS COMMUNITY GATHERINGS

STORAGE

Phase 1: Open

MARKET

OPEN SPACE

FLEXIBLE SPACE

OPEN SPACE OPEN SPACE

FLEXIBLE SPACE FLEXIBLE SPACE

SANITATION SANITATION

Old Town Fabric (existing)

MARKET

COMMUNITY GATHERINGS

STORAGE

SANITATION

BLOCKS

INSERTIONS

Pavillions as nodes of infrastructure, sanitation and public spaces

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INTERNAL CONNECTIONS

COMMERCIAL STREET

COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

CERAMIC SHOWROOM

OPENINGS AND INSERTIONS

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COMMUNITY BUILDINGS INFRASTRUCTURE PAVILIONS

NEW 2 STORY HOUSING

COMMUNAL BLOCK CENTERS

SECONDARY ROADS

Part III:

Industry in Transition: Re-Store, Re-Program, Re-Use, Re-Purpose, Re-Cycle

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Ecological Urbanism Anne W. Spirn Brown Earth-Work: A New Landscape Paradigm and Research Approach for Brownfields Regeneration Zheng Xiaodi Industrial Urbanism: Exploring the City–Production Dynamic Tali Hatuka/ Eran Ben-Joseph/ Sunny Menozzi Case Studies Referencing City as Loft

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Ecological Urbanism *

Anne Whiston Spirn

* Note from the

author: This essay was first published as a chapter in The Routledge Companion to Urban Design, Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia LoukaitouSideris, editors (Routledge, 2011). An updated and revised version with the title Ecological Urbanism: A Framework For The Design Of Resilient Cities is available at: https:// annewhistonspirn. com/pdf/SpirnEcoUrbanism-2012. pdf.

I regret that it was not possible to provide a more comprehensive review of the many other authors who have contributed to the evolution and development of this tradition; that must wait for an indepth review of the literature, as must a review of the many designs and plans for places that embody principles of ecological urbanism.

Human survival depends upon adapting ourselves and our settlements in life-sustaining ways, designing places that reflect the interconnections of air, earth, water, life, and culture, that help us feel and understand these connections, places that are functional, sustainable, meaningful, and artful (Spirn 1998). Ecological urbanism aims to advance this goal.

Ecological urbanism weds the theory and practice of urban design and planning, as a means of adaptation, with the insights of ecology – the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environment – and other environmental disciplines, such as climatology, hydrology, geography, psychology, and history.

Ecological urbanism has an aesthetic dimension, but it is not a style; the works of its practitioners may be radically different in appearance even though based on the same principles.

Ecological urbanism is not a new idea; its roots are ancient, and it is grounded in a tradition of key concepts and principles. Ecological urbanism is critical to the future of urban design: it provides a framework for addressing challenges that threaten humanity (global warming, rising sea level, declining oil reserves, rising energy demands, and environmental justice) while fulfilling human needs for health, safety, and welfare, meaning, and delight.

ECOLOGICAL URBANISM: HISTORIC ROOTS AND CURRENT TRENDS The theory and practice of ecological urbanism has a long history, a foundation of knowledge to support it, and projects that demonstrate its benefits. The roots of this tradition in Western culture are deep: from Hippocrates’ treatise Airs, Waters, Places of the fifth century B.C. to Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature of 1969 and Kevin Lynch’s Good City Form of 1981 to contemporary authors (Spirn 1985).

More than two thousand years ago, Hippocrates described the effects of “airs, waters, and places” on the health of individuals and communities. Vitruvius (ca. first century B.C.) described how the 134

layout of streets and the orientation and arrangement of buildings should respond to seasonal patterns of sun and wind. Leon Battista Alberti in 1485 expanded on these recommendations, advocating that the siting of cities and the design of streets, squares, and buildings should be adapted to the character of their environment so that cities might promote health, safety, convenience, dignity, and pleasure. “We ought never to undertake any Thing that is not exactly agreeable to Nature,” Alberti warned, “ for nature, if you force or wrest her out of her Way, whatever Strength you may do it with, will yet in the End overcome and break through’ all Opposition and Hindrance... forced to yield to her daily and continual Perseverance” (Alberti 1485).

Alberti underscored this warning by cataloguing the disasters suffered by cities that had disregarded the power of nature, a warning issued several centuries later by George Perkins Marsh, who predicted that “human improvidence” was reducing the earth “to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess” as to threaten the “extinction of the species” (Marsh 1865). Marsh proposed that “in reclaiming and reoccupying lands laid waste by human improvidence or malice...the task...is to become a co-worker with nature in the reconstruction of the damaged fabric.” This was an approach embraced by Marsh’s contemporary, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed urban parks, parkways, and neighborhoods as part of a broad program to promote the health, safety, and welfare of urban residents. In designs for landscape infrastructure of parkways, streetcar lines, rivers, and sewers, Olmsted sought to “hasten the process already begun” by nature, thereby achieving more than the “unassisted processes of nature” (Olmsted and Vaux: 19, 8; Spirn 1995).

All the concepts and principles described here were first described in earlier publications, many of which are available for download at www. annewhistonspirn.com.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, some disagreed over whether the task was to rebuild existing cities or to build new “garden cities” in the countryside, such as those advocated by Ebenezer Howard (Howard 1902). Patrick Geddes opposed Howard’s approach: “Here or nowhere is our Utopia,” he argued (Geddes 1915).

Geddes, who was educated as a biologist, viewed each city and its surrounding countryside as an evolving organic whole whose future plan should be based on an understanding of its natural and cultural history and its “life-processes in the present” (Geddes 1915). To attain such understanding, Geddes advocated “regional surveys” of “things as they are and as they change... towards things as they may be,” which would serve as the vehicle for town plans and city designs tailored to the particular “character and spirit” of each city. (Geddes 1915: 138-139). Lewis Mumford, like his mentor Geddes, promoted an integrative approach to cities and their regions: “ once a more organic understanding is achieved of the complex interrelations of the city and its region, the urban and the rural aspects of environment, the small-scale unit and the large-scale unit, a new sense of form will Industry in Transition: Ecological Urbanism

135

spread through both architecture and city design.” To Mumford, this new urban form “must include the form-shaping contributions of nature, of river, bay, hill, forest, vegetation, climate, as well as those of human history and culture, with the complex interplay of groups, corporations, organizations, institutions, personalities” (Mumford 1968). Mumford influenced Kevin Lynch and Ian McHarg, who shared the conviction that cities must be viewed in their regional context and that the natural environment has a social value to be cultivated in urban design. From that common ground, they diverge.

For Lynch, the city is first and foremost a human habitat, and he judged “good city form” by how well it sustains human life (Lynch 1981). Lynch stressed the importance of how people perceive the city, proceeding from human perception to understanding the sense of place. He explored the role that natural features play in enhancing the identity, legibility, coherence, and immediacy of urban form from the scale of the street to that of the region, for “the mental sense of connection with nature is a basic human satisfaction, the most profound aspect of sensibility.... The movement of sun and tides, the cycles of weeds and insects and men, can also be celebrated along the city pavements” (Lynch 1981). His last book, Wasting Away, takes an ecological approach to managing resources and waste (Lynch 1990).

McHarg’s point of departure was the natural environment: “Let us accept the proposition that nature is process, that it is interacting, that it responds to laws, representing values and opportunities for human use with certain limitations and even prohibitions” (McHarg 1968). Like Geddes, McHarg asserted that “any place can only be understood through its physical evolution” (McHarg 1967). As a prerequisite for planning and design, he advocated a survey, the “ecological inventory.” It was always the same list (climate, geology, hydrology, soils, vegetation, wildlife, and ecosystems) no matter what the site’s location, scale, or land use. McHarg’s ecological inventory is a checklist of interrelated systems, useful not only to understand how a place came to be, but also as a diagnostic tool with which to identify problems and opportunities that might otherwise be missed (Spirn 2000). For McHarg, design was an evolutionary strategy, a means of adaptation. His approach is valuable for urban design, even though he viewed the city as a pathological environment.

For Jane Jacobs, as for McHarg and Lynch, “human beings are part of nature” as are cities ( Jacobs 1961: 446). “Nature, sentimentalized and considered as the antithesis of cities, is apparently assumed to consist of grass, fresh air and little else,” Jane Jacobs scorned, “and this ludicrous disrespect results in the devastation of nature.” Like Lynch, she focused on the city as a human habitat and saw urban design as a way to support and fulfill human needs. Jacobs advocated an ecological approach to designing and managing cities, arguing that 136

cities are problems of organized complexity, akin to living organisms, and that there are lessons for urban design from the study of systems where “half-dozen or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways’” ( Jacobs 1961: 433). Jacobs urged urban designers and planners to think in terms of processes and to “work inductively, reasoning from particulars to the general, rather than the reverse,” from grand theories to specific proposals ( Jacobs 1961: 440).

Many researchers, practitioners, and critics have contributed to the theory and practice of ecological urbanism since Jacobs, McHarg, and Lynch, far too many to treat adequately in the context of this brief summary. Ecological urbanism is a broad approach to urban design and planning; related to it are aspects of several contemporary movements: ecological design (Spirn 1984, Hough 1995, Van der Ryn and Cowan 1996, Thompson and Steiner 1997, Corner 1997, Johnson and Hill 2002, Berger 2008), sustainable design (Calthorpe and Van der Ryn 1986, Lyle 1994, Hester 2006), green architecture (Wines 2000, Fromonot 2003), green infrastructure (Wenk 2002, Benedict and McMahon 2006), landscape urbanism (Mohstafavi 2003, Waldheim 2006, Almy 2007), and industrial ecology (Graedel and Allenby 2003, Terway 2007). Not all the works – written, drawn, or built – produced under these rubrics, however, qualify as ecological urbanism; they belong to the extent that they embody key concepts and principles.

ECOLOGICAL URBANISM: KEY CONCEPTS AND PRINCIPLES FOR URBAN DESIGN Key concepts of ecological urbanism include: cities are part of the natural world; every city has a deep, enduring context; cities are habitats; cities are ecosystems; urban ecosystems are connected and dynamic; urban design is a tool of human adaptation. These fundamental propositions are the foundation from which principles for urban design and planning derive (those listed here are illustrative not exhaustive).

Cities are part of the natural world Natural processes do not stop operating at city limits: paving and building stone, for example, affect heat gain and water runoff just as exposed rock surfaces do anywhere. The urban environment is the consequence of a complex interaction between the many purposes and activities of human beings and the natural processes that govern the transfer of energy, the movement of air, the erosion of the earth, and the hydrologic cycle. Despite their differences, all cities transform their natural environment in similar ways. Human activities interact with natural processes to create a typical urban climate, urban Industry in Transition: Ecological Urbanism

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soils, urban hydrology, urban plant and animal communities, and characteristic urban ecosystems (Spirn 1984: 4-5). Cities are part of the natural world. Recognition of this basic fact has powerful implications for how the city is designed, built, and maintained, and for the health, safety, and welfare of every resident.

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the belief that the city is an entity apart from nature and even antithetical to it has dominated the way in which the city is perceived and continues to effect how it is designed, built, and maintained. This attitude has aggravated and even created many environmental problems, both local and global: poisoned air and water; depleted or destroyed resources; more frequent and more destructive floods; more damage from geological hazards; increased energy demands and higher construction costs (Spirn 1984: 5). At the root of this failure to recognize the city as part of nature is the notion that nature is a place (wilderness and countryside, but not city) or a thing (mountain, river and tree, but no thing made by humans). But nature is an idea, not a place or a thing. The idea of nature as consisting of the biological, physical, and chemical processes that create and sustain life, the earth, and the universe is fundamental to ecological urbanism. If one embraces this idea, then the false oppositions between city and nature, the given and the built, fall away. + Recognize cities as part of the natural world and design them accordingly Many authors have described how this might be accomplished.

See, for example, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, which is organized into sections on air, earth, water, life, and ecosystems, with successful cases from the scale of the house and garden to those of the neighborhood, city and region (Spirn 1984). The key is to think in terms of the ways that human activities and urban form interact with natural processes of air (heat transfer and air flow), earth (geology and soils), water (water flow), life (reproduction, growth, and behavior), and ecosystems (flows of energy, information, and materials, succession of plant species and behavior of plants and animals). Note, this is not a just a matter of imitating or echoing the forms of natural features or of using indigenous materials, but, as Marsh and Olmsted put it more than a century ago, “the task...is to become a co-worker with nature” and thus to achieve more than the “unassisted processes of nature” (Marsh 1865, Olmsted and Vaux). By focusing on the natural processes that shape and structure the environment, urban designers can accommodate dynamic change in the natural environment, make connections among seemingly unrelated elements and issues, recognize that not all traditional settlement patterns or building forms should be repeated, and realize opportunities.

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+ Plot the interplay of natural and social processes that shape and structure the city Ian McHarg overlaid maps of diverse natural and social factors in order to better understand this interaction (McHarg 1969). Such overlays can reveal surprising relationships among seemingly unrelated phenomena, such as the correlation between buried floodplains and vacant land in low-income inner-city neighborhoods, but they portray these relationships as static (Spirn 2005). Anu Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, among others, have developed mapping techniques that enable designers to visualize how processes operate in space and time (Mathur and da Cunha 2001, Berger 2006).

Every city has a deep, enduring context While urbanization radically changes the surface of the urban landscape, there is a more enduring context, with distinctive rhythms, which is the product of climatic, geomorphic, and biological processes operating and interacting across millennia. The enduring context of a city is expressed in its climate (hot, cold, or temperate; humid or arid; and seasonal variations), geology (rock type and structure, seismic and volcanic activity), physiography (plain, basin, Piedmont, or mountain), and biome (tundra, forest, prairie, or desert). In the history of a place this “deep” context is a constant that successive human generations must re-address. Traditions, values, and policies may change, but deep context remains key to the history and future of a place – why it was settled, its initial location, its transportation routes, its economic development and population distribution, the character of its buildings, streets, and parks, and the health and safety of its residents (Spirn 1998: 158). When urban form obscures or opposes a city’s enduring context (by planting trees and lawn in a desert; by burying a river in a sewer and filling in its floodplain), it will require additional energy and materials to sustain. + Adapt the physical shape and structure of a city – the infrastructure of roads and sewers, the buildings and parks – to its deep context Urban form that reveals and responds to deep context is likely to be more functional, more economical, and more resilient than design that disregards it (Spirn 1998). This is especially important for the design of the infrastructure (water, sewer, power, transportation) that supports the city, whether at the scale of building, neighborhood, city, or region. Such design may also afford an aesthetic experience of unity with the processes which shape the landscape and which sustain life (Spirn 1988). + Anticipate and exploit catastrophic events Every city is prone to specific natural hazards whose precise timing is unknown. San Francisco will experience a major earthquake; Las Vegas and Phoenix, severe drought; St. Louis and Pittsburgh, Industry in Transition: Ecological Urbanism

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major floods. It was inevitable that a major hurricane would strike New Orleans. After a catastrophe, there is a will to rebuild and to “do things right,” but that window of opportunity is small. Urban designers should plan ahead for redesigning and rebuilding in order to seize the opportunity when catastrophe strikes.

Cities are habitats Cities are places for living: for individuals and groups, for humans and other species. As habitats, they must provide settings for the biological and social needs of the organisms who dwell there: for reproduction and growth, movement and exchange, communication, making and building, teaching and learning, work and play, reflection and worship. What could be more obvious? And yet, cities are full of places that are ill-adapted to the needs of their inhabitants: dysfunctional, contaminated, and vulnerable to natural hazards, exposing residents to discomfort, inconvenience, and even to danger.

Cities provide habitats for many nonhuman species (from microbes to trees, from insects to fish, birds, and mammals); some are indigenous, others are typical urban species, some are central to human health and prosperity, a few are hostile. Ironically, most urban pests were imported by humans, deliberately or inadvertently, and are well-adapted to the habitats that humans create. Urban development tends to reduce biodiversity, with far-reaching adverse effects ( Johnson and Hill 2002). + Design the city as a life-sustaining and life-enhancing habitat Every urban design project should enhance the quality of the urban habitat for humans and other species, even if that goal is not an explicit part of the designer’s brief. Kevin Lynch provides measures of “good city form” in terms of how well urban form sustains life (“vitality”), by how clearly it is perceived in space and time (“sense”), how well environment and behavior “fit,” and by whether these standards are provided in a manner that provides “access,” “control,” “efficiency,” and “justice” (Lynch 1981). Many others, too numerous to cite here, have elaborated on how this might be accomplished (e.g.

Alexander et al 1977, Hester 2006, Spirn 1984, 1987, and 1998). + Celebrate the natural processes that shape the urban habitat and that sustain life, make them tangible and understandable Pleasure and meaning are fundamental human needs, and “the mental sense of connection with nature is a basic human satisfaction, the most profound aspect of sensibility” (Lynch 1981). Urban design that fosters and intensifies the experience of the natural processes that sustain life fulfills this need (Spirn 1988 and 1998). Aesthetic experience of such places has the potential for “re-centering human consciousness from an egocentric to a more bio-centric perspective” (Meyer 2008).

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+ Design and manage the urban habitat for nonhuman species Like humans, each species has specific needs, and the most effective way to enhance their survival or establish control is often through the design and management of their habitat.

Cities are ecosystems The urban ecosystem, like any ecosystem, consists of all the organisms that dwell within it (including humans) and their interactions with each other and with their physical environment, which comprises built artifacts like buildings, roads, and sewers, as well as water, soil, and plants. The urban ecosystem is an open system: energy, material, and information flow through it as resources are imported, transformed, and consumed, then exported as wastes.

The less efficiently resources are used, the more wastes are produced and contamination increased. The urban ecosystem encompasses all the processes which flow within and through the city: cultural processes as well as natural processes, flows of capital, people, and goods, as well as flows of water, air, nutrients, and pollutants. The city as a whole, itself an ecosystem, is composed of many smaller ecosystems: of ponds and river corridors, parks, and buildings. + Design the city and its rural periphery, as well as every park, building, and district within that larger whole, as ecosystems that require minimal inputs of energy and resources to build and sustain The design of an urban ecosystem entails not just the composition of its structure, shape, and materials, but should include as well the means by which it will be built and maintained over time. The city, and every building, park, and infrastructure system within it, should be designed as much as possible as “closed” ecological systems, systems that import and consume fewer resources, produce fewer wastes, and whose wastes are recycled as resources. This goal is most easily understood and achieved at the scale of a park or a building and its immediate surroundings, and there are good examples (Lyle, Wines, Fromonot). At the district scale, increasing the density of urban development can make energy-conserving strategies such as shared transportation systems and district heating more feasible. At all scales from house to metropolitan region, wastes – the byproducts of one activity – may be a resource for another: the home composting of kitchen waste to produce garden amendments is analogous to the regional project of combining leaf litter and sewage sludge to produce new soil (Spirn 1984). Industrial ecology brings together industries whose waste and resource streams are symbiotic (Lynch 1990, Graedel and Allenby 2003, Terway 2007).

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Urban ecosystems are connected The many ecosystems that comprise the larger urban ecosystem are linked by the physical space they share and by the channels through which energy, material, and information flow. There are ecosystems within ecosystems: a pond ecosystem, for example, exists within the larger ecosystem of its watershed (and there are watersheds within watersheds, from that of a small stream to a continental river basin); a building is an ecosystem within a neighborhood. Given this connectivity, changes to one ecosystem may produce repercussions in many others, and an ecosystem may be externally regulated (Pickett et al 2004). Problems felt in one place may be caused by activities that take place elsewhere: strong winds at the base of a tall building aggravated by conditions upwind, floods and pollution by discharge upstream, vulnerability to hurricane-driven waves by erosion of marshes and swamps. Environmental and social problems in lowincome neighborhoods are often created or aggravated by flows of capital and wastes to and from suburban communities (Spirn 2005).

In these and many other cases, local intervention alone is doomed to failure. Solving social and environmental problems may require taking action in a different location than where the problem is felt. + Address social and environmental challenges within appropriate boundaries at the appropriate spatial and temporal scales Designers should identify the systems to which their project site is connected and track the flows of energy, materials (food, water, waste water), information, and capital that move in and out. No matter how small or large the project, the designer’s responsibility is to address the context of and impact on the ecosystems to which it is connected.

Design proposals should not be limited to the area enclosed by the client’s boundaries, but should be expanded to include that area necessary to effectively address the challenges posed by site, program, and context. + Define multi-purpose solutions to comprehensively defined problems Urban designers and planners should seek integrated solutions to social, economic, cultural, and environmental problems. One strategy is to start with for a city’s most pressing problem, one for which there is widespread public support, and then find ways to address other concerns as well. Air pollution, water pollution, or flooding may be the central, organizing issue within which social, economic, and other environmental problems are addressed. Or, alternatively, a social or economic problem, such as unemployment or extensive abandonment of property, may serve as the focus, and ways found to incorporate solutions to environmental problems. The integration of open urban land into a green infrastructure, for example, could extend the aesthetic and recreational value of parks and parkways to 142

a crucial role in health, safety and welfare. Parks and plazas, rivers, streams, and floodplains, steep hillsides, and even parking lots and highway corridors could be part of a cohesive system to improve air quality and climate, to reduce flooding and improve water quality, to limit the impact of geological hazards such as earthquakes, subsidence, and landslides, to provide a diverse community of plants and animals within the city, to conserve energy, water and mineral resources, and to enhance the safe assimilation of the city’s wastes (Spirn 1984, Wenk 2002).

Urban ecosystems are dynamic Urban design is an art of time as well as space; it is a projection into the future, which is complicated by the fact that the urban ecosystem is constantly changing. Studying environmental change over time fosters an understanding of urban landscapes as dynamic, how natural processes shape human settlements and how social and cultural processes shape urban ecosystems, in turn (Spirn 2005). Knowing how a place has been shaped over time is key to understanding its present and possible future. + Take account of history The urban designer must ask: What is this place in the process of becoming? Which of its features are clues to ongoing processes that continue to exert a decisive influence, and which are merely artifacts of the past that assert little influence now? Which features are amenable to change and which are resistant? It is difficult to answer such questions without understanding how a place evolved, through what processes and actions, when, and which of its features have had a sustained impact on their surroundings over time. The environmental history of a place provides a window into the ways natural and social processes interact through time, and how planners have intervened, for good or bad (Cronon 1991, White 1996, Klingle 2007). Note: this has nothing to do with imitating or adapting historic built form. Taking account of history means more than preserving historical structures and using history as a source of formal precedent.

History is away of extending human memory beyond the human life span.

Urban design is a powerful tool of adaptation Through culture, technology, and the design of physical habitats, the human species spread across the earth, from warm savannahs to cool forests to the cold Arctic tundra, and has continued to evolve.

Most humans now live in cities, and urban design is a powerful tool of adaptation. No matter how well one understands a city’s history, its ecosystems, and its enduring context, no matter how carefully one tries to anticipate the future, there will always be unforeseen circumstances to which a city must adapt.

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+ Design resilient cities An ecosystem’s resilience is a measure of its ability to adapt or adjust to change, whether caused by internal or external processes (Pickett, Cadenasso, and Grove 2004). Resilience is a useful concept for urban designers in thinking about cities that are adaptable to changing conditions and needs (as opposed to the concept of sustainability, for example, which implies maintenance of a stable state). In The Resilient City, Vale and Campanella (2009) studied how twelve cities recovered from a variety of historic disasters (war, fire, earthquakes, floods) to draw lessons for how cities might better prepare for and respond to catastrophe, whether predicted or not.

Unlike earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and drought, whose risks in a particular place are known, phenomena like economic and cultural shifts, new technology, and changes in the global environment are less predictable.

Kevin Lynch describes a range of additional physical design strategies for enhancing a city’s ability to adapt to future change: avoid urban form that is too narrowly specialized such as districts that consist entirely of a single, specialized land-use; encourage a diversity of buildings and neighborhoods; adopt an additive structure, one that can accommodate growth or decline at the periphery without major change to the overall structure at the center of a neighborhood or city (a grid, is an example of additive structure); employ temporary structures or uses, when appropriate, especially true for uses in which technology is changing rapidly; utilize communication systems to accommodate changing needs rather than radical alteration of the city’s physical structure (Lynch 1958). Urban form that is congruent with the enduring context of a city’s natural environment will also be more resilient. + Act comprehensively and incrementally Major challenges like climate change and recovery from economic recession may require a comprehensive and rapid response, but it is dangerous to implement a single model for change. Massive largescale interventions often produced unforeseen effects, which may be devastating, such as those precipitated by urban renewal of the 1950s and 1960s. Diverse approaches, implemented incrementally, provide the opportunity to learn from failure and success and to respond; such solutions should fit local conditions, tailored to the needs of specific people in particular places. But incremental projects should be undertaken as part of a comprehensive framework for largescale investment that addresses regional needs. The local view gives an intimate view of the habitat of individuals and small groups; an overview gives a broader perspective of larger systems.

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ECOLOGICAL URBANISM AND THE FUTURE OF URBAN DESIGN Much is known about the urban natural and social environment, and there exist many successful models of ecological urbanism. Yet most of these examples are not known to the public, to natural and social scientists, or even to urban designers and planners. Ignorant of existing knowledge and precedents, researchers and practitioners repeatedly reinvent the wheel. What is needed is a series of literature reviews on ecological urbanism and its subfields, which provide a critical, comprehensive overview of what is known: the principle themes and threads of inquiry, the keys works and contributions in each area, regions of agreement and the disputed territories, gaps in knowledge, potentially fertile areas of inquiry, and models of practice that deserve to be replicated.

Much is still not known about the urban natural environment and the processes that shape it, and there is great opportunity for future research. Particularly promising are recent collaborations between urban designers and experts in other disciplines, such as ecology, economics, engineering, and art. Landscape architect Alex Felson and ecologist Steward Pickett, for example, describe design projects that are also ecological experiments (Felson and Pickett 2005).

The reasons for embracing and promoting ecological urbanism are compelling. At stake is the future of humanity and whether we can adapt our behavior and settlements to meet the challenges we face (those posed by climate change and environmental contamination, for example, and by inequities in exposure to the hazards they represent) and whether we can do so in ways that are life-enhancing and life-expanding. Urban designers have an essential role, not merely in producing safer and healthier urban habitats, but in making legible and tangible the systems that support life, and in changing the perception of what is possible.

<< Professor Anne W.

Spirn showing us her writings and thoughts during her travel to Beijing with the venue of Tsinghua’s Landscape Architecture program anniversary.

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“Brown Earth-Work”: A New Landscape Paradigm and Research Approach for Brownfields Regeneration*(edited version) Zheng Xiaodi

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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51608295) Translated by Li Min. Proofread by Liu Jian. First published in Chinese Landscape Architecture, 2015, (4), pp. 10 – 15. Later published in 2017 as “Brown Earth-Work”: A New Landscape Paradigm and Research Approach for Brownfields Regeneration [J].

China City Planning Review (01):31-39 with revisions.

The current version published in this book is not including the explained ontology on Brown Earth Work explained in point 4.Theoretical roots: Discussion on Related Concepts included in the 2017 version.

Soil contamination has become increasingly serious in recent years in China. While answering a reporter’s question on March 7, 2015, Chen Jining, Minister of Environmental Protection of China, pointed out that China is faced with a contradiction between economic development and environmental protection unprecedented in human history, and soil remediation is one of the three major actions adopted by China to fight against pollution. Since the Beijing Songjiazhuang Subway Contamination Accident in 2004, China has paid more attention to contaminated land remediation and a series of actions has been quickly carried out (Xie and Li, 2010). In May 2016, the Soil Pollution Prevention and Remediating Action Plan was officially issued, marking an important opportunity to further promote the process of soil remediation in China. However, in the current practices of contaminated land remediation in China, the remediation work is mostly limited to pollution cleanup activities in a general sense, without much consideration on improving the overall landscape quality on site.

The process of remediation shall actually be a process of overall optimization of the brownfield sites, calling for safe, effective, ecological, and aesthetic solutions which can not only reduce pollutants to a safe range, but also recreate a healthy ecosystem and pleasant human settlements. The integration of aesthetics and landscape arts into the remediation process is an innovative and critical approach to create a safe and delightful living environment, which can raise the land value, promote research and development, arouse public awareness on brownfields regeneration, and propel sustainable utilization of contaminated lands.

Worldwide, landscape architecture has been adopted by contemporary designers as an effective means to address the shortcomings of the industrial age and the challenges of modern cities (Desimini, 2013). Brownfields are selected and transformed to serve as the main venue for major international events, such as the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, the 2002 World Cup in Korea, and the 2012 148

London Olympic Games, to revitalize the urban areas in decline. Yet, how we can best practice in landscape architecture to better tackle the issues in brownfields regeneration still needs more attention and further discussion.

1. Brownfields regeneration and landscape architecture a) Why open space is favored in brownfields regeneration In China, open spaces, such as urban parks, nature reserves, sports parks, golf courses, and green areas for environmental protection, have become the end uses of a large number of brownfields regeneration projects. Just to list a few, for instance: in 2006, the comprehensive brownfields regeneration project of the Six Bay Coal Mining Subsidence Area in Urumqi City of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was officially launched to build a large-scale sport eco-park which integrates recreation, entertainment, and fitness; in 2009, the Nanhu Eco-City Central Park in Tangshan City of Hebei Province was opened to the public, which converted the harsh environment of coal mining subsidence area and a huge landfill into an attractive urban green space; in 2011, the Shixia Landfill in Heyuan City of Guangdong Province was closed to be transformed into a public park providing recreation and entertainment space for local residents. Plenty similar examples can be found in other countries as well. For example, in the US, a 42-year-old concrete plant in New York City was transformed into a popular Concrete Plant Park; in Egypt, a 40-meter-high garbage hill in Cairo was turned into an oasis of the Al-Azhar Park, which also prompted the regeneration of the poverty-stricken communities in the surrounding area; and in the UK, the Giant’s Park Landfill, which covers an area of 135 Ha, would be regenerated into a recreation and environmental restoration park (Noord-Brabant-Province, 2011).

Compared to ordinary real estate development, open space is more favored as the end use in brownfields regeneration because it exhibits four distinctive advantages: a1. Open space adapts better to the special site conditions of brownfields. Due to complex site conditions caused by soil and groundwater contamination and potentially unstable underground situation, often times buildings are difficult, or impossible in some cases, to be constructed in brownfields. In many cases, open space may become the only choice for end use; a2. The construction cost of landscape projects is relatively low; a3. Landscape projects have the advantages of quick returns and short cycles, and thus are favored by the local governments or related stakeholders to present the positive image of brownfields regeneration; Industry in Transition: Brown Earth Work

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a4. Open spaces are more flexible to adapt to various programs and the long-term remediation process. As remediation work progresses, the bearing capacity and risk level of the site would be changing, which in turn would allow for different transitional and/ or permanent programs. Open spaces can more easily adapt to this dynamic process. b) Why landscape architecture becomes the leading discipline to tackle brownfields regeneration It is not a coincidence that landscape architecture becomes one of the leading disciplines to focus on brownfields regeneration. The fact that landscape architecture is able to address the complicated issues involved in the process of brownfields regeneration from all three aspects of ecological process, social humanities, and physical environment explains this phenomenon: b1. Brownfields regeneration involves complicated and dynamic ecological processes, so it is necessary to take into full consideration of various ecological elements, such as water, vegetation, animals, and habitats; b2. Brownfields regeneration is inseparable from social and cultural activities. It shall strive for environmental justice through public participatory processes; b3. Brownfields regeneration will eventually be implemented through transforming and shaping the physical environment, so as to regain vitality and increase value.

Landscape architecture is one of the few disciplines to practice and research by synthesizing all three above aspects, which is precisely the reason why landscape architects often play a leading role in brownfields regeneration projects. c) The role of landscape architecture as “bridge,” coordinator, and space maker Brownfields regeneration is a complicated and comprehensive subject which is impossible to be tackled by any one single discipline, but involves at least the following fields: law, politics, economy, ecology, environmental engineering, landscape architecture, and social humanities. Among them, landscape architecture plays an important role as a “bridge” and coordinator to connect principles and technologies of science and engineering disciplines, such as environmental science, ecology, hydrology, and geotechnical engineering, with theoretical knowledge of liberal arts disciplines, such as public policy, economic management, and sociology.

Eventually, inputs from all disciplines shall be synthesized through landscape planning and design process and reflected in the physical space formed.

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2. Drawbacks of brownfields regeneration practice in China: lack of collaboration between remediation and landscape design Among the disciplines involved in brownfields regeneration, landscape architecture and environmental engineering are the two that have decisive influences over the physical morphology of brownfield sites in practice. The former is to create a sustainable ecosystem and an attractive space, while the latter is to clean up pollutants through remediation. In one single project, these two disciplines have impacts on the same site and influence over each other despite their different objectives.

Considering that brownfield sites have distinctive characteristics in terms of contamination and remediation, landscape architects participating in any brownfield regeneration project shall possess certain knowledge of environmental engineering, so as to clearly and accurately understand the characteristics and limitations of the specific site, to identify design focus and difficulties, and to establish an effective mechanism to communicate and collaborate with environmental engineers in the process of the project.

Based on comparative studies of a large number of cases and interviews with many participants in brownfield regeneration projects, in both China and abroad, it is observed that, compared with China, professionals of landscape architecture and environmental engineering in European countries, the US, and other developed countries work more closely and more effectively with each other during the process. Challenges faced by landscape architects due to the lack of contamination and remediation knowledge are resolved through close collaborations with environmental engineers in the early stage and throughout the whole process of the project. In these countries, landscape architects or urban designers work in an increasing number of brownfields regeneration projects as project leaders to coordinate a multi-disciplinary team, among which environmental engineering professionals are key members.

While in China, not only effective collaboration between professionals of landscape architecture and environmental engineering is still limited in practice, but also the consensus on the necessity of such collaboration has not yet been established. A well-known expert in soil remediation that the author interviewed even stated frankly that “there is no need for cross-disciplinary collaboration between environmental engineers and designers, since there are just two scenarios in practice to deal with this issue: one is that designers are to design the site after it has been remediated by environmental engineers, the other is that environmental engineers are to remediate the site in accordance with the plan made by designers.” This kind of view is not uncommon among environmental Industry in Transition: Brown Earth Work

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engineering professionals and quite some interviewees even doubt about why landscape architects shall acquire any environmental engineering knowledge.

In the field of landscape architecture, the situation is not optimistic either. The research and practice of brownfields regeneration in China are mostly carried out in the past 10 years. Although there gradually is a consensus on the necessity and significance of brownfields regeneration within the field of landscape architecture, most landscape architects have little or no knowledge of the seriousness and complexity of contamination, the dynamic and long-term nature of site remediation, and the spatial impacts of specific remediation technologies on the physical site. Many projects are only to transform brownfield sites from “brown” to “green” in appearance and take it as the only target and standard to evaluate whether the transformation is successful or not. Landscape architects who lack related environmental engineering knowledge are unable to engage in a dialogue with environmental engineers working on the same project, let alone to achieve an effective and close collaboration.

The number of brownfields regeneration projects increased drastically in China in recent years. More and more landscape architects are involved in this field. Thus, it is important and urgent to clarify the critical relationship between site remediation and landscape design during the process. Only by clearly understanding the subject can we develop an efficient system to further guide practice.

3. The core element: “Brown Earth-Work” Despite the complication and challenges of contamination and remediation, there are many successful landscape projects in brownfields regeneration. Some present similar spatial characteristics, such as the rolling hills of the Kite Mountain in Seattle Gasworks Park (Sun and Liu, 2004) in the US, the conical landmark mountains in Sydney Olympic Games Millennium Park in Australia, and the 10 m-high circular hill in Minneapolis Gold Medal Park in the US. Some projects appear very different, such as the huge elevated hardwood platform in Civita Park of Sao Paulo in Brazil and the inaccessible bunker gardens in Duisburg-Nord Park in Germany.

Although these sites are all brownfields, the landscape strategies for their regeneration are either identical or dramatically different. Thus a question is raised: could there be a common core element among various brownfields which may decisively influence the choice of landscape regeneration strategies and the final spatial morphology of the site? The answer is YES, and this core element is identified as “Brown Earth-Work” by the author.

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Brown Earth-Work refers to the contaminated (or potentially contaminated) soil and other soil-like substances in brownfields, including contaminated soil, slags, tailings, wastes, and incineration ashes, etc., whose contamination shall be investigated, assessed, and remediated in the process of brownfields regeneration. The most essential feature that distinguishes brownfields from general sites is the “contamination” existing or potentially existing on site. In the fields of environmental engineering and chemistry, “contamination” is often presented in forms of complex chemical formulas or heavy metal elements, which indicates the abstract existence of pollutants, without recognizing the material existence of pollutants in the physical environment. In reality, pollutants or contaminants are attached to material carriers in the physical environment, which may be gradually reduced along with the remediation process, however is difficult to be completely eliminated. For example, even if domestic waste is treated by incineration, there are still ashes left to be disposed of; even if contaminated soil is remediated by physical or chemical methods, there would still be residual materials; and the body mass of contaminated soil treated with phytoremediation would not be reduced at all.

This material carrier of “contamination” is Brown Earth-Work.

Identifying and coining this new term is not to further complicate the already complex brownfields regeneration process, but to provide the spatial interpretation of site contamination, to clarify and spatialize the core element in current practice of brownfields regeneration, and to unify both the abstract and the material existence of contamination in three-dimensional physical environment.

The concept of “Brown Earth-Work” focuses mainly on the brownfield ontology which tries to integrate the two aspects of technology and art. That is the operational process of earthworks in engineering practice and the space making potential of earthworks in land art, plus the “brown” feature of brownfields, i.e., the contamination and the site characteristics that the pollutants bring to the site. The term “earth-work” in “Brown Earth-Work” can be understood in three ways. First it is morphology which describes the material composition of the subject; second, it is methodology which refers to the “methods” creating the morphology, including both technological and artistic methods; and third, it is appearance which exhibits the spatial characteristics.

The term of “Brown Earth-Work” highlights the explicit spatial interpretation of contamination in brownfields presenting the duality of brownfield ontology from both aspects of remediation and space making. It strives to provide a new common ground for establishing and enhancing closer dialogues and collaborations between landscape architecture and environmental engineering.

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Note: A complete ontology of this term can be found in original text Point 4: Theoretical Roots

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5. Interpreting Brown Earth-Work a) Brown Earth-Work vs brownfield The complex process of brownfields regeneration is influenced by many factors which can be roughly divided into two categories of “soft” and “hard.” The “soft” ones include laws and regulations, policies, economy and society, and so on, while the “hard” ones refer to the aspects directly shaping the physical site, which is mainly influenced by the two disciplines of landscape architecture and environmental engineering. Brown Earth-Work is the core physical element in the process of brownfields regeneration and the force of the “soft” factors will be “expressed” in the “hard” physical world, which results in joint reflection of both factors in the physical and spatial quality of brownfield sites. b) The contamination components of Brown Earth-Work Contamination in Brown Earth-Work may be present in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms. Different types of pollutants are often mixed together in reality, though they can be classified as persistent organic pollutants, volatile organic compounds, semi-volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, pesticides, and so on. This situation can be caused by a variety of reasons. For instance, some industrial processes require the use of a variety of industrial chemical reagents, solvents, and other toxic and harmful substances, which would remain and contaminate Brown EarthWork; some brownfields, such as mining pits, are used as illegal dump sites for domestic and construction waste after being abandoned, leading to the fact that a variety of pollutants generated by different sources coexist in Brown Earth-Work.

Consequently, it is necessary to carry out in-depth investigation and testing on Brown Earth-Work, in order to accurately determine the specific contamination components it possess. Gaseous pollutants in Brown Earth-Work may include gases volatilized by volatile organic compounds or semi-volatile organic compounds, and / or landfill gas; solid pollutants may consist of heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, petroleum hydrocarbons, and pesticides, etc.; and liquid pollutants may comprise landfill leachate and / or contaminated plumes. c) Brown Earth-Work vs remediation By identifying the specific pollutants attached to Brown EarthWork, remediation strategies can be supported by the corresponding remediation techniques in environmental engineering. Due to the complexity of the original industrial activities and former land uses, pollutants on site are often a mixture of different ones in many cases, calling for remediation strategies composed of different technologies. As an ongoing process of research and development, 154

brownfields remediation technologies can be divided into three categories of matured, innovative, and emerging ones, according to the technology’s maturity of application in practice. Matured technologies, which have relatively complete information of application effectiveness, operational cost, and so on, comprise such technologies as air injection, bio-ventilation, packaging, excavation, incineration, extraction-treatment, permeable reaction walls, and soil vapor extraction.

Innovative technologies, whose full application is still limited due to the insufficient data related, consist of such technologies as bioremediation, natural decay, soil washing, and thermal desorption. Emerging technologies, which are mainly still in the stages of laboratory experiment, field testing, and pioneering project application, include such technologies as soil farming and phytoremediation (Hollander, Kirkwood, and Gold 2014). At present, finding the most economical, effective and short-term remediation technology is still the goal of brownfields regeneration practice all around the world. With continuous development of environmental engineering research, the “contamination” information in “Brown Earth-Work” can serve as a series of preset sockets, which can be coupled with new technologies as they develop according to the specific pollutant components. d) Brown Earth-Work vs landscape systems In practice, brownfields remediation are often carried out through earthwor engineering processes, thus the amount of remediated soil is considered as an important indicator of environmental remediation For example, in the case of the 2012 London Olympic Games, the excavation, treatment, and remediation of approximately 1.5 million m3 of soil is taken as one of the important achievements of the project to mark its sustainable development (Christopher, 2013). In the Millennium Park project of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, the primary design challenge for Peter Walker, the well-known American landscape architect, was to tackle a large amount of contaminated soil on site creatively and artistically. Dealing it with inspirations, Walker designed a number of conical mounds in the park, which not only met the remediation requirements of environmental engineering by capping the contaminated soil, but at the same time shaped these unique landforms as attractive landmarks in the park.¹ In general, landscape systems consist of three basic natural elements: topography, water body, and vegetation. The landscape system developed during the process of brownfields regeneration is closely linked with Brown Earth-Work. d1. Brown Earth-Work and topography: regardless of what method is adopted to remediate Brown Earth-Work, the earthwork volume will significantly affect the morphology of landforms. The Industry in Transition: Brown Earth Work

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requirement of treating Brown Earth-Work on site often becomes the opportunity to shape unique landforms. d2. Brown Earth-Work and water body: pollutants can be carried away while rainwater flows through Brown Earth-Work, polluting downstream water system and surface groundwater. Therefore, the design of water systems in brownfields needs to take into account preventing rainwater from permeating into Brown EarthWork and adopting sustainable strategies of rainwater harvesting, purification, and recycling systems. d3. Brown Earth-Work and vegetation: as Brown Earth-Work in the remediation process still contains some harmful substances, only specific species tough enough can grow on it. Even if when Brown Earth-Work is capped, species that can be planted also need to be selected according to specific circumstances limited by the thickness of soil.

6. How clean is clean: brownfields remediation based on risk assessment Since Brown Earth-Work is the material carrier of contamination, the remediation goal of brownfields regeneration process is to “clean up” contamination in Brown Earth-Work. But how clean is “clean”? To answer this question, it is necessary to trace back the development of “risk assessment-based environmental remediation.” In the US, during the early stage of the enforcement of the Superfund Law, rigid remediation standards were adopted to manage contaminated sites.

Only one single safety range was set for each specific pollutant on site no matter what the end use was, and the goal was to completely and permanently eliminate all contamination. Against the original will to facilitate remediation of contaminated sites, this strict approach actually hinders the regeneration process in reality due to the very high cost it results in.

As documents such as the Risk Based Corrective Action (RBCA) in the US were issued, many countries have gradually adopted the approach of risk-based site management, which means to decide on the management plan from the perspective of risk control. The most economical and effective risk control measures shall be taken depending upon the level of risk the contamination on site poses to the environment and public health, which include institutional controls (e.g., restricting land use), engineering measures (e.g., barrier technology), or remediation actions ( Jiang, Gong, et al., 2011; Gong, 2012). This risk assessment-based remediation approach relates contamination control to land use, as risk levels for different land uses vary from each other. The goal of brownfields management is not to thoroughly and permanently remove the pollutants, but to take proper actions to control the risks they pose to the environment 156

and human health to be within the safe range according to the specific land use the site will be regenerated into. For example, the remediation standard for brownfields that are to be converted into residential areas will be higher than those for commercial or industrial end uses.

The answer to the question of how clean is clean is not to simply put forward an absolute figure, but to control the contamination that poses risks to human health and the natural environment within the safe limit according to regeneration land use scenarios.

The decision-making process of remediation strategies should take into consideration land use and future programs, which requires collaboration between environmental engineers and site designers in the early stage of the project.

From the perspective of human health, the aim of contamination risk control is to avoid contact of human bodies with the contamination attached to Brown Earth-Work on site. In practice, this objective can be achieved through the following three ways: 1. Isolation, which means to cap Brown Earth-Work with clay, geomembrane, concrete slab, or other means to prevent its contact with the human bodies; 2. Remediation, which means to reduce the concentration level of pollutants in Brown Earth-Work to the safe range through physical, chemical, biological or composite remediation technologies; 3. Outward transport, which means to transport Brown EarthWork to another place to achieve risk transfer.

The last way completely removes Brown Earth-Work from the original site and makes the site no different from common project sites. As there is no longer the special challenge as a brownfield, it can be redeveloped in accordance with design and construction procedures of general development projects. Although the “outward transport” way of doing is the most commonly adopted practice in current brownfields regeneration projects in China, it should not be advocated considering that the “transport” process is likely to cause secondary pollution along the course and to create new brownfield sites and sometimes it is simply contamination “transfer.”

Conclusions Brownfields regeneration is a highly complex and dynamic process.

The concept of “Brown Earth-Work,” which emphasizes the physical and spatial dimensions of “contamination” in brownfield sites, is proposed to identify the core element of brownfields and to provide a basis for more effective and efficient collaboration between site remediation and landscape design professionals.

Industry in Transition: Brown Earth Work

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The volume of Brown Earth-Work shall be measured and its specific contamination composition and level shall be investigated. It is also necessary to estimate the expected costs, implementation time cycle and engineering work load of various remediation strategies and, very importantly, their spatial impacts on landscape design, so as to make the wisest decision on the overall regeneration approach.

The collaboration between landscape architecture and environmental engineering professionals should be conducted as early as possible in the process of brownfields regeneration, which will lead to not only choosing the most efficient remediation strategy, but also providing more possibilities and flexibilities for the creation of landscape space.

The quality, type, and characteristics of Brown Earth-Work, as well as the operational methods of its management shall be further explored. Situations for manufacturing factory sites, mining sites, and landfills differ greatly from each other in terms of the component of Brown Earth-Work and the spatial characteristics of the physical sites.

Phytoremediation has become a very popular emerging remediation technology which requires working closely with Brown Earth-Work in-situ. These are just to list a couple of potential research and/or practice subjects. Based on the concept of Brown Earth-Work, as a core element of brownfield sites, more creative and outstanding work can be carried out in the future.

TANGSHAN LANDSCAPES OF EXTRACTION

steel factory

grassland

exploration

forest

e-forest

forest

e-forest

build infrastructure

embankment

explode

log

excavation

excavation pit

excavation pit

subsiding terrain remaining structure

restoration

subsiding landscape

reclamation

subsiding landscape

nursery

rock 158

TANGSHAN POST-EXTRACTION CHALLENGES

GREEN SPACES

DOU RIVER SUBSIDING

SUBSIDING

RESERVOIR

LIQUEFACTION

DACHENGSHAN MOUNTAIN

LIQUEFACTION

SUBSIDING

NANHU PARK

subsiding landscape

water contamination

subsiding landscape

soil contamination

Industry in Transition: Brown Earth Work

giant structure

losing top soil

159

TANGSHAN EXTRACTION AND POST-EXTRACTION LANDSCAPES 161

162

163

Facing Forward: Trends and Challenges in the Development of Industry in Cities*(edited version) Tali Hatuka, Eran Ben-Joseph, Sunny Menozzi

*

This article was first published in T. Hatuka, E. Ben Joseph, S. Menozzi, “Facing Forward: Trends and Challenges in the Development of Industry in Cities,” Built Environment Journal, Alexandrine Press, UK 43/1, 2017 (pp 145155)

In a time of dramatic shifts in the manufacturing sector—from mass production to just in-time and make-to-order modes of production, from the limited use of expensive robotics to the widespread use of inexpensive robots, from centralized to distributed logistics systems, from polluting and consumptive production to a cleaner and more sustainable process, and from a demand for unskilled, inexpensive labour to a growing need for a more educated and specialized workforce—cities may see new investment and increased employment opportunities. However, garnering benefits from these shifts will require us to change how we think about industrial development and city planning. What are the spatial needs of manufacturing today? What might they be in the next 30 to 50 years?

Should advanced manufacturing be subject to the same rules and zoning regulations as traditional manufacturing? How can cities benefit from retaining and attracting manufacturing activity? Is it possible to design an industrial city that is liveable and offers its inhabitants a high quality of life?

The following essay outlines some developments and trends and some predictions for the future, with a focus on three main themes: technology, manufacturing, and cities. While the discussion that follows is based on studies and reports conducted mainly in the US, its insights should not be viewed as confined to this context. Many cities around the world are poised to reassess their relationships with industry, and they will benefit from doing so. More specifically, the essay focuses on three interlinked dimensions of manufacturing and city planning—proximity, localism, and planning regulations— and recommends their critical assessment to address the needs of industrial urbanism in the future.

Changing Technology: The Role of Proximity in Developing Industrial Ecosystems Technological change is altering manufacturing’s physical footprint, manufacturing spaces, distribution processes and networks, access 164

to transportation, and preferred geographical locations. In particular, this change is modifying the conflict between the competitive advantage of low-wage labour and the competitive advantage of proximity—to centres of research and development, markets, and highly skilled labour—and, in turn, is altering the conceptualization of industry as a whole.

Competitiveness and proximity are becoming interdependent.

Gary Pisano and Willy C. Shih suggest that industrial ecosystems, their ‘industrial commons’ or communal resources for innovation, and firms’ and countries’ competitiveness are tightly linked (Pisano and Shih, 2009). They further argue that outsourcing erodes the ‘industrial commons’ (i.e. place-specific networks or systems of suppliers; research and development resources, including universities, government or corporate research centres; and specialized workers); it degrades firms’ internal process-engineering and design capabilities by severing the feedback loop between manufacturers, engineers, and designers; and, by reducing the number of jobs in an industry in a location, it encourages specialized workers to move away and discourages students from pursuing coursework in related fields (Ibid.; De Backer et al., 2015, p. 4).

This position has been further supported by Susanne Berger, who presented three key lessons from the MIT Taskforce on Innovation and Production’s analysis of industrial development in Germany and China: (1) strong manufacturing does not require low wage labour; (2) dense ecosystems preserve jobs by dissuading companies from relocating or shifting jobs elsewhere; and (3) real innovation occurs in scaling up firms and rebuilding the capabilities of the industrial ecosystem (Berger, 2013). Clearly, no single national model is going to work across the economy, but policy-makers need to acknowledge that proximity enables knowledge development. Such recognition will serve as the starting point for policy development. Learning is an ongoing process that takes place when engineers and technicians on the factory floor bring their problems to the design engineers and struggle with them to find solutions; learning takes place when users return with problems (MIT Taskforce on Innovation and Production, 2013, p. 12). Moreover, technological change is making proximity— the minimization of distance—a vital factor in structuring logistical networks and regulatory regimes.

Changing Manufacturing: The Power of Localism Industry has often been perceived in an economic or political context divorced from geographic, locational, or spatial considerations.

However, this detachment from geography and community is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Technological change and Industry in Transition: Facing Forward

165

subsequent changes in manufacturing processes and strategies are likely to reverse the trend towards the globalization of manufacturing.

In the future, manufacturing will be more localized, increasing the importance of community and place for manufacturers.

In addition, technological change is altering manufacturers’ understanding of the trade-off between the costs and benefits of low-wage labour and the costs and benefits of proximity in novel ways. Technological change is thereby creating new geo-spatial relationships. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the world’s largest manufacturing economies. Instead, new geo-spatial relationships are emerging worldwide because of technological change in industry.

This shift towards localism raises the question of the role of educational institutions: what sort of relationship should academia have with industry? Fiona Murray argues that the clustering of universities, start-ups, and manufacturers capable of making prototypes and producing small volumes can expedite the innovation process by creating opportunities for knowledge transfer amongst skilled labour (Murray, 2014). Moreover, as she argues, institutionalindustrial clustering gives innovators the ability to scale up their production incrementally. However, for clusters to develop, cities must allow some industrial uses in areas where these uses have been hitherto prohibited. Murray observes that universities are in a unique regulatory position as the property owners of large campuses, remarking, ‘We need to think about the kinds of spaces for scaleup, and we have an opportunity because of the property ownership [of universities] and so on to really, actually space the urban environment’ (Ibid.).

Localization is thus not only an opportunity but also a major challenge. Seizing this opportunity has important implications for cities which stand to benefit from new investment, tax revenues, and increased employment opportunities. However, reports and policy recommendations on clustering—the trend towards industry specialization and geographic concentration—and manufacturing fail to consider urban spatial and social realities. Furthermore, the role of community and geography in the development of industry raises new macroeconomic challenges, which need to be translated into updated regional economic development strategies and updated planning regulations.

Changing Cities: Rethinking Industry Planning Regulations Turning to the question of space, we see a troubling trend in the practices of postindustrial planning that has led to the abandonment of urban industrial land in cities with large but shrinking manufacturing sectors and expanding service sectors. In some cities, 166

vacant or underutilized factories and warehouses are being converted into non-industrial uses, such as loft apartments or living/working spaces for artists; in others, former manufacturing sites are razed to make way for new residential and commercial districts.

The detachment of cities from the physicality of industry is becoming increasingly unsustainable. In the coming decades, the question will not be whether growth in manufacturing is going to occur but where. A major factor in manufacturers’ site selection decisions is the speed of delivery to customers; manufacturers are increasingly choosing locations based on labour availability and transportation access, which influence the speed of delivery, rather than on land costs. This shift suggests that manufacturers are willing to compete to purchase land in mixed-use zones that permit industrial uses.

Economic development strategies and updated planning regulations might evolve with planners’ and administrators’ recognition of the importance of industrial land to cities’ economic robustness and their understanding that some standards and policies have quickened the re-zoning of vital, central industrial land for other uses (e.g. hotels and mixed-use developments). Smart growth refers to a set of urban design and planning standards and policies that support the building of compact, mixed-use neighbourhoods that are connected to the wider region via different types of transportation systems, that aim to improve residents’ quality of life (e.g. by making communities more affordable and/or diversifying residents’ transportation choices), that support and diversify local economies, and that conserve natural resources and farmland. Although smart growth standards and policies aim to support and diversify local economies, these standards and policies fail to protect industrial land from encroachment and do not call for urban land to be reserved for industry (Ibid., p. 87).

Industry and Planning Prospects “Effective policy (or effective design) works on the boundaries between dream and reality, linking deep needs and obscure desires to open experience and test.”

Kevin Lynch, Good City Form Manufacturing constitutes a significant share of the world’s total economic activity, and industry occupies large areas of our built environment. No single answer can predict what future manufacturing will require, but cities can begin to respond to manufacturers’ needs by establishing the right conditions and reembracing extant urban industry. Four central challenges complicate Industry in Transition: Facing Forward

167

this response. The first is conceptual: with the rapid growth of biotechnology, internet-related digital media, and digital fabrication, confusion regarding terminology is a pervasive problem. What exactly do we mean when we speak of ‘industry’, ‘manufacturing’ or ‘production’? (Cohen et al., 2007). The second concerns public consciousness—i.e. the public’s and political leaders’ lack of exposure to modern industry (and, consequentially, their outdated perceptions about industrial activity). The third involves planning—i.e. the lack of local and regional industrial policies that encourage the return of industry to urban sites and the failure of the planning-practice literature and recommendations to advocate for the conservation of urban industrial land and the retention and attraction of manufacturers as an economic development strategy (Leigh and Hoelzel, 2012). The fourth challenge is spatial – i.e. the limited and declining supply of urban land zoned for industry.

The planning and spatial strategies for supporting manufacturing are either scattered or nonexistent. How should planners and policymakers address the challenges facing industry through spatial solutions? What criteria should guide the development of contemporary urban industrial spatial development? What parameters are being used to decide where manufacturing is located?

What is manufacturing going to look like in the city of tomorrow?

These questions consider the future of urban industrial land: an enormous challenge that the planning profession has barely begun to address. Left to its own devices, legacy urban industrial land will not be redeveloped in a manner that supports manufacturing jobs; the near-term remediation costs and long term competition from competing land uses are significant disincentives.

Ultimately, manufacturing must be viewed with fresh eyes to recognize that sustaining thriving cities is vital and to re-think and re-imagine industrial urbanism. Doing so will be a major task for designers, planners, and policy-makers in the years ahead, but it is one that is sure to bear fruit and lead to better place-making.

>>Studio team picture during our visit to Tangshan in January 2019.

168

Industry in Transition: Facing Forward

169

Case Studies Recreation

Casino

Education

Creative Industry

Housing

Cultural Venue

Retail

Manufacturing and Production

Sports

Food/Beverages

Office

Convention Center

Museum

Heritage Architecture

Hotel

Storage

100,000 people

1 megastructure cluster

170

Postindustrial Retrofit Referencing City as Loft Zollverein Park, Essen, Germany Volklingen Ironworks, Volklingen, Germany Tate Modern, London, UK Battersea Power Station, London, UK Parque Fundidora, Monterrey, Mexico Navy Shipyards, Philadelphia, USA Bethlehem Steel, Bethlehem, USA 798 Artzone, Beijing, China Shougang Group, Beijing, China

171

ZOLLVEREIN PARK DEVELOPMENT, ESSEN, GERMANY

1895

1928-1986 USAGE Coal mine HISTORIC NAME Zeche Zollverein

1900

1928

1986-2001 1986 coal mine 1993 coke oven

1950

1986

2000 2001

2001-Present

USAGE 1999: part of the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park INITIATOR 1989-1999: Bauhutte Zollverein Schacht GmbH since 1998: Zollverein Foundation

USAGE Mixture of culture, art, educational and social institutions and creative companies MANAGEMENT non-profit endownment MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIFICS Since 2010 UNESCO world heritage master plan: OMA, ASTOC architecture: Sanaa, OMA, Norman Foster

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Property Owner: Foundational Development: Public

Profit/Non-Profit Permanent government aid

PROGRAM

VISITORS PER YEAR

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

172

FIGURE GROUND

100M

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

173

VOLKLINGEN IRONWORKS DEVELOPMENT, VOLKLINGEN, GERMANY

1881

1895

1881-1986 USAGE Ironworks HISTORIC NAME Völklinger Hütte

1900

1950

1986-1994 1986 ironworks ceased operations

1994-Present USAGE Industrial heritage site, museum and science center, cultural events and exhibitions

USAGE Not used MANAGEMENT Tranferred from Dillinger-HütteSaarstahl AG to the Land Government of Saarland INITIATOR State government

1986 1994

MANAGEMENT Private company Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte GmbH MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIFICS Since 1994 UNESCO world heritage landscape plan: Latz + Partners

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Property owner: UNESCO World Heritage & Public Development: Public

Non-Profit Government aid

PROGRAM

VISITORS PER YEAR

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

174

FIGURE GROUND

preserved repurposed new buildings 200M 200M

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

175

TATE MODERN, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

1850

1891 1900

1950

1980

1994 2000

1891-1980

1980-1994

1994-Present

USAGE Coal-fired power station

PROPOSED USAGE Proposals on housing developments and cultural programs

USAGE A museum with the original turbine hall being the main exhibition space and building extensions housing additional facilities

INITIATOR Central Electricity Generating Board

MANAGEMENT Tate Gallery

HISTORIC NAME Bankside Power Station

MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIFICS Construction: Carillion architecture: Herzog & De Meuron

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Property Owner: private Development: public/ private

Profit / Non-Profit Permanent Government Aid

PROGRAM

VISITORS PER YEAR

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

176

FIGURE GROUND

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

177

BATTERSEA POWER STATION, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

1850

1900

1933

1950

1983

2000 2012

1933-1983

1983-2012

2012-Present

USAGE Coal-fired power station

PROPOSED USAGE 1983: Indoor Theme Park 2003: Retail and leisure complex 2006: ‘Eco-tower’, subway extension, biomass power station 2008: Stadium and park INITIATOR 1983-2003: David Roche 2003-2006: Parkview International 2006-2012: REO (Real Estate Opportunity)

USAGE A mixed-use neighborhood wih a blend of restaurants, shops, cultural facilities, and a river taxi stop next to a waterfront park

MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIFICS Designated as a Grade II listed building

MANAGEMENT SP Setia and Sime Darby MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIFICS master plan: WilkinsonEyre

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Property Owner: private Development: public/ private

Profit / Non-Profit Permanent Government Aid

PROGRAM

REUSE STRUCTURE Portion of the original structure in adaptive reuse

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

178

FIGURE GROUND

0m

100m

200m

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

179

PARQUE FUNDIDORA DEVELOPMENT, MONTERREY, MEXICO

1850

1900

1950

1986

2000 2001

1900-1986

1986-2001

2001-Present

USAGE 1900: Monterrey Steel Foundry company is founded 1959-1977: Expansion and modnernization plans are exectuted to install more plants and increase output

USAGE 1986: Fundidora decalred bankrupt 1988: Decree to found park 1988-1991: Master Plan construction 1991-2001: Plan implementaiton

USAGE Mixture of culture, art, educational and social institutions along with exhibition spaces, hotel, and office space

HISTORIC NAME Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey

INITIATOR Government of Nuevo León

MISCELLANEOUS / SPECIFICS Inagurated as National Industrial Architecture Site, which supports the park in pursuing preservation funding

MANAGEMENT Fundidora Park Trust

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Property owner: Public Development: Public-Private Partnership

Public-Private Partnership at founding 70% revenue-funded and 30% government aid today, with the goal of being 100% revenue-funded

PROGRAM

VISITORS PER YEAR

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

180

FIGURE GROUND

preserved repurposed new buildings 100M

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

181

PHILADELPHIA NAVY SHIPYARDS, PHILADELPHIA

1800 1801

1900

1939

1996 2000 2004

1801 - 1939

1939 - 1945

2004- Present

USAGE Shipyard for building and repairing US Navy

USAGE Shipyard for building and repairing US Navy.

Production peaks during WWII, after which PNSY experiences a slow decline.

USAGE Mixed use complex.

Home to corporate headquarters, retail, and residential.

OWNERSHIP Private.

MISCELLANEOUS In 1970, the final ship of the site is built as nuclear-powered ships outclass their production.

FINANCES While the site master plan was approved in 2004, progress has been slow to populate the full site. In 2016, $35M in historic tax credits were approved for site buildings, and interest in the project was renewed.

In 1996, their doors close.

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Property Owner: Public Development: Public/Private

Profit / Non-Profit Permanent Government Aid

PROGRAM

ACTIVITY Weekend and after hours traffic

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

182

ORIGINAL CONDITION

0

100 m

N

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

183

BETHLEHEM STEEL DEVELOPMENT, BETHLEHEM, UNITED STATES

1857

1857 The Suacona Iron Company is founded, and would later be renamed the Bethlehem Steel Company.

HISTORIC USAGE Steel Mill CURRENT USAGE Mixture of entertainment facilities, mixed-use development, and warehouse facilities.

1943

1974

1995

2000

2009 2016

1943 Bethlehem Steel reaches peak operations, employing more than 31,000 people.

2000 The City of Bethlehem designates the campus as a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District to help facilitate its redevelopment.

1974 Bethlehem Steel begins to struggle to compete with foreign steel companies and ceases efforts to modernize its technology and facilities.

2009 The Bethlehem Sands Casino opens

1995 The Steel Mill is shuttered.

2011-2016 The Steel Stacks Arts and Cultural Campus (2011), Hoover-Mason Trestle elevated park (2015), and National Museum of Industrial Heritage (2016) open.

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Bethlehem Redevelopment Authority, ArtsQuest, Inc. (non-profit manager of arts campus), BethWorks Sands Corporation

The casino was privately financed and helped generate nearly $50 million for preservation and to develop the arts campus. ArtsQuest provided another $45 million. develop the arts campus.

PROGRAM

VISITORS PER YEAR

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

184

FIGURE GROUND

preserved repurposed new buildings 100M

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

185

798 ARTZONE, BEIJING, CHINA

1990

1950 1957

1957 - 1990

1990 - 2006

USAGE Military Factory

USAGE Since 2000 increasing reuse of the area by artists and designers

HISTORIC NAME Joint Factory 718

2000

2006

2006 - Present 2006 start of official conversion

INTIATOR Prof Sui Jianguo, Huang Rui

USAGE Artist studios, creative companies, galleries and gastronomy MANAGEMENT Beijing 798 Art Zone Management Committee: Chaoyang District Government and Seven Star Group (property owner) MISCELLANEOUS Since 2008 the area has been officially tolerated as an art district

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Property Owner: Public Development: Public/Private

Profit / Non-Profit Permanent Government Aid

PROGRAM

ACTIVITY 24/7

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES

186

ORIGINAL CONDITION

N

0

100 m

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

187

SHOUGANG GROUP DEVELOPMENT, BEIJING, CHINA

1919

1949

1958

1919-1949 USAGE During the turbulent war period, the production of the refinery was insignificant.

1949-1994 1994 Renamed as Shijingshan Iron and Steel Company 1958 First steel production

HISTORIC NAME Rijingshan Refinery (Longyan Iron Mine Co., Ltd.)

USAGE 1999: part of the International Building Exhibition Emscher Park INITIATOR After the independence, Beijing started to developing industrial clusters in its suburban area. Shougang

1994

2004 2008 2011

1994-2011 1994 Reached its peak and was ranked No.1 In the nation 2004 14,000 workers selfemployed 2008 Production cut in half Phase 1 of Caofeidian new site constructed 2011 Old factory offically shut down Phase 2 of Caofeidian new site constructed MANAGEMENT Shougang Group, Beijing

Planning Beareu, and Beijing local government MISC. / SPECIFICS China Industrial Heritage Protection List (first batch) master plan: Tsinghua University Winter Olympics Design Team architecture: CCTN Design, Ge Design, Beijing Shougang Design Institute, Politecnico University of Technology master plan: OMA, ASTOC architecture: Sanaa, OMA, Norman Foster

STAKEHOLDER

FINANCING

Shougang Group, Beijing Planning Bureau, and Beijing local government

The municipal government and Shougang Corporation jointly funded the establishment of Shougang JingJin-Ji Co-development Industry Investment Fund and attracted social capital participation.

PROGRAM

VISITORS PER YEAR Not applicable (parks not open yet as of studio (Spring 2019)

PRESERVED MEGASTRUCTURES 1. Shougang Blast Furnace Museum Reconstruction; 2. Shougang Xishi Winter Olympics Plaza

188

188

FIGURE GROUND

preserved repurposed new buildings 100M

ADAPTIVE REUSE

Industry in Transition: Case Studies

189

Part IV:

Designing a City in Transition

190

Industry and Ecology: Radical Predictions Lorena Bello Gómez/ Brent D. Ryan Redeeming Tanggang Spectrums of Industries + Ecologies Feiyue Chen/ Stephen Erdman Joude El-Mabsout/ Tanaya Srini Turning Point Tangshan Haoyu Wang/ Charlotte Xin Yun Ong A Second Fire Zhuangyuan Fan/ Melissa Gutiérrez Soto/ Dylan Halpern

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Industry and Ecology: Radical Predictions

Lorena Bello Gómez, Brent D. Ryan

Post-industrial buildings and landscapes pose great environmental challenges to the future development of cities in transition. With their original extractive and processing activities having become obsolete, these areas are characterized by abandonment, infrastructural redundancy and pollution and contain vacant buildings, surplus infrastructure, and polluted landfills. Yet, these ruins of a city’s industrial past form powerful architectural ensembles, engaging and unique urban environments, and a significant element of collective pride, memory and imagination of the workers who inhabited them for generations. For these reasons, the contemporary urban designer must consider the potential of post-industrial territories to be reimagined, repurposed and restored ecologically, in order that these important territories might transition into a new economic and technological future that is healthier for workers as well as for the surrounding city.

Early deindustrializing nations such as Germany or the UK have pioneered the concept of restoring and rehabilitating industrial heritage in place of demolishing it, as so often still happens in the United States. The cultural and iconic value of these places has been repurposed into mixed-use ensembles that are surrounded by ecologically restored landscapes. German projects such as the Emscher Landschaft Park in the west, or the Furst-Puckler-Land lakes of the east have been particularly notable. In these places, adaptive reuse, social urbanism, and landscape reshaping provided for old industrial structures to house new economic and social uses. As a result, these regions’ industrial heritages became assets instead of tabula rasas. The design of postindustrial territories is an emerging and newly pressing issue in China, especially in former coalmining cities such as Tangshan, where many factories have been or are about to be shuttered. These trends, if left unmediated, could result in a shrinking and elderly working-class population inhabiting territories with substantial ecological problems.

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The second exercise of Tangshan in Transition generated design solutions to the problems posed by abandonment and pollution in our site’s postindustrial territories, by proposing new activities that would go hand in hand with ecological restoration, adaptive reuse, and social urbanism. Our site represents, in microcosm, China’s challenges in its transition process toward a post-industrial future. The site lies between major extraction sites in Tangshan, with the Dou River bordering its west and with active railways running along its east edge. The site is also adjacent to the urban core of Tangshan. Most of the site was industrialized with either processing facilities, extractive sites, or supportive housing, during the past century. In recent years, deindustrialization has progressed, as we saw in our visit.

Today, the site combines deindustrializing areas, desolate wastelands, polluted factory campuses, and industrial activities that are soon to depart. Most factories have been decommissioned or will be relocated in the near future, leaving areas of contaminated land.

In the south of the site, Tangshan Iron and Steel Group, Tangshan Power Plant, and Qixin Wharf will be vacated. These industrial facilities await reuse and repurposing. In the north of the site, ceramic factories have already moved out, leaving abandoned buildings and land. Some of the kilns are an important industrial heritage. These kilns are projected to become a feature of the “Tangshan Porcelain Culture Park”, an area of 6.4 hectares that is already under construction. The remaining industrial heritage is a fascinating component of the site. The city has envisioned the site to be an extension of Tangshan’s urban core, accommodating an imagined population of 120,000 by 2030. The city’s vision projects the site occupied by residential areas and comprehensive services, presumably involving the demolition of much of Tangshan’s industrial heritage. Can we imagine a future for these post-industrial sites that meshes heritage, new economic activities, residences, and ecological areas?

The site’s potential is rich. A dense railway network designed mostly to ferry industrial materials to and from extraction and processing sites crosses the studio site in various states of activity and repair. A spectacular and comparatively modernized steel plant and adjoining power plant will be abandoned in more or less their intact form, replaced by more modern facilities on the coast.

Ancient and longstanding pottery and ceramics activities of different levels of dilapidation provide a rich heritage of economic, social, and architectural value. Extraction sites are wounded ecologies that present tabula rasas demanding a new future as part of a second nature for Tangshan. The industrial quality of the site is challenging, rich, and an exciting opportunity for urban design.

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The studio was organized around three topics, each relating to industrial activities that occupy a portion of the studio site: Steel Mill; Power Plant; Ceramics Factories. These topics are detailed below.

2A: Steel Mill Tangshan is a sea of factories interspersed with extraction sites and processing facilities. Much of this industrial fabric survives today in the form of steel mills, coking plants, and other forms of heavy industry. The studio site possesses many forms of industrial structures in vast, enclosed campuses. The Tangshan Iron and Steel Group, or Tangsteel, founded in 1943, is one of the largest state-owned, steel manufacturers in China. Tangsteel is currently headquartered in the south of the studio site. It is to be relocated to Caofeidian by the end of 2020.

While steel mills are conventionally considered to be dirty and ruinous, Tangsteel defies these expectations. An earlier renovation created a green, if not ecological campus inside the walls. Our January visit revealed modernized structures, planted areas, and infrastructure interspersed with both architecture and landscape.

The campus is vast, however, and preservation in its entirety is likely to be challenging and impracticable. What other alternatives exist? The Tangsteel site represents an opportunity to pioneer reuse opportunities that are only just being tested in Beijing. Could Tangshan be a leader in the sympathetic repurposing and redesign of abandoned steel mills?

2B: Power Plant The studio site has multiple enclosed, monofunctional factory campuses in various scales, including the Tangshan Power Plant.

This Plant was initiated after the earthquake in 1976 and has been providing power since 1985. Tangshan plans to shut down this coalfired plant in the near future. Today, the plant’s concrete stacks are a landmark of Tangshan’s otherwise undistinctive urban core. The Power Plant sits at a picturesque turn of the Dou River. Across the river, the plant’s spacious danwei compound survives intact. The plant disrupts public access to the waterfront and has likely contributed to the waterway’s pollution as well.

Power plants offer opportunities to reuse and reclaim valuable land, but they also pose design challenges. The large open volumes of power plants are not always easily reusable. Environmental pollution poses a challenge. On the other hand, London has converted a power plant into one of the greatest contemporary museums of Europe, and Beijing is finding exciting futures for Shougang’s power structures as well. The Tangshan plant’s iconic form and waterway location promise, on the one hand, the opportunity to recapture the waterfront for public use, in tandem with cities worldwide. But 194

bolder futures are also possible for the powerful and frankly bizarre engineering monuments that make up the former plant. The danwei directly across the river also offers the opportunity for synergistic futures for housing in tandem with this iconic site.

2C: Ceramic Factories Tangshan’s long history of pottery production is intertwined with its small-scale ‘village’ settlements. Pottery workshops and factories are scattered over the studio site, fabricate a wide variety of products such as artisanal porcelains, utensils, toilet facilities, and laboratory equipment. The market for Tangshan’s pottery industry is global, as we saw from our January visit to one small workshop. Tangshan’s ceramics industry provides employment for many low-income workers. But this industry is at serious risk. Not only has the city shuttered and demolished many facilities, but the surviving facilities themselves seem outmoded, underused, and underperforming.

Environmental conditions are poor and working conditions are certainly not up to global standards. Yet ceramics are intimately interwoven with Tangshan’s history and society in a deep and meaningful way.

The studio site’s combination of small-scale ceramics facilities, with their range of structures, intimate, dilapidated spaces, and socioeconomics link to Tangshan’s workers provide a compelling platform for the reimagination of this ancient industry, the redesign and reuse of its spaces, and the economic valorization of its worker population. Ceramics are a luxury industry today, and Tangshan has a long-standing foothold in this industry. What might a future ceramics industry resemble, and how might it occupy the unique industrial spaces found on the studio site today? The intimate relationship of the ceramic factories with village and danwei settlements provide additional opportunities to consider these urban fabrics in conjunction with each other.

Radical Predictions Tangshan is a city in transition. Industry, the foundation of modern China’s first truly industrial city, is departing, leaving behind swathes of extraction landscapes and abandoned factories, processing facilities, and power plants. Danwei housing, once closely associated with industrial plants, now mostly houses an older, lower-income population whose economic connectivity to contemporary Tangshan is vulnerable. The historic core of the city, devastated and nearly destroyed by the 1976 earthquake, remains undercapitalized, underutilized, and underappreciated. Despite shining new tower districts that are visually and functionally identical to those of other Chinese cities, Tangshan is distinct in the large area of the city dedicated to industry or marked by industrial extraction.

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The 2019 MIT-Tsinghua urban design studio, the first to holistically examine a transitional Chinese city, tackled Tangshan’s challenges energetically and creatively. The MIT studio results published in this volume, together with Tsinghua studio results to be published in a second volume, provide promising design directions for diverse types of industrial sites within the studio’s designated study area. Each studio project pioneers a design strategy for industrial facilities with few worldwide design precedents: ceramics factories, a power plant, and a 1990s-era steel mill. The resulting design solutions offer grounds for formally bold, heritage-sensitive, ecologically restorative, and socially progressive urban design in a city, region (China’s Northeast), and nation that will be facing many more such challenges as deindustrialization, and the accompanying demographic shifts, progress in coming decades. The 2019 studio thus stands as a truly future-oriented and radically predictive glimpse into the future of China’s postindustrial regions.

Tangshan’s oldest industry is ceramics, and this industry also arguably provided much of the economic raison d’etre for the nowvanishing semi planned villages located adjacent to pottery factories.

Second Firing, by Zhuangyuan Fan, Dylan Halpern, and Melissa Gutierrez Soto, provides an optimistic, palliative, and even restorative future vision of this ancient industry. Second Firing depicts a renewed ceramics industry focusing on contemporary products and sustainable production cycles to occur within a consolidated range of factory structures, while other repurposed ceramics structures and tactically inserted new high rise towers provide for contemporary service functions like visitation and living. An interlaced system of food production, bioremediation, and ecological restoration embraces the factory structures within agricultural fields, ponds, and shading trees. Second Firing also provides an infrastructural framework for a new neighborhood of moderate density housing. This district’s scale and relationship to agricultural production proffers a humane, palliative residential vision in strong contrast to the overly dense, spatially pathological high-rises of New Tangshan, as well as a reminder of the low-rise village formerly occupying the site; one of thousands that contemporary policy thoughtlessly erases, instead of rehabilitating.

While obsolete industrial facilities in other parts of the ‘Global North’ (North America, Europe, Russia) are often many decades old, China presents a paradoxical situation of comparatively modern facilities made redundant by the rapid-fire internal competition of new-built factories and processing plants in more logistically accessible areas.Thus the seemingly modern Tangsteel plant and power station will soon shift production to the Caofeidian new city along the shores of the Bohai Bay. Turning Point, by Charlotte Ong and Haoyu Wang, converts the former Tangsteel Power 196

Plant into a kind of social condenser for contemporary Tangshan, with recreational facilities occupying the former cooling towers, environmental research centers in administration buildings, and community markets threaded between waterway networks that themselves provide a cleaning and purification system for the polluted Dou river wrapping the powerplant site. Contrasting with contemporary paradigms of high art and/or retail and residential activities on such sites, Turning Point strategically adapts to and enhances links within its riverine site adjacent to the Dashengchan Park, a last remnant of montane dry forest habitat within central Tangshan. The scenic bend in the Dou River, once the nexus for industrial employment, becomes a recreational, ludic, and ecological resource for the city.

The Tangsteel South Rolling Mill, one of the largest industrial facilities in Tangshan and a major source of pollution and visual blight, presents the city’s current most challenging reuse opportunity.

With levels of pollution a closely held state secret, remediation forecasts are difficult, never mind identifying practicable futures for the vast physical plant. Piranesian in scope and scale, of the mill.

Redeeming Tanggang, by Feiyue Chen, Stephen Erdman, Joude Mabsout, and Tanaya Srini, boldly encompasses the geography of the mill within a terraforming strategy that employs industrial waste as scenic vistas and protective berms for new data storage centers within the mill site. Much of the skeletal machinery of the blast furnaces remains, embraced within a regenerated dry coniferous landscape that conveys the gradual retrenchment of urbanization away from the agricultural eastern edge of the city toward the more thickly inhabited west. Incomprehensible within conventional visions of ‘leveraging’ open space sites for speculative activity, Redeeming Tanggang instead recalls forested hills, or Qin dynasty-era burial mounts and the notso-distant Yinshan range carrying the Great Wall to the Bohai shore.

Eschewing dense networks of housing, Redeeming Tanggang projects a pastoral grid of low-density housing within the regenerated forest.

A modern steel mill is transformed into a heterogeneous landscape, heritage area, and new technology center.

Tangshan in Transition projects a bold future for postindustrial China, with regenerated ecology, new civic activities for an aging population, technological innovations and economic centers, and an industrial heritage preserved not as museum but as critical component of an envisioned cityscape in which scale, access, experience, and performance are reimagined, recalling elements of China’s historic past within a framework geared to the future.

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Redeeming Tanggang Spectrums of Industries + Ecologies

Feiyue Chen, Joude El-Masbout, Stephen Erdman, Tanaya Srini

Tanggang Steel, not unlike Tangshan itself, is a site of evacuation.

Once the most productive site for steel manufacturing in all of China, the city is slated to lose the steel company, and its 6,000 jobs, to the coast as it follows the region’s other industries in relocating to Caofeidian. In addition to lost jobs, the steel company leaves behind deep ecological scars in the form of thoroughly compacted and highly acidic soil on former mining and coal storage sites, which subsequently polluted the Douhe River through its runoff. Moreover, the Central Park-sized site is the city’s most profound reminder of its storied past as the cradle of Chinese industrial innovation. A lingering question remains: can Tanggang be redeemed?

This project aims to grapple with the void left in Tanggang’s absence—the environmental degradation and economic uncertainty at a massive scale—through radical landscape and future-facing industrial interventions. In doing so, we opt to design processes instead of designing outcomes, as the reality of Chinese urbanization makes predicting Tangshan’s future an exercise in futility. We employ preservation as a key strategy for celebrating the site’s industrial heritage, but intervene to create monumental terraforms that can converse with the existing scale. This ecological remediation strategy materializes by composting the byproducts of a diverse set of industries that are introduced to the site. The selected industries satisfy both the physical scale of buildings preserved and the need for human interaction with the site, while contending with industrial production’s turn towards automation.

What results is not only a remediated humanistic landscape, ripe with opportunity, but also a strategy for post-industrial ecological urbanism that can be applied throughout Tangshan and beyond.

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Tanggang occupies almost 3.5 km2 of land on the east side of the city of Tangshan. For comparison, it is slightly larger than the area of New York City’s Central Park.

The future of Tangshan is uncertain: industries are rapidly vacating, leaving many residents without jobs if they do not leave the city altogether. Without institutions of higher learning, young residents have little reason to stay. And yet, a new Tanggang is well-situated to add value to the city. For example, it anchors the east side of the city, and can add connectivity to the city’s rail, which will soon provide transit to Beijing within an hour.

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HBIS GROUP TANGSTEEL COMPANY

Tangshan Steel in 1975

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The First Steel Manufacturing Machine in Northeastern China in1921

Tangshan Iron and Steel Co.,Ltd was founded in 1943. It is known as the “home of converter” and one of the earliest enterprises in China that successfully applied continuous casting technology to large-scale industrial production. After the reform and opening up, Tangshan Iron and Steel Co.Ltd has steadily accelerated its pace of development and ranked among the top ten steel mills in the country.

1. Blast Furnace 2. Coal Mining Zone 3. Transportation Zone 4. The First Rolling Mill 5. The Second Rolling Mill 7. Parking Lot & Green Space 8. Tangshan Cultural Square

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This analysis of Tanggang’s architectural morphology demonstrates the enormity of the scale of its existing building stock. Even its smallest buildings dwarf the size of Tangshan’s market rate housing, which are usually two to three times the size of the city’s predominant housing type, the Danwei.

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The environmental challenges facing the site are numerous: openair coal storage (in the northeast corner of the site) left highly compacted and acidic soil, making new plant growth, let alone human inhabitation, impossible given the toxicity. Coal transfer has likely contaminated soil across the site, as well as the runoff to Dou River.

The seismic activity across Tangshan mixed with Tanggang’s mining past means subsidence is another serious environmental threat.

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SITUATING TANGGANG AMONG OTHER INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE CASE STUDIES:

TANGGANG

Public Funding

Private Funding

VÖLKLINGEN

ZOLLVEREIN

Demolition

Preservation

FUNDIDORA

Low Economic Productivity

High Economic Productivity

SHOUGANG

BETHLEHEM

Few Reuse Strategies

Many Reuse Strategies

DESIGN PRINCIPLES From single use to multiple diverse uses Managing Scale

Integration of production + Living

Experiential heritage instead of ‘dead memorialization’ Environmental restoration + Design through phasing

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Economically Productive Industrial Heritage

Embracing the monumentality of the site Ecological Remediation 210

Based on case studies, we identified a set of actions in our preservation strategy that would reintroduce economic production to the vacated site, create mixed uses to reduce the impact of single-industry evacuation, and design procedurally through phasing to introduce landscape and industry solutions incrementally. These strategies culminate in three design priorities: celebrating the scale of Tanggang using monumental landscapes, remediating the ecology in the process, and pairing these processes with new industries to propel Tangshan into the future.

Site Conditions

Industry

Process

Landscape

New Design

Massive Scale

Monumentality

Environmental Degradation

Remediated Landscapes

Uncertain Future

Future-Facing

Nature

Passive

Human

Posthuman

Parkside Active

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Cityside

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Environmental Institution

Computing School

Floodable Recreation Hilltop Overlook

Rooftop Recreation

Recreation Cluster

Retail + Dark Kitchens

Warehouse

Data Centers

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Student Housing Industrial Design

IKEA Production + Retail Center

Warehouse Cabins in the Woods

Skywalk Composting Facility

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Coal Mining Zone Parking + Green Space First Rolling Mill Second Rolling Mill Tanggang Hospital

Third Rolling Mill Administrative Building

Existing Site

1

Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Preserved Megastructures

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Each programmatic intervention we introduce is part of a larger process meant to contend with both the industrial and ecological challenges of the site. We read the site using different spectrums that acknowledge the surrounding assets of the city including the new East Lake Park. The surrounding assets suggest entries to the site, which influence the level of activity programmed for different areas.

These readings ultimately result in a site that integrates the activities of human and nature using future-facing, or “post-human” industry to mediate the two.

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Dark kitchens centralize food production for delivery 25km² | 750 jobs In-Vessel composting facility with city-wide capacity 70km² | 45 jobs Retail spaces anchored by food and big-box furniture 15km² |105 jobs Warehouses, serving Alibaba and other major retailiers 190km² | 950 jobs Data Centers serve region’s IT and computing needs 535km² | 530 jobs 3

Preservation and Reuse

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The site will be covered with 60cm-deep compost to neutralize toxins

Soil Remediation

Three to Five Years The first three to five years of the design process will involve reusing preserved buildings by introducing a set of industries—including data centers, storage and warehouses for mega-retailers, and dark kitchens—whose byproducts can be used to create the compost required for soil remediation. The composting facility introduced to the site has the capacity to generate the requisite amount of compost to cover the entire site in one year, but we build in additional time to start up a city-wide composting program.

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Polluted Soil

Remediated Soil via Compost

Terraforming with Remediated Soil

These terraforms require around 30,000 hectaressquared of composted soil, which will take approximately one year to produce, given the capacity of the in-vessel facilities that can accommodate all of the city’s composting needs.

Terraforming

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Reforestation and River Rehabilitation

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3-5 years

Coniferous Tree Planting For Carbon Sequestration

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Cabins

Riverside recreation fields double as dooable landscapes 5km² | 20 jobs Roof Spas and other green roof recreation transmute heat generated by the data centers 12km² | 540 jobs

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New Recreational Uses

Housing Tangang Environmental Institute sparks innovations in blue and green tech 40km² |729 jobs

5-10 years

Tangang Industrial Design Institute trains makers that sell at on-site retail spaces 21km² | 340 jobs Tangang Computing Institute trains students for Industry 4.0 20km² | 360 jobs 8

Campus Institutions and Housing

Five to Ten Years The next five years are used to fully transform the landscape using terraforms, and integrating this new terrain with industry by incorporating new recreational uses. Once the landscape is suitable for humans, desperately needed educational institutions and housing for students and faculty are introduced, such that humans can continually inhabit the site.

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The composting facility could accommodate the organic waste of the nearly 8,000,000 residents of Tangshan municipality.

Final Site Build Up

9

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The site has much greater development potential and could support a much larger facility that could accommodate the organic waste of the more than 100,000,000 residents of the Jing-jin-ji region. The resulting compost could be sold to support regional agricultural and landscaping needs. [* These estimates are based off of the capacity of Calgary, Canada’s newly constructed city-wide composting facility]

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Regional Composting

10+ Years, From Site to Region The fully realized site design features monumental terrain and future-facing industries arranged spectrally across the site. This realization does not put an end to the processes, but instead expands their purview. For example, we imagine that the composting facility can shift to treating the waste of the entire region, thus serving an acute need in and around Beijing and greater China to initiate environmental and nature-based-solutions for dealing with organic waste.

Designing a City in Transition: Redeeming Tanggang

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Spectral Readings These program and landscape sections demonstrate how the site functions spectrally, with denser activity and ecology on the west, “human” side, and more passive programming flowing from the “post-human” area to the site’s forest edge. The terraforms and their associated industries stitch either side of the spectrums together.

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Recreation Institution Housing

River

Forest

Deciduous trees

Coal runoff

Programmed Landscape

Bio-remediation planting

Subsurface lyme filtration

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Industrial Design

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High quality compost

Cabins

Retail

Computing School

Vapor barrier

40 meter existing building

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Environmental Institute

New Industry

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Low quality compost/fill

Data Center

Warehouse

Computing School

Composting Facility

Coniferous trees /Carbon sequestration

Contaminated soil

Enjoying the waterfront: As part of the ecological remediation strategy, the treated Dohue River becomes a node to connect Tanggang with the city to the west, and a recreational amenity.

Relaxing at the spa: Rooftop recreation, including spas heated by data center emissions, are accessible via the terraces. These amenities again offer the opportunity to engage with Tanggang’s monumentality on multiple planes.

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Experiencing culture: The riverfront is reprogrammed with storm water management features and gathering spaces for athletic and cultural activities. The multipurpose amphitheater doubles as a performance space and storm water collection basin.

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Engaging with megastructures: In preserving the most striking megastructures, the opportunity to engage the industrial heritage emerges.

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Scaling the terraces: Continuing through the forest invites exploration of the sublime terraces.

As they are traversed, more of the expansive site and Tangshan’s skyline become visible above the forest roof.

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Turning Point: Tangshan

Haoyu Wang, Charlotte Xin Yun Ong

Turning Point is not only a reference to the geographical location of the power plant site at the meander of the river, but also to the opportunities and potential presented as the power plant site transitions from its current industrial state into future uses. We seek to open up this site and reconnect it with the rest of the city, putting it to new productive and public uses. Where the power plant once contributed to environmental pollution of the city, we seek to reposition the power plant site as an educational demonstration, city park and public space that could showcase cutting-edge environmental remediation strategies. Rather than having the former industrial site turn into a passive use, we seek to incorporate new productive systems of research and pilot new technologies in the areas of environmental remediation and agricultural production. The site will also be activated with recreational uses and social and retail activities that will attract residents of all ages.

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The power plant sits at the nexus of the green corridor stretching from Nanhu Park in the Southwest to the future East Lake Park in the northeast. Dou River meanders along the site. This is a critical node in Tangshan’s green and blue networks. Yet, there are limited connections across the river. Potential adaptive redevelopment of the steel plant could introduce new connections. The site is within a 10-minute-walk radius of several residential areas that are 232

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DACHENGSHAN PARK

Residential School

underserved by retail and public spaces. The redevelopment offers an opportunity to create a new ‘backyard’ for the power plant danwei community directly across the river. Given the number of educational institutes in the vicinity, the site becomes an experiential learning and educational public space complementing traditional classroom learning.

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TANGSHAN THERMAL POWER COMPANY

A Power Plant Built in Kaiping Mines, built in 1906 (photo taken in the 1937)

Tangshan Power Plant in the 1960s

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1. Steam Turbine Unit 2. Cooling Tower 3. Boiler 4. Industrial Storage Tank

Tangshan Thermal Power Company was founded in 2002. There are more than 1700 employees. The installed capacity is 600MW, of which two 300MW heating units were put into operation in 2004. All the power generated by the company is supplied to Beijing-TianjingTangshan power grid, and it also undertakes the task of heating more than 10 million square meters in the downtown of Tangshan City. Currently, the impression of the power plant site is shaped by the views of industrial structures. Within the context of a low-rise residential neighborhood, the scale of these structures makes them highly visible from a distance.

The key components of the power plant are the boiler system and chimney, cooling towers and the turbine hall. These are large-scale distinctive structures that are local landmarks.

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Danwei housings

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Steel Mill Redevelopment (Park proposal)

Dachengshan Park

SITE PLAN 0

100

200m

The power plant today has limited entrances and is a walled complex.

It is an island in the city with limited connections to its surroundings, though it still has impact on the city through environmental pollution.

The large-scale structures like the cooling towers are local icons and landmarks with high potential for adaptive reuse. Our site plan is grounded in the principles above. Starting with the environmental system consisting of air purification, water remediation and forest restoration, these systems allow for new layers of production and recreation to be introduced. Embedded across the entire site are educational and social systems.

EDUCATIONAL

creating open systems + reintegrating with the city

AIR PURIFICATION ENVIRONMENTAL

WATER REMEDIATION

AGRICULTURE

PRODUCTION

RESEARCH + NEW TECH

RECREATION

FOREST RESTORATION SOCIAL environmental remediation not externalities ARCHITECTURAL ICONS HIGH POTENTIAL FOR REUSE

POWER DANWE

ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION CLOSED SYSTEM ISLAND IN THE CITY CHIMNEY

VEHICULAR BRIDGE

BOILER SYSTEM

inclusive spaces for social interaction MAIN ENTRANCE

TURBINE HALL COOLING TOWER

productive reuse of structures NO CONNECTION TO PARK

opportunities for active learning + experimentation

Designing a City in Transition: Turning Point

TRUCK + TRAIN ENTRANCE

DACHENGSHAN PARK

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Open-air marketplace with productive greens upon purified water

Looking down to the marketplace from the climbing wall of a cooling tower

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Taking advantage of water and air purification systems, a layer of productive green is created with greenhouses scattered on the water surface and an indoor vertical farming system created by transforming the former turbine hall. The products, including consumable and ornamental plantings, will then be sold in the open-air marketplace that not only attracts young people to explore exotic foods, but also provides social interaction opportunities for the elderly.

With most of the programs open to the public, the site performs as an urban-scale educational instrument, which demonstrates cutting-edge technologies and strategies to shape the future of the city’s environment and production. To facilitate educational tours, former industrial conveyors are renovated and extended into skywalk galleries that connect major programs on site. Other recreational programs will also attract teenagers to visit with opportunities for active learning. As a demonstration park with the future on display, the site will also serve as a paradigm for the rest of the city in shaping the future of Tangshan.

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View of the wetland park from the Danwei community across the river

Canopied street between Dachengshan Mountain and the power plant site

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Without walls, landscape of Dachengshan park will be introduced into the site as a forest spanning across and street and covering peripheries of the site. When the forest meets the meander, it seamlessly blends into a wetland park which is created by retreating the original riverbank back for 50 meters. The wetland park is covered by shrubs to stabilize the soil and performs as a passive water remediation mechanism.

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The water remediation system flows through the site as a secondary meander of the Dou River. A mechanical pump moves polluted river water from the Dou River into a carbon filtration system to strip away the heavy metals. As a secondary remediation system, we employ phytoremediation techniques as the water then enters aerobic reactors and ecological fluidized beds housed in greenhouses, before flowing into the horizontal sub-surface constructed wetlands.

The cleaned water is then put to productive use for agricultural and recreational purposes before it finally returns to the river.

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WATER TREATMENT AIR STRIPPER TOWER

AEROBIC REACTO

GAS + AIR DIRECTED TO AIR PURIFICATION CHIMNEY GAS AND AIR COLLECTED

ACTIVATED CARBON FILTRATION

EACH OF THE AEROBIC RE A LAYER OF FLOATING A SYSTEMS OF THE PLANT HABITAT FOR THE

CHEMICALS STICK TO THE SURFACE OR WITHIN PORES OF GRANULES. THIS PROCESS REMOVES FUEL, PCBs, DIOXINS + RADIOACTIVE WASTES

AIR RISES WATER IS SPRAYED OVER PACKING MATERIAL PACKING MATERIAL POLLUTED WATER

AIR RISES THROUGH PACKING MATERIAL WATER TRICKLES DOWN TO BOTTOM

ACTIVATED CARBON GRANULES

AIR BLOWER PUMP THIS PROCESS REMOVES CHEMICALS THAT EVAPORATE EASILY LIKE FUELS + SOLVENTS. CONTAMINATED WATER IS PUMPED UP INTO THE CHAMBER AND SPRAYED OVER PACKING MATERIAL. THE PACKING MATERIAL ALLOWS THE WATER TO SLOWLY TRICKLE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE TANK. A FAN BLOWS AIR UPWARDS CAUSING CHEMICALS TO EVAPORATE OUT OF THE WATER. THE CHEMICALS ARE COLLECTED AND TREATED SO THEY CANNOT CAUSE FURTHER POLLUTION.

CLEANED WATER FOR FURTHER REMEDIATION

INLE WATER FOR NEXT STEP OF CLEANING

GREENHOUSE TROP

IN THE INITIAL PHASES THE CLEANED WA NON-EDIBLE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE LIK ARE HOUSED IN SPECIALIZED GREENHOUS AND THE RIVER WATER IS PROGRESSIVELY CAN THEN BE GROWN O

POLLUTED RIVER WATER IS PUMPED UP INTO THE PRIMARY WATER TREATMENT PLANT

COOLING TOWER TESTBED

LABORATORY FOR TESTING SMALL EXPERIMENTAL SUBMERSIBLES AND DEEP SEA DIVING TRAINING. ALTERNATIVELY USED FOR WATER STORAGE FOR EMERGENCY PURPOSES

ORS + ECOLOGICAL FLUIDIZED BEDS

EACTOR TANKS PROVIDES A MINI-ECOSYSTEM WITH AQUATIC PLANTS AT THE TOP. THE EXTENSIVE ROOT TS EXTEND DOWN INTO THE WATER AND PROVIDE E BACTERIA WHICH BREAKS DOWN WASTES.

ET PIPE

HORIZONTAL SUB-SURFACE FLOW CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS PHYTOREMEDIATION WATER FLOWS CONTINUOUSLY AND HORIZONTALLY THROUGH A PLANTED FILTER BED. PLANTS PROVIDE APPROPRIATE ENVIRONMENT FOR MICROBIOLOGICAL ATTACHMENT, GROWTH AND TRANSFER OF OXYGEN TO THE ROOT ZONE. ORGANIC MATTER AND SUSPENDED SOLIDS ARE REMOVED BY FILTRATION AND MICROBIOLOGICAL DEGRADATION IN AEROBIC ANOXIC AND ANAEROBIC CONDITIONS. WETLAND PLANTS (MACROPHYTES)

INLET PIPE OUTLET PIPE SLOPE WITH LINER

PICAL FLOWERS

RHIZOME NETWORK

SMALL GRAVEL

CLIMATE-CONTROLLED SPECIALIZED GREENHOUSE

ATER WILL ONLY BE USED FOR KE TROPICAL FLOWERS WHICH SES. AS THE SYSTEM MATURES Y CLEANED, EDIBLE PRODUCE ON THIS SITE.

CLEANED WATER CAN BE USED FOR AGRICULTURAL PURPOSES

TROPICAL FLOWERS FOR CUT FLOWER INDUSTRY

INDOOR VERTICAL FARMING

PLANTS ARE GROWN USING HYDROPONIC OR AEROPONIC SYSTEMS ON VERTICAL STACKS IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT WITH ARTIFICIAL SUNLIGHT, HUMIDITY, TEMPERATURE CONTROLS. SOFTWARE WILL CONTROL THE AMOUNT OF LIGHT, WATER AND NUTRIENTS THAT THE PLANTS RECEIVE.

LED LIGHTS CLOTH MEDIUM AEROPONIC NUTRIENT MIST

CLEANED WATER CAN BE USED FOR RECREATIONAL PURPOSES

SWIMMING POOL

CLEANED WATER CAN BE USED FOR RECREATIONAL PURPOSES. THE COOLING TOWER IS CONVERTED INTO A SWIMMING POOL AND THE WATER IS THEN RETURNED TO THE RIVER.

WATER FLOWS BACK INTO THE RIVER

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252

Second Firing: Tangshan

Zhuangyuan Fan, Melissa Gutierrez Soto, Dylan Halpern

Tangshan’s ceramic production landscape is populated by linear warehouses. Long tracks and kilns for firing, glazing, and decorating the many ceramics produced in the city fill the pitch buildings. The streetscape bears some resemblance to the urban village: winding roads and alleyways populated by low-rise buildings that invite exploration. The craft in Tangshan is central to its identity, the industry dating back to the Qing Dynasty. The ceramic in Tangshan is known as ‘bone china’-- so named for the bone ash making up around 50% of the paste’s volume. These ceramics have long been the preferred type in England, where the process was invented. The bone china production process is slowly fading in the city, as factories close their doors or change to industrial or more general ceramics production. Everyday and artisan ceramics across the country have flourished, particularly in places like Jingdezhen, but Tangshan’s production is characterized by utilitarian and sanitary ceramics for toilet bowls and sinks. Ecologically, these production spaces present massive impermeable surfaces and output a significant carbon dioxide emissions as a result of traditional furnaces. Caustic paint supplies exacerbate environmental issues and challenges for worker health.

Ceramics in Tangshan are ready for a re-imagined landscape and revamped industrial tempo. The large flexible warehouses can house a huge number of industries, and re-inventing ceramics for a 21st century market allows for rich exploration. The study of this area emphasizes the respect for this tradition in Tangshan and the value of the existing workforce. Looking to the site’s relationship with the river and the incoming East Lake Park, considerations for an environmentally-friendly industrial program are critical. Finally, circular production – where the waste of one firm is the raw material of another – provides new possibilities for the ceramic craft.

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6

2

1

4

7

9

8

5 10 3

254

Tangshan Haigelei Fine Bone

Tangshan First Ceramic Factory

Tangshan Longyingci Co. Ltd.

Porcelain Co., Ltd. 1

2

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1998 OUT OF BUSINESS

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1993

GOOD

Tangshan Longyuan Factory

3

OUT OF BUSINESS

GOOD

GOOD

Tangshan Ceramic Co. Ltd

KaiPing District Ming Ceramic Factory

5

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1994

6

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1997

GOOD

No.4 Acid Resistant Ceramic Factory

7

OUT OF BUSINESS

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1996

Tangshan Longyuan Co. Ltd

OUT OF BUSINESS

GOOD

Tangshan Meishu Ceramic Factory

9

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1997

GOOD

YEAR ESTABLISHED:1994

GOOD

8

OUT OF BUSINESS

OUT OF BUSINESS

Thangshan No. 6 Ceramic Factory

4

OUT OF BUSINESS

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2004

OUT OF BUSINESS

GOOD

YEAR ESTABLISHED:2004 OUT OF BUSINESS

GOOD

To explore this landscape’s conservation, and future uses means to consider the network of factories large and small that populate Tangshan. The largest factory in the site, Tangshan’s Number 1 Ceramic Factory, was selected as the site of study. It is currently used only for storage, and it is poised at the infrastructural junction of rail, highway, surface streets, and the Dou river.

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

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TANGSHAN NO. 1 PORCELAIN FACTORY AND BOYU CULTURAL PARK

Qixin Ceramics in the 1930s

Desheng Pottery Factory Built in the 1930s

256

Desheng Pottery Factory in 1942

Tangshan Bone Porcelain was first produced in Tangshan No.1 Porcelain Factory. In July 1982, the opalescent bone porcelain produced by this company passed the national appraisal making the birth of Tangshan Bone Porcelain in 2012. There are more than 50 Bone Porcelain Manufacturing Enterprises with an annual output of 140 million pieces and an annual output of abour 800 million yuan.

1. Main Entrance of NO.1 Porcelain Factory 2. Processing Area of NO.1 Porcelain Factory 3. Main Entrance of Buyu Company 4. Processing Area of Boyu Company

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

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258

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

259

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

68 m2

10,748 m2

1 9

260

PROGRAMMED BANDS + OPERATION BANDS

COMMERCE

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

EDUCATION

FOOD PRODUCTION

RETAIL & MARKET

CERAMIC PRODUCTION

NEW INDUSTRY

PUBLIC PROGRAMMING

RAW MATERIALS

Across our larger site in Tangshan, ten major ceramic operations are in differing phases of operation. Sites have varying degrees of activity, usage, employment, size, and building footprints. We select the No.1 Ceramic Factory campus as our study site.

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

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262

MARKET + RETAIL

FOOD PRODUCTION

WASTE + MECHANICS

CERAMICS

Inspired by the existing grid within the site itself, our proposed plan introduces “bands“ in two directions to re-activite the site with a interwoven social, production, and recreation network.

R&D

EDUCATION

PRESERVED: PRODUCTION BUILDINGS

PRESERVED: PROGRAM SKELETON PRESERVED: LOOSE PLUG-IN BUILDING NEW PRODUCTION BUILDING

OPEN SPACE

SUNFLOWER FIELD MEADOW NURSERY PERVIOUS PLAZA CIRCULATION

NEW INDUSTRY

RAW MATERIAL

COMMERCE

PEDESTRIAN PATH VEHICULAR PATH BUILDING ACCESS

263

ERASURE

LANDSCAPE

INSERTION

CONCEPT DIAGRAM

New Neighborhood and Urban Agriculture

OPENING

STORMWATER MANAGEMENT

Waste and Mechanicals

Markets and Commerce Industrial Scale Ceramics

Tree Nursery and Soil Remediation

Food Production

New Industry

Raw Material and Soil Remediation

N

Village Ceramics Extension

The organization for the site utilizes programmatic bands that activate and synergize different programs. The existing site suggested this linear structure, and these programmatic bands create an intersection between residential and industrial zones.

265

The complete plan threads green through the site and suggests a porous linkage between home and work. The site presents a flexible land use plan for future development, and a schematic consideration of where density can be created.

SITE VIEW

267

The study explores three major design strategies: Subtract, Activate, Insert. New buildings are tactically built to create a new element of the landscape and perspective of the site. The goal is to integrating ecological systems and consciousness of industry demands into short term and long term plans. A circular production site is designed to create synergies within the site so that minimal inputs are needed for a cohesive industrial system.

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270

VILLAGE INTERVENTION

A101

Landscape and architectural typologies provide a kit of parts to form a new landscape in the ceramics site. Connecting elements of the village, industrial fabric, and contemporary demands, these building and environmental envelopes allow for forward-looking activations of space. Surface and subterranean water systems mitigate flooding during heavy rains, and increased density contributes to a credible economic argument.

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

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Village upgrade to provide missing infrastructure and public spaces

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

273

Collective agro-courtyards within new urban fabric

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

275

Restored collective space within the new industry

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

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278

Nursery as part of the new industrial park to start a reforestation strategy in the city

Designing a City in Transition: Second Firing

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Afterword: Lessons from Tangshan Lorena Bello Gómez, Brent D. Ryan

Given the new focus of the MIT-Tsinghua China Urban Design studio on the deindustrializing Chinese city, this conclusion offers an opportunity to provide some context for future such studios and related design efforts. The coming peak population of China, and the continuing transition from an industrial to a postindustrial service economy, as detailed in the introduction to this volume, provide a strong motivation for future studios to continue to address this pressing urban condition. This is particularly so, given the comparative lack of urban design investigations and solutions in transitioning Asian, as opposed to American or European, cities.

Below, we provide four reflections for future China urban design studios, drawn from the experience of Tangshan in Transition.

These reflections examine a range of practical and conceptual issues pertaining to urban design. The first, “Don’t Expect Data”, reminds us that China is a particularly challenging environment for the data-driven approaches that are increasingly conventional in urban design, planning, and architecture. The second, “Reconsider Heritage”, speaks to China’s unique postindustrial quality as a nation that industrialized in large part within recent decades, rather than in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as did the US and Western Europe. The third, “Collaboration is Critical”, reinforces the importance of urban design’s interdependence with related disciplines including landscape architecture, environmental science, real estate and industrial economics, and agronomy. Our final reflection, “Reimagine the Postindustrial”, emphasizes the new face of clean, urban industry as a viable replacement for both the dirty, dangerous industrial processes of the past, and the conventional service and leisure-driven postindustrial strategies that have dominated design and planning thinking for industrial sites in the West.

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Don’t Expect Data In China, GIS data, broadly considered a baseline information resource in North American and European contexts, is a strictly held state secret. Despite collaboration with the Tangshan city government and with Tsinghua University, the 2019 China Urban Design studio was completely deprived of parcel- and block-level GIS. This seemingly nonsensical data restriction is more understandable in light of contemporary China’s strict data access policies (e.g. inaccessibility of Google, Facebook, etc.), and in light of the near-complete secrecy of governmental policy decisionmaking, as compared to the more pluralistic, democratic decision process of North American and European governments. In fact, private surveying or mapping of any kind is illegal in China! Whatever the reason, the lack of geospatial data is a reality that future urban design studios will need confront and overcome through creative means. Widely available virtual private networks (vpn) permit slower but accessible Google and other widely available Western internet functions, including Open Street Map, which contains partial building footprint information.

These restrictions, and workarounds, are familiar to almost every China-based designer, and can be quickly picked up by US-based designers as well. Nevertheless, the lack of instantaneously available high-quality geospatial data is a challenge that must be overcome by future studios.

Reconsider Heritage Visitors to European and North American industrial heritage sites step into a world in large part formed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Industrial heritage is thus suffused in the West with a nostalgia for a departed world, vanished two or even three generations years ago. China is different. While the oldest industrial facilities like Tangshan and Shougang, in Beijing, were founded in the late 19C as well, the physical facilities are in many cases just one or two decades old, the product of China’s meteoric industrial growth in the post-1980 period. China’s industrial heritage is thus heterogeneous, a mix of “older”, pre-1980 facilities, and even more recent ones. This lack of seeming antiquity is liberating for designers, a release from the obligation to treat such facilities as heritage, and instead an opportunity to understand closed or abandoned industry for its formal and tectonic qualities. This understanding is both a more powerful motive for design, and an opportunity for a broader range of programming, including contemporary industrial uses, discussed in a later reflection, and environmentally performative activities. By the same token, this reconsideration of heritage cannot and should not provide license

283

for purely economically driven activities such as those that have decimated the former steel mills of the United States, leaving mostly vacant lots and shopping centers behind. China’s industrial plants, modern as they are, merit the same formal consideration as older facilities, and in some cases more, given their massive scale, larger in many cases than the older industrial plants of Europe and North America.

Collaboration is Critical Tangshan is not just an urban condition. On the ground plane alone, the studio site bordered extraction sites of significant scale, as well as agricultural fields and quasi-rural village settlements. Underneath the ground, there was clear evidence that subsidence was shifting soil, destabilizing the urban area to an unknown degree. The abovenoted state-imposed data limitations extended to environmental studies; it was unclear to what extent, or where, Tangshan was polluted, although it was evident to all participants that the pollution, and associated damage, was likely extreme. In the west, urban brownfields are a complex, wicked policy problem requiring input and collaboration among several disciplines, including environmental science, landscape, economics, planning, and design. The same is doubtless true for China, although there was little indication in 2019 that such collaboration was widespread, in part because the same data restrictions applied to the release of environmental findings that would no doubt reveal very bad news. Given the comparative lack of periurban settlements in China, where tall apartment buildings often border farmers’ fields, the participation of agronomists is also critical, especially given the likely environmental justice issues associated with agriculture in industrial areas as well as urban villages. Future studios would do well to engage such related disciplines in whatever way possible, whether for lectures, consultation on studio projects, or even associated seminars or workshops. That such enlarged conceptions of urban design studios are not yet typical does not mean that they are not critical, particularly for the generation of creative strategies for conditions as complex as deindustrializing Chinese cities.

Reimagine the Postindustrial Industry is changing. No longer the dirty, polluting, dangerous stereotype of decades past, industry today has been shaped by the same workplace safety, environmental improvement, and technological efficiency efforts that have revolutionized developed world economies. As Hatuka, Ben Joseph, and Menozzi detail in their contribution to this volume, urban planning has yet to accommodate this changed reality of contemporary industry in existing codes and regulatory structures. The contemporary industrial reality of small284

scale, comparatively clean, efficient and economically productive facilities provides urban designers with enhanced strategies for postindustrial sites, which need no longer be perceived merely as leisure or service centers, but can instead be understood as renewed sites of production. This new reality is particularly opportune for sites like Tangshan’s ceramics plants, whose structures are easily repurposable, small-scale, and accessible to the urban network.

Contemporary industry also provides transitioning industrial cities like Tangshan with additional options: no longer must conversion away from industry be the only economic option. Instead, such formerly single-purpose economies can diversify, utilizing new industry to apply existing sector skills and citizens, such as Tangshan’s ceramics industry. New industry provides industrial cities with the opportunity to retain specializations from the past, and apply them to the future. Such new-industry specialization might provide transitioning industrial cities with competitive advantages analogous to, if not identical to, those of the past. Such advantages would provide both economic sustenance as well as critical sources of pride for these cities. Future urban design studios might consider additional research into new industrial sector potentials, another impetus for the collaboration discussed in the previous reflection.

Next Steps Forward Academic investigations such as urban design studios exist in conjunction with research, policy, and design, only some of which can occur within university settings. It is our hope that publications such as this studio volume can be disseminated among and publicized within the diverse communities of actors who will play a role in redesigning the transitional cities of China’s future. The 2019 MITTsinghua Urban Design Studio team is proud to have played a part in establishing this new direction for urban design in a setting whose problems are so complex, pressing, and important to solve for future generations in China and in the world.

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Appendix

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Teaching Bibliography / Essay References Contributors Credits

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Teaching Bibliography / Essay References

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Huixian, L., Housner, G. W., Lili, X., & Duxin, H. (2002). The Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976. Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California. https://authors.library.caltech.edu/26539/1/TangshanEQRept.htm Wang, Z., Cui, X., Liu, K., 2002. Chapter 6. Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction of Tangshan, in: The great Tangshan earthquake of 1976 (Volume 3). Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.

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Visscher, J. (2010). New landscape Lusatia: International Building Exhibition catalog 2010. Bilingual edition. ed. Berlin: Jovis.

Socialist Housing: The Danwei Compound Bonino, M., Pieri, F.D. (2016). Beijing Danwei: industrial heritage in the contemporary city. Berlin: Jovis.

Bray, D. (2005). Social space and governance in urban China: the danwei system from origins to reform. Califirnia: Stanford University Press.

Chow, R. (2015). Changing chinese cities: the potentials of field urbanism. Honolulu: University of Hawai Press.

Lü, X., and Perry, E. J. (1997). Danwei: the changing chinese workplace in historical and comparative perspective. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe.

Den Hartog, H. (2010). Shanghai new towns: searching for 288

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Lü, Junhua, Rowe, P. G, & Zhang, Jie. (2001). Modern urban housing in China, 1840-2000. Munich; New York: Prestel.

Wu, W., and Gaubatz, P. R. (2013). The Chinese City. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.

The Villages: China’s “Informal” Al, S. (2014). Villages in the city: A guide to South China’s informal settlements. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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Taylor, N.(2012). The village in the City. Economic & Political Weekly 47, 17–19. https://doi.org/10.15957/j.cnki.jjdl.2014.06.016 Postindustrial Urbanism and Heritage Al, S. (2012). Factory towns of south China: an illustrated guidebook. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

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Contributors

INSTRUCTORS Lorena Bello Gómez is Lecturer in architecture and urbanism at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning since January 2013.

Lorena’s research focuses on the potential of infrastructure as catalyst for design across scales. She examined this topic with her PhD in urbanism ¨Hybrid Networks¨ under the guidance of Manuel de SolaMorales and Joan Busquets. She founded TERRALAB to continue this research through design studios and collaborative projects with foundations and universities in Colombia, India, Mexico, Japan, Spain and Portugal. Lorena holds a B.Arch in Architecture and Civil Engineering with honors from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, UPC, a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a European PhD in Urbanism from UPC. Brent D. Ryan is Associate Professor of Urban Design and Public Policy at MIT. His research focuses on emerging urban design in postindustrial, global cities in North America, Europe, and Asia.

His recent book The Largest Art: A measured manifesto for a plural urbanism (2017) examines urban design’s engagement with pluralism.

His first book Design After Decline: How America rebuilds shrinking cities (2012) examined rebuilding in Detroit and Philadelphia. Ryan has lectured, written, and practiced widely on urban design. He previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ryan holds degrees from Yale University, Columbia University, and MIT. TEACHING ASSISTANT Colleen Chiu-Shee is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Her expertise lies at the intersection of four interlocking fields of study—city design and development, urban governance, environmental studies and global studies. At MIT, Colleen has engaged in several research projects linking global knowledge, values and experiences to China’s urban development.

She co-instructs design studios and graduate courses on city design and development.

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STUDENTS Feiyue Chen is currently Master of Science in Architecture Studies in Urbanism (SMarchS AU) candidate at MIT’s department of architecture. He studied at Chongqing University and Kumamoto University and received his Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) degree in 2018. As a co-founder of Dunes Workshop, he conducts research and practices urban design, focusing on the contemporary urban issues through the lens of civic culture and collective memory.

Joude El-Mabsout is currently Master of Science in Architecture Studies in Urbanism (SMarchS AU) candidate at MIT’s department of architecture. She received her Bachelor in Landscape Architecture (BLA) from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Joude is interested in the relationship between people, space and the environment, and her recent research covers the topics of coastal urbanism and contested landscapes.

Stephen Erdman was an urban planner with the New York City municipal government prior to enrolling in MIT’s Master in City Planning program. He worked on affordable housing development projects and housing policy, with a focus on housing for people experiencing homelessness, low income seniors, people who identify as LGBTQ, and other vulnerable populations. Stephen holds a B.A. in urban studies from Fordham University.

Zhuangyuan Fan is pursuing a Master’s degree in City Planning with a concentration in urban informatics and design development at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her work thrives at the intersection of spatial analysis and urban imagination.

Yuan holds a Bachelor in Architecture from Zhejiang University with honors and an Masters in Landscape Architecture from Pennsylvania University.

Melissa Gutiérrez Soto is currently a Master of Science in Architecture Studies in Urbanism (SMarchS AU) candidate at MIT’s Department of Architecture. Her current work is focused on migration patterns and cross-border urbanism to examine urban design responses to the dynamics of migration in México. Melissa holds a BArch with a concentration in Landscape and Urbanism from Universidad de Monterrey, México.

Dylan Halpern is a civic technologist, data visualist, and urban planner. He is currently pursuing a Master in City Planning degree at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His research interests looking forward focus on technology’s role in the built environment, and how the ethics, source, and transparency of data can make the city a better place for everyone. Dylan holds a BFA Suma Cum Laude in Graphic Design and Urban and Regional Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University.

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Charlotte Xin Yun Ong was a Master of City Planning student at MIT from 2017 to 2019 where she conducted research on international case studies of new town developments, industrial urbanism, noise regulations and the future impact of autonomous vehicles on parking garages. Prior to MIT Ong worked as Planning Intern researcher at WXY; Executive Planner at the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore; and Community Outreach intern for the Hudson River Housing project.

Tanaya Srini is a Master of City Planning candidate at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her major strands of research focus on the political economy of urban measurement tools and the effects of natural disasters on housing access for low-income renters. Tanaya graduated with high honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Wesleyan University, where her research focused on the political economy of subsidized housing delivery in cities of the global south.

Haoyu Wang is currently a student in the SMArchS Urbanism program at MIT’s Department of Architecture. He is interested in establishing dialogues between urbanism and the changing ways of people’s life in the digital era. His current study focuses on potential impacts of digital nomadism to the future built space and design strategies in response. Haoyu holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from University of Miami and had been working in the U.S. and Japan prior to entering MIT. ESSAYS Eran Ben-Joseph is the Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research and teaching areas include urban and physical design, standards and regulations, sustainable site planning technologies and urban retrofitting. He has authored the books: Streets and the Shaping of Towns and Cities, Regulating Place, the Code of the City, RENEW Town and ReThinking a Lot. Eran worked as a city planner, landscape architect, and urban designer is Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States. He holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and MS from Chiba National University of Japan.

Beatrice Chen is the executive director of Inmigrant Social Services Inc. She was previously the Manager of Teaching and Learning at the New York Public Library where she worked with the 86 branch libraries and four research libraries to help make NYPL’s collections and exhibitions accessible to K-12 students and teachers. For eight years she was the curator of education at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas in New york City. Beatrice received a B.A. in History and Intrenational Studies from Yale University, an Ed.M from Harvard Graduate School of Education and an MCP from MIT. 300

Lin Peng is Associate Professor at Tsinghua University. From 2008 to 2012 he served as Director of Tangshan’s Planning Bureau, Committee Deputy Director of Caofeidian New District, and Committee Director of Tangshan Bay Eco-City. Lin’s work focused on planning the first-generation of Eco-Cities in China and the strategies for transition in resource-depleted cities in China. He was the chief designer for Tangshan’s Post-Earthquake Plan for EnergyEfficient Architectural Upgrading Plan, which remains China’s largest plan for energy-efficient housing renovation. Lin also directed the planning of Nanhu District, which has become a model for China’s post-mining ecological restoration projects.

Tunney Lee (late MIT Professor Emeritus) was former Head, Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, and the former Head of the Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong . He served as Chief of Planning and Design at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and was also Deputy Commissioner of the Mass. Division of Capital Planning and Operations. His research and teaching at MIT was focused on the process of community-based design and he led many studios involving Boston area neighborhoods.

Most recently, his research was focused on urban development of the Pearl River Delta in China, and an Atlas of Urban Residential Densities.

Jian Liu received her Bachelor degree in Architecture and Master and Doctor degrees in Urban Planning & Design from Tsinghua University. She is Registered City Planner in China, Tenured Associate Professor at Tsinghua University School of Architecture, Managing Chief-Editor of China City Planning Review. She was Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Graduate School of Design Harvard University in 2016, l’Oservatoir d’Architecture de la Chine Contemporaine in 2000 and 2003, visiting scholar at UBC Center for Human Settlements in 1995. Her research focuses on urban and rural planning, urban regeneration, planning institution, and international comparison.

Adèle Naudé Santos, FAIA, former dean of MIT SA+P (20042014) and currently Professor Post Tenure of Architecture and Urban Planning. During her tenure as dean she founded the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, an important urban think tank, that she later co-directed for two years to keep pushing her design research forward through the Housing+ initiative. Her practice as principal architect in the firm Santos Prescott and Associates include affordable and luxury housing, and institutional buildings, with recently completed projects in California, Massachusetts, Guatemala and China. Professor Santos has received many awards and honors including the 2009 Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education and the Friendship Award by the Chinese government.

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She received an AA Diploma from the Architectural Association in London, a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard, and Master of Architecture and Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.

Anne W. Spirn is an award-winning author and distinguished landscape architect, photographer, teacher, and scholar. Spirn, a professor of landscape architecture and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of three books: The Granite Garden; The Language of Landscape; The Eye is a Door; and Daring to Look. Spirn has also written a series of essays that explore how ideas of nature and community have influenced great planners and designers such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ian McHarg. In 2018 Spirn received the National Design Award and the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Medal. In 2001, she was awarded Japan’s International Cosmos Prize for “contributions to the harmonious coexistence of nature and mankind.”

Tali Hatuka (B.Arch, MSc., PhD), an architect and urban planner, is the Head of the Laboratory of Contemporary Urban Design, in the Department of Geography and Human Environment at Tel Aviv University. Hatuka works primarily on planning and urban design issues, focusing on the relationships between urban development, city design and conflicts in contemporary cities. She has authored the books: Revisioning Moments: Violent Acts and Urban Space in Contemporary Tel Aviv (2010), The Factory (2011), and the Design of Protest (2018). She is co-author of the books, State-Neighborhood (Hebrew, 2012) and City-Industry (Hebrew, 2014). She holds a PhD from the Technion, Haifa and Post-Doctorate from MIT. Zheng Xiaodi Ph.D., RLA, ASLA, CHSLA, is associate professor, Vice Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture (LA), and director of both the International Affairs Office the Center for Brownfields Research at Tsinghua University School of Architecture.

She is the General-Secretary of the National LA Education Steering Committee and the official delegate of the Chinese Society of LA (CHSLA) at the (IFLA-APR) Council. Her current research focuses on brownfields regeneration and sustainable landscape. She received her B.Arch. and Ph.D. from Tsinghua University and MLA from the GSD at Harvard University and is a Registered Landscape Architect in Pennsylvania.

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Credits Photos in the book were taken by the Studio Team during our visit to Beijing and Tangshan during January 2019: Lorena Bello Gomez, Brent D. Ryan, Colleen Chiu-Shee, Feiyue Chen, Joude El-Mabsout, Stephen Erdman, Zhuangyuan Fan, Melissa Gutierrez Soto, Dylan Halpern, Charlotte Ong, Tanaya Srini, and Haoyu Wang. Drone pictures were taken by Tsinghua PhD Candidate He Zhu during our visit to Tangshan. The pictures used in the Case Studies were selected online from fair use sources free of copyright. Historical pictures of Tangshan were taken during our visit to the Museum of Coal Mining.

Pictures in pages 46 and 47 have been taken from Tunney Lee´s pictures from his 1980 trip to China with Kevin Lynch, deposited at Rotch Library and accesible via Dome MIT. The editors have attempted to acknowledge all sources of images used and apologize for any errors or omissions.

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BELLO / RYAN

MIT/SA+P [ARCH + DUSP]

CITY IN TRANSITION

China, is the world’s most populous country and has been associated for decades with rapid urban growth, but China is also a complex landscape with cities in economic and social transition. Deindustrialization is rampant, particularly in Northeast China in areas associated with resource extraction and processing. The resulting “transitional cities” struggle with abandonment, pollution, and the challenges of reuse and reactivation.

While these issues are long familiar to urbanists in European and North American contexts, the design of postindustrial space is an emerging and newly pressing issue in China. With its economic slowdown and rising social disparities, China, a country where urban design and planning has confronted only rapid industrialization and growth for the past four decades, has already started to shrink. The projects explored in this volume provide promising design directions for future urbanism in a country where vast numbers of cities are just beginning to experience the population declines and degradation of their physical environment that many European, American, and ex-Soviet cities have experienced for decades.