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| SUMMARIES AND ANALYSIS ON THE STUDIES ABOUT URBAN SOCIAL SPACE IN THE SOCIALIST TRANSITIONAL COUNTRIES |
| WEI Li-hua1, YAN Xiao-pei2 |
1. College of Architecture & Civil Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China;
2. Center for Urban & Regional Studies, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China |
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Abstract The paper generalized and analyzed the studies on the urban social space in the socialist transitional countries. There were common grounds in the evolution of urban social space between the central-east Europe and China, such as suburbanization, poor inner-city, residential segregation etc. The former experienced the rapid and thorough transition from Socialist to Capitalist in the early 1990s, which generated serious social instability, especially, social inequality. The later was the gradual and stable transition under the socialist ideology. So it will be helpful for the next studies on the urban China social space.
China, as the state socialist countries, has entered into the transitional era since the Open and Reform in 1978. The "solid" urban structure started to change under the influence of socio-economic transition. In general, the Chinese city has become the transitional city. The socio-economic transition imprinted naturally their influence in urban space, which was re-structured gradually.
Facing with the serious social problem and spatial restructure, urban planners, sociologists, cerographists in China and central-east Europe focused on the "urban transition". They concluded that the transition from state redistribution to market economy changed the social stratification. Some social groups wined, some lost. The winners bought larger houses in new-built suburb. The losers had to be stayed in the social housings, which constructed in socialist era with low quality. The social stratification was determined by the families' economic status, that is to say, the market competitive ability. The urban society polarized and the social space polarized also. The above phenomenon has been proved by the Prague and Erfurt in East Germany.
Although the transition process of China is different from the central-east Europe, it also generated a series of urban restructuring. Some researchers put forward that the four urban spaces emerged in Chinese cities under reform, globalization and rural-urban migration, that is, space of differentiation, space of consumption, space of marginalization or informal space and space of globalization. Even they said that it's necessary to explain this transition from the economic-political system as Harvey. But the studies about Chinese urban social space should pay much attention to the "local factors" besides the globalization.
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Received: 28 August 2005
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2006, Vol. 21 
