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| SPATIAL PRACTICE OF SOCIALIST CITY——Worker's New Village in Shanghai (1949-1978) |
| YANG Chen |
| Researches Center of Modern and Contemporary China, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris 75006, France |
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Abstract Analyzing with a history-space-society tri-dimensional vision, this article summarizes and gives a shape to three aspects of Shanghai workers' new village built in year 1949-1978:"genesis of new village", "construction process" and "new village's impact on the urban space and social life". First, there were three main causes why the new regime carried out a mass of workers' new village construction in 1950s. Secondly, in the socialism reform process in 1930s, there were many contradictions and incoehences in the Shanghai urban policy. The state industrialization policy that "inland is superior to littoral" and "elimination of regional imbalance in development" confined the state fiscal input to Shanghai for a long period. On the other hand, the local fiscal policy that "production is major to life" also sacrificed residential needs to pursue a rapid growth in industrialization. Thus, except two short durations of new village construction climax in year 1952-1954 and 1957-1958, the non-production investment, such as housing, kept in a relatively low level in the whole thirty years. Finally, as the subject of Shanghai urban renewal-during the socialism period-workers' new village had shown up as the critical urban practice for the new regime to achieve their political wills, economic policies and social ambitions. The layout of the new village targeted merely at the principle of "serving for production", it accommodated the commuting of workers and at last shaped a new life style of "taking factory as home". The new village's construction in suburb carried forward the "center-border" style of power and space in old Shanghai city. Besides, influenced by the tough economic development, the construction standard of new village continued to descend, which greatly affects the family life and neighborhood relationship of the workers living in the new village. The mass construction of new village kept these long last and far reaching impacts on urban special structure and social life of the working class so far.
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Received: 01 September 2010
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2011, Vol. 26 
