Book review essays

Book reviewed in this article: Regionalism and monopoly capitalism: a new approach to the study of local power : Dulong, R. 1978: Les régions, l'état et la société locale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Regionalism and monopoly capitalism: a new approach to the study of local power : Logroye, J. Wright, V. editors 1979: Local government in Britain and France: problems and prospects (LGBF). Regionalism and monopoly capitalism: a new approach to the study of local power : Tarrow, S., Katzenstein, P. and Graziano, L. editors 1978: Territorial politics in industrial nations (TPIN). Regionalism and monopoly capitalism: a new approach to the study of local power: Lojkine, J. 1977: Big firms' strategies, urban policies and urban social movements (1975). In Harloe, M., editor, Captive cities.     

城市用地形态的理论建构及方法研究

城市用地形态是城市形态研究的一个重要方面和核心内容.论文立足于我国快速城市化进程中城市用地矛盾尖锐与城市用地结构混乱等突出问题,通过对城市形态研究理论的历史过程梳理,提出了在我国开展城市用地形态研究方向的学术理论价值和现实针对性,并在人居环境科学理论的框架指导下进行了城市用地形态研究的理论建构及方法探索.     

Marxist approaches to the study of urban politics

Get article commence en mettant l'accent sur le débat entre Lojkine et Poulantzas pour identifier les divergences (ainsi que certaines convergences) au sein de la théorie politique marxiste. Ceci permet de passer à un examen critique de deux études récentes majeures sur la politique urbaine en France partant d'une perspective marxiste—celles de Lojkine et de Biarez et al. II est montré que les points forts et les points faibles de ces études concrétes relévent des démarches théoriques qu'elles adoptent. La mise au jour de ces points est destiné à développer les études subséquentes dans ce domaine.     

中国城市网络研究的自主性建构

中国城市网络的研究起源于20世纪80年代的城市经济体制改革,近十多年来,受到来自国外城市网络研究理论和方法的影响。追溯20世纪80—90年代中国城市网络的研究动态,梳理当前城市网络研究的三大领域,即全球生产网络、企业内部网络、基础设施网络的脉络,并指出存在的问题,然后提出如何紧密联系中国的城镇化实践,形成自主性的中国城市网络研究具有重要的现实意义。     

地方理论:城市空间发展的再生理论

地方理论(Sense of Place)在城市与景观空间规划与发展领域中,代表着对环境研究的一种新角度和新方法,代表着当代城市与景观规划与设计研究的新视野。地方理论强调人与环境之间的感知、认知和记忆关联,是一种空间的再生产策略和方法。本文以地方理论为本体,探讨地方理论的本质内涵、构成体系及解构城市空间再生的方法论维度,如地方实践模式、地方再现模式、再现地方模式以及地方理论在城市规划与设计中的区位活化观、设计活化观、遗产活化观、形态活化观、产业活化观等再生设计策略,从而丰富和完善地方理论体系及城市规划与景观规划设计理论体系。     

城市经济带的理论问题

"城市经济带"是本文基于城市经济学、区域经济学、空间经济学与产业经济学理论的交叉融合,针对国内外城市经济发展中的现实问题提出来的概念.作为城市经济未来发展的一种趋势,"城市经济带"对于促进中国转轨经济中区域经济快速健康发展的实践具有重要的指导意义.鉴于当前学术界尚未对"城市经济带"给出明确的阐释,本文对"城市经济带"的相关理论问题进行了初步探讨,如理论溯源、内涵阐释等方面,以期达成对"城市经济带"相关实践领域的理论自觉.     

Placing the Urban Village: A Spatial Perspective on the Development Process of Urban Villages in Contemporary China

The rapid urbanization of China since the mid‐1980s has led to the development of a new spatial category, the urban village (chengzhongcun). The dominant neoliberal urban development regime approaches urban villages as a social, spatial, economic and political problem, and as targets for aggressive redevelopment and eradication policies. In this article, I propose a spatial perspective that makes use of several theoretical ‘anchors' to analyze the influence of urban village spatiality on its development process and to explore alternatives to the dominant redevelopment model. I begin by examining the spatial conceptualization of the urban village as a non‐place, arguing that this spatial reading undergirds the redevelopment‐by‐demolition model and tends to obscure alternative conceptualizations. I then move on to propose three alternative readings of urban village space, examining it as an everyday space, a liminal space and a neighborhood. Combining these three readings with the ‘non‐place' conceptualization provides a nuanced understanding of urban villages' unique spatial attributes and social roles, by evoking spatial and social processes that take place in most urban villages across China. Taken together, these spatial readings challenge the social and spatial rigidity of dominant representations of urban villages and supply a much‐needed spatially based conceptual framework that can be used to develop new urban planning models.     

Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism

Urban political ecology (UPE), an offshoot of political ecology that emerged in the late 1990s, has had two major impacts on critical urban studies: it has introduced critical political ecology to urban settings, and it has provided a framework for retheorizing the city as a product of metabolic processes of socionatural transformation. However, there was another goal in early UPE programmatic statements that has largely fallen by the wayside: to mobilize a Lefebvrian theoretical framework to trouble traditional distinctions between urban/rural and society/nature by exploring urbanization as a global process. Instead of following this potentially fruitful path, UPE has become bogged down in ‘methodological cityism’––an overwhelming analytical and empirical focus on the traditional city to the exclusion of other aspects of contemporary urbanization processes. Thus UPE's Lefebvrian promise, of a research program that could work across traditional disciplinary divisions and provide insights into a new era of planetary urbanization, has remained unfulfilled. In this article we trace UPE's history to show how it arrived at its present predicament, and offer some thoughts on a research agenda for a political ecology not of the city but of urbanization.     

Theorizing the Politicizing City

This introductory symposium article develops a framework for an urban political reading and a theorization of urban uprisings. We argue that there is a need to foreground the notion of the urban political as central to the theoretical and practical demands of urban research today. First, we revisit critical urban theory in light of recent urban insurrections and point out a lack of sustained theoretical engagement with the political. Second, based on this critique, we argue for what we call a ‘re‐centring of the urban political' to rethink urban theory in ways that consider the city as a site of political encounter, interruption and experimentation, even when, or perhaps especially when, these ways fall outside institutional forms or lack the organizational form or legitimacy of social movements. Thus, we attempt to place politics at the heart of radical urban political theory and practice today in order to make sense of urban subjects, events and claims that elude established government practices and institutionalized structures.     

从生态规划到景观城市主义

景观城市主义是诞生于上世纪90年代的一种思想和实践,它继承了生态规划思想,又对其进行了进一步发展。本文从景观城市主义与生态规划一脉相承的关系入手,分析了景观城市主义产生的背景、理论基础,探讨了景观城市主义的理论研究与实践发展,其对生态规划的继承与发展以及对我国城市建设规划的指导意义。     

新疆绿洲城镇的孤岛效应研究

基于文献分析对城镇孤岛效应的内涵、经济本质和理论基础进行归纳,提出了新疆绿洲城镇孤岛效应的理论观点。通过文献从定性和定量两方面考证:新疆绿洲地理系统有显著的孤岛效应,空间上的封闭性与分散性导致了城镇经济的孤岛效应;通过分形数据考证:新疆城镇体系仅有局部分形特征,表明城镇系统结构的孤岛效应。那么缓解绿洲城镇孤岛效应的基础是交通与通讯,本质和关键则在于城镇产业的合理选择与区域分工。     

Graph theory and managing urban change

In almost any kind of empirical research, it is useful—some would say essential—to have in mind a “model” of the thing or process to be investigated [1]. Research may subsequently validate or invalidate this initial model. But some kind of model is useful from the outset of any research project, in order to provide a link between the precise directions of the research and its ultimate objectives.To examine and describe the organizational and institutional aspects of major urban systems, therefore, requires some kind of model of a major urban system. Such a model has two important functions. It serves as a framework for interpreting data which are gathered in the course of the research; and it also suggests possible hypotheses for testing against the data.The model in a piece of research may be either stated or implied. But for research into phenomena as complex as major urban systems, it is well to have a model which is spelled out in fairly explicit terms.There is really no shortage of explicit models of urban systems. (Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the difficulty lies more in the opposite direction!). Each of these models has its respective strengths and weaknesses and, consequently, is more appropriate for some kinds of research than for others [2]. The purpose of this paper is to describe a model which provides a suitable basis not merely for understanding but also for managing changes in major urban systems. In other words, this paper is intended to provide the basis for an essentially action-oriented model of major urban systems.     

Popular Urbanization: Conceptualizing Urbanization Processes Beyond Informality

This article introduces the concept of popular urbanization to describe a specific urbanization process based on collective initiatives, self-organization and the activities of inhabitants. We understand popular urbanization as an urban strategy through which an urban territory is produced, transformed and appropriated by the people. This concept results from a theoretically guided and empirically grounded comparison of Mexico City, Istanbul and Lagos. Based on postcolonial critiques of urban theory and on the epistemologies of planetary urbanization, we bring urbanization processes in these urban regions into conversation with each other through a multidimensional theoretical framework inspired by Henri Lefebvre focusing on material interaction, territorial regulation, and everyday experience. In this way, popular urbanization emerged as a distinct urbanization process, which we identified in all three contexts. While this process is often subsumed under the broader concept of ‘urban informality’, we suggest that it may be helpful to distinguish popular urbanization as primarily led by the people, while commodification and state agencies play minor roles. As popular urbanization unfolds in diverse ways dependent upon the wider urban context, specific political constellations and actions, it results in a variety of spatial outcomes and temporal trajectories. This is therefore a revisable and open concept. In proposing the concept of popular urbanization for further examination, we seek to contribute to the collective development of a decentered vocabulary of urbanization.     

城市轨道交通线路—网络—体系

本文根据建设模式的不同,对我国城市轨道交通建设发展历程进行了科学的阶段划分,就城市轨道交通的线路、网络和体系作了理论性分析与诠释,并在对城市轨道交通线路式、网络化、体系化三种建设模式解读和论述的基础上,提出体系化建设是我国城市轨道交通建设的发展趋势。     

The effects of agglomeration externalities on urban green total-factor productivity in China

For China's urban industrial layout and green development, determining which types of agglomeration externalities are most advantageous to the rise of green total-factor productivity has both theoretical and practical relevance. This research experimentally studies the effects of three types of agglomeration externalities on urban green total-factor productivity using the data of 285 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2018. The findings demonstrate that urban green total-factor output is rising, albeit with certain differences during different time periods. Both the Jacobs externality and the Porter externality are favorable for increasing urban green total-factor production when all cities are evaluated together, although the latter has a stronger promoting influence. The effect of the Marshall-Arrow-Romer externality, on the other hand, is not significant. Furthermore, these effects also depend on the stage of economic development and population size.     

基于受托责任构建政府审计理论框架的研究

从科学的高度剖析政府审计,以受托责任理论为切入点,利用审计的三方关系构建政府审计理论框架,是政府审计理论研究的突破口。政府审计是基于受托责任产生的,在政府审计中也存在着审计委托人、审计人和被审计人三方之间的关系,这个关系是政府审计的本质体现,也是政府审计理论框架构建的逻辑基础和科学基础。基于受托责任构建的政府审计理论,有利于调整审计人在关系中的定位,对审计实务具有特殊的意义。     

Urban Laboratories: Experiments in Reworking Cities

The notion of the ‘urban laboratory’ is increasingly striking a chord with actors involved in urban change. Is this term simply a metaphor for urban development or does it suggest urbanization by substantially different means? To answer this question, we review the work of science and technology studies (STS) scholars who have empirically investigated laboratories and practices of experimentation over the past three decades to understand the significance of these spaces of experimentation in urban contexts. Based on this overview of laboratory studies, we argue that urban laboratories and experimentation involve three key achievements — situatedness, change‐orientation and contingency — that are useful for evaluating and critiquing those practices that claim to be urban laboratories. We conclude by considering some future directions of research on urban laboratories.     

城镇存量建设用地的内涵界定与类型划分

在查阅和梳理国内外研究现状的基础上,从土地利用实际状态和考虑地上附着物功能价值的角度,重新界定我国城镇存量建设用地的内涵,并将城镇存量建设用地重新分类。利用文献资料法、比较分析法得出以下结论:(1)我国对城镇存量建设用地内涵的确定存在偏好于时间维度、缺乏闲置的弹性、脱离其地上附着物的功能价值、类型划分主要根据其土地使用者性质等不足;(2)重新界定城镇存量建设用地内涵:从土地利用实际状态出发,确定其是否被充分利用。考虑地上附着物功能价值是否被体现;(3)将城镇存量建设用地分为空地、非空地中的部分利用土地与未充分利用土地三类。本文认为:城镇存量建设用地内涵的重新界定和分类,有利于促进我国城镇存量建设用地的利用与管理。     

Dynamics of urban sprawl and sustainable development in China

Compared with the rich literature on urban sprawl in Western cities, relatively little is known of the driving factors, processes, and future trends of urban sprawl in China. This research analyzes the socioeconomic forces behind two parts of urban sprawl in China: urban decentralization and urban renewal, and reveals two basic characteristics of Chinese urban sprawl: de-densification and expansion of urbanized areas. It uses the term “urban sprawl” to consider the reasons behind urban transformation on a regional level in China. This research begins with definitions of sprawl in Western and Eastern countries, and follows with a dynamic analysis of the social, political, and cultural aspects of sprawl. Three case studies focus on three urban regions in China: Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. This research provides a comprehensive definition of “urban sprawl” in China, identifies the patterns of urban sprawl and growth, and indicates possible alternative strategies for urban expansion. Finally, it offers suggestions on how to effectively control urban sprawl in China, and provides a pathway to achieving sustainable development.     

城市增长的动力研究

将城市增长定义为城市区域的生长或衰退。从这个角度出发,对城市区域进行了地理划分,并根据各因素对城市区域的影响,利用理论力学的原理,将城市增长动力归纳为向心力、离心力和摩擦力三种。分别介绍了三种动力的含义以及产生原因,最终得出城市增长是三者共同作用的结果。