Events

Jointly organized by Asia Research Institute of National University of Singapore, and Urban Studies Programme of Yale-NUS College, Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Colleen Chiu-Shee, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has dramatically expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. New development programs, including “urban-rural coordination”, “new-type urbanization”, and, most recently, “rural revitalization”, are fundamentally rewriting the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Rural simulacra, such as high-rise new towns, ecological protection zones, historical tourism sites, and industrialized farms, reflect planners’ and policy-makers’ urban imaginations of what the rural should be and have more to do with serving urban consumers than ensuring rural welfare. Drawing on his recently published book, which explores the experimental implementation of these programs in the municipality of Chongqing, Smith will discuss this ongoing push for the near-total urbanization of China’s territory and population, as well as the implications these policies have for rural people facing an increasingly precarious urban future.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Nick R. Smith is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. His research examines experimental practices of urbanization and planning, with a regional focus on China and Southeast Asia. Smith is the author of The End of the Village: Planning the Urbanization of Rural China. He is currently at work on a history of the Shekou Industrial Zone and the origins of China’s rapid urbanization.

Eric C. Thompson is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Before joining NUS, he completed a PhD in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Washington and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of California Los Angeles. He teaches anthropology, gender studies, Southeast Asian studies, and research methods. His research spans field sites across Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. His research interests include transnational networking, gender and power dynamics, urbanism, agrarian transitions, and ASEAN regionalism.

Yi Jin is a postdoctoral fellow in Asian Urbanisms Cluster at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. He obtained his PhD in human geography and urban studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science in January 2019. His doctoral thesis investigated China’s mode of urban governance in transformation, with a special attention on the national project of dilapidated house area (penghuqu in Chinese) redevelopment. Trained with a background of sociology and human geography, his research expertise includes urban redevelopment, urban governance, critical spatial theory, industrial heritage, city and everyday life, and qualitative research methods. His research project in ARI will explore the mobile vertical urbanism and the governance of vertical cities in East Asia, and with Singaporean investment in Chongqing, China as the case.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.