BOOK REVIEWS
no direct links to the community. Does this mean,
however, that we can simply transpose ‘Western’
theoretical approaches and critiques to understanding
urban regeneration under post-socialism? Although
not addressing this issue explicitly, Murzyn’s analysis
would suggest not. She identified a series of processes
which have played an important role in shaping the
post-1989 revitalisation of the district which relate
to its specific pre-socialist history and its experience
of state socialism. It is the role of these legacies, in
combination with the processes of Europeanisation
and globalisation, which supports the argument that
urban post-socialist regeneration must be understood
with careful attention to its specific context. Murzyn
notes that the context of the dilapidation in the post-
World-War-II period is significantly different from
that leading to dereliction in ‘Western’ cities at the
time. The neglect of this historical area of the city
compared with new ‘socialist’ areas of investment,
combined with the system of rents and tenure, leads
to the stagnation, but also in some ways to the inad-
vertent ‘conservation’, of the area and its heritage.
As elsewhere, market-led revitalisation in Kazimierz
is spatially selective in its impact, but this is also influ-
enced by the legacies of the socialist period, such as
the imposed break in urban governance and the diffi-
culties in reaching consensus among urban actors. In
Kazimierz these processes are further complicated by
the dissonant heritage of the Jewish community (for
example, the commodification of Jewish heritage in
Poland in the context of Holocaust remembrance, or
the need also to acknowledge the strong Catholic con-
nections of the district) and a growing nostalgia
throughout ECE for an idealised pre-1945 multicul-
tural heritage. As Murzyn concludes, it is difficult to
interpret what the impact of war, state socialism and
treatment of different ethnic and religious groups has
meant for Kazimierz and its regeneration. However,
her analysis clearly indicates the need to approach
understanding post-socialist urban regeneration in a
sophisticated way which goes beyond simply import-
ing ‘Western’ models of practice or theory, and
suggests that urban theory needs also to incorporate
more of the lessons of post-socialist urban change.
CRAIG YOUNG #2007
Manchester Metropolitan University
Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity,
Scarcity and Space, 1949– 2005.
DUANFANG LU , 2006.
London: Routledge,
204 pp. £65.00 hardback
ISBN 0 415 35450 hardback; 0 203 00119 2 e-book
2491
Remaking Chinese Urban Form, one of the latest
additions to Routledge’s Planning, History and the
Environment series, constitutes a welcome contri-
bution to a growing body of literature on Chinese
planning history. This widely illustrated book traces
the historical development of the work unit
(danwei) as the dominant urban form of Chinese
socialism. It seeks to demonstrate how, despite its
waning role as the fundamental socio-spatial unit of
the Chinese city, it remains a persistent urban form
that continues to shape the post-reform urban
environment.
The book is organised thematically, each chapter
focusing on a discrete topic that epitomises a critical
moment in the development of contemporary
Chinese urban form. Chapters are assembled in a
collection of relatively independent articles that
only occasionally overlap. Chapter 1 introduces the
volume by defining the work unit as a unique response
to the needs of capital accumulation and the necessity
of labour reproduction within a socialist, Third World
context. It establishes the third-worldliness of China’s
post-1949 quest for modernity by defining its socialist
period as post-colonial, “permeated by a combination
of revolutionary drives, developmentalist aspirations
and nationalistic concerns” (p. 6). Lu argues that
spatial production in Maoist China was not only due
to the socialist mode of production, but also to weak
planning power and a historical condition of scarcity.
Chapters 2 and 3 constitute part I of the book,
‘China Modern’, which traces the history of China’s
residential planning paradigm. Chapter 2 investigates
the diachronic development of the neighbourhood
unit—and its Soviet variant, the microdistrict—as a
travelling urban form, transformed from an imported
Western concept in the republican period and gradu-
ally made Chinese through appropriation, discursive
conversions and ad hoc pragmatic decisions by
socialist planners. Chapter 3 focuses on the develop-
ment of the work unit, describing its main spatial fea-
tures and discussing some of its socio-spatial
implications for the Chinese city.
Part II, ‘Urban Dreams’, addresses the distortion of
planning ideals under socialism. Chapter 4 traces the
development of the work unit, initially designed as a
unit of production that gradually developed into the
basic unit of collective consumption, integrating
workplace, residence and social services. By provid-
ing insights into work unit micropolitics and the con-
flicting relationships between the state, work units and
planners, it illustrates how idealistic socialist plans
were negotiated and adapted to local realities to
ensure the social reproduction of workers. The
chapter also reveals important contradictions, flaws
2492 BOOK REVIEWS
and inefficiencies of the socialist system and some of
the perverse effects of planned scarcity. Chapter 5
examines the people’s commune movement and its
experimentation with modernist design, as an
inquiry into the utopianisation of modernity.
Part III, ‘Shifting Boundaries’, examines how the
built environment was transformed and reworked
over time. Chapter 6 examines the persistence of
China’s wall-building tradition over successive his-
torical periods, as a medium through which to study
the relationship between modernity and tradition in
contemporary China. Chapter 7 revisits the work
unit and its post-reform transformation from an
enclosed entity into a more fluid space, as market-
driven production came to replace industrial
development.
The book closes with a brief epilogue that reiter-
ates how the complex and often conflicting relation-
ship between scarcity and the socialist system
created specific spatial strategies, which eventually
gave rise to the unique form of the work unit.
Largely based on extensive archival research and
careful spatial analysis, one of the book’s greatest
contributions rests in its detailed description of the
morphological evolution of the danwei and of its
formal genealogy. The book’s innovative and sophis-
ticated analytical framework, which draws upon
architectural and planning history, political economy
and post-colonial theory, also demonstrates a clear
capacity for insightful discernment and critical
theorisation.
One of the book’s most original contributions
remains its focus on the issue of scarcity as a key
notion in providing an alternative understanding of
Chinese modernity as a post-colonial, Third World
nation. Lu presents scarcity, the notion of ‘being
lacking’, as a historical condition inherited from
imperial China, exacerbated by a comprehensive
embargo in the 1950s and later structurally created
by the socialist economic system. For the author, scar-
city has played a powerful role in the way China has
historically seen itself and remains a potent notion in
its national imagination
Whereas the structures of political economy pro-
vided the basic rules for agents to operate in a
social field, scarcity distorted the rules, changed
social and spatial imaginations, modified the
inter-relations between social agents, and incited
human agency and action (p. 14).
Unfortunately, the thesis that historical conditions of
scarcity limited China in fulfilling its desire for mod-
ernity is not entirely supported by the narrative, as the
issue is only superficially discussed in the different
chapters. The argument is further weakened by the
author’s view of scarcity as a historical condition
against which China has to struggle (p. 163). This
view tends to depoliticise scarcity, presented as an
objective reality rather than a social construct
closely related to social inequality, power struggles
and uneven access to resources.
While the book offers a welcome insider’s perspec-
tive into China’s urban reality, it is at times troubling
to see the Western planning experience used as a point
of reference to assess the specificity of the work unit,
while little comparison is made with the pre-socialist
Chinese city. For example, in chapter 3 the ‘less
urban’ quality of the Maoist city is measured
against Georg Simmel’s description of European
modernity, not against earlier notions of Chinese
urbanity. Later in the chapter, Chinese women’s con-
dition in the socialist city is contrasted with the con-
temporary Western experience, while nothing is said
of the pre-Mao situation. If using the Western capital-
ist city as a comparative does establish the work unit
as a unique urban form within a global urban history,
it fails to provide a historical understanding of how
the emergence of a new urban form has transformed
local experiences of urbanity.
Throughout the book, a similar lack of historicisa-
tion hinders a full appreciation of how Chinese urban
form was actually ‘remade’. Although the evolution
of the work unit since 1949 is detailed, very little is
said of the urban structure that prevailed before the
1949 revolution and of the urban lifestyle it sustained.
Without proper historical background, it is difficult to
make sense of how this new urban form departs from
the pre-existing urban structure and how the existing
urban fabric was transformed to accommodate this
new organisational unit.
On this front, one exception is chapter 6, which
traces the rich history of the wall in Chinese urban
history and may be one of the most insightful and
carefully written chapters in the book. This detailed
account of the changing meaning of the wall over a
vast historical period offers a much-needed glimpse
of pre-1949 urban form and allows a temporal
appreciation of urban change. However, its position
near the end of the book and its lack of connectedness
with the broader theme of the work unit reduces its
usefulness in contextualising previous discussions of
changing urban form; it also makes the absence of
such historical grounding in the rest of the book all
the more striking.
A related problem is the lack of insight into the
impact of urban transformation on the local landscape
and how urban change affected the everyday urban
experience. Many chapters present detailed physical
 BOOK REVIEWS
descriptions of changing urban patterns based on
archival research, but the absence of ethnographic
data weakens our comprehension of how these
spaces were lived in, perceived and experienced on
a daily basis, and how they were socially produced,
transformed and reworked through everyday prac-
tices. Most descriptions of urban form express the
abstract viewpoint of planners and decision-makers.
One exception is the fascinating if all too brief
chapter 7, which provides a vivid glimpse into the
everyday experience of the work unit and the new
social practices that have recently emerged. This is
also one of the most illuminating chapters, thanks to
the rich ethnographic details elicited.
A final shortcoming is related to the structure of the
book, whose disjointed organisation prevents an often
insightful and innovative content from being articu-
lated in a coherent and powerful way. The fact that
each chapter is treated as an independent entity and
is largely disconnected from previous discussions,
represents a missed opportunity to build upon pre-
vious findings, deepen the analysis and construct a
more solid and comprehensive argumentation. It
also results in a tedious fragmentation of the narrative
and in occasional repetition. For example, the failure
to link the discussion of the evolution of the work unit
found in chapter 3 to the history of the neighbourhood
unit presented in chapter 2, and thus explicitly to
confirm the assumed genealogy between both con-
cepts, weakens the impact of the research. Similarly,
a more integrated narrative may have helped to justify
the relevance of some chapters to the overall discussion.
While parts of chapter 5 on the people’s commune was
enlightening, nowhere is this rural experiment pre-
sented as a significant element in understanding the
transformation of the socialist urban vision and the con-
struction of Chinese urban form.
In short, Remaking Chinese Urban Form contains
all the elements of a compelling theory of urban
form, but a greater thematic coherence, tying together
different discussions in a more comprehensive narra-
tive, would have made it a more powerful book,
whose impact would have been greater than the sum
of all its disconnected parts.
ANNE -MARIE BROUDEHOUX #2007
Université du Québec à Montréal
Culture, Urbanism and Planning
JAVIER MONCLÚS and MANUEL GUÀRDIA (Eds),
2006
Aldershot: Ashgate
320 pp. £55.00 hardback
ISBN 0 7546 4623 8 hardback
2493
The cultural dimension of planning is not always seen
as belonging to the widely accepted realm of planning
practice and research. Yet, for many, identifying the
importance of culture and creativity is one of the
key challenges for today’s and tomorrow’s planners.
Of special interest to both researchers and policy
makers have been places with (economic) success
stories of cultural urbanism to be told; places where
culturally attuned planning has made a difference.
These stories have included examples from cultural
infrastructures (such as entire districts) to flagship
events, from regeneration schemes to city marketing.
Discourses about non-planning and temporary plan-
ning, especially concerning areas in transition, are
also very much in vogue. In some rare cases cultural
planning has come to mean the presence of culture in
all planning.
Often, however, the ‘culture discourse’ in planning
takes two presuppositions for granted: first, the
‘success’ stories that are told come from a handful
of cities (Barcelona being a European favourite),
and secondly, the time-span they cover extends
barely over the last 20 years or so (thus focusing on
the boost of festivals and the so-called creative
industries).
Culture, Urbanism and Planning anthology pro-
vides a much-needed broader account, both theoreti-
cal and empirical, of the cultural dimension being
exercised in planning. The usual suspect cities, Barce-
lona and Baltimore, are there, but voices from Latin
American, Scandinavian and historical English cities
open up new perspectives to the discussion. The
book starts with a strong statement that the cultural
dimension has been present right from the very begin-
ning of planning and urbanism, while acknowledging
the ambiguity of what ‘culture’ and ‘planning’ have
stood for in various times and circumstances. The
argument is further developed in 15 chapters that
are organised within three sections.
The first part, entitled ‘Historical and cultural per-
spectives’, sets the context with three contributions.
One of the greatest achievements of the book lies
here in its rich historical scope. The reader is provided
with a variety of views on how the cultural dimension
has evolved over time, not being a new ‘quick fix’ (as
critics of cultural planning often argue) brought about
to solve various struggles in planning. Michael
Hebbert and Wolfgang Sonne are concerned with
how history has been used in city building in
general. Robert Freestone and Chris Gibson develop
an interesting chronology of planning paradigms of
the past century and analyse how culture has played
a role in them. The authors identify the ‘city as
work of art’ paradigm as one of the earliest phases,