Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Manitoba, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 273-316).

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / abstract / Earth Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Dentistry / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

abstract / Public Health / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

A political boundary divided the City of Shenzhen in 1978. The southern portion is designated as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), while the northern region remains a part of hinterland China. The divide creates a geographical and psychological chasm in the administrative and ontological existence of Shenzhen. The locals dubbed this border “the Second Line”. The Second Line and SEZ were a part of Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s open and reform economic policies in 1978. The SEZs were designated areas along the southeast coast of China for the socialist state’s experimentation with global capitalism. After years of wars, revolution and repression of the individual pursuit of capital, Shenzhen underwent extraordinary urban and economic development, growing from clusters of villages holding 300 000 residents to a megalopolis of more than a million in one decade. The Second Line drove uneven urban and economic growth in the Shenzhen SEZ. The radical speed of development and opportunities brought workers from rural areas of China. They made up the economic and urban substructure of the city, but were excluded from urban social welfare. Shenzhen’s industries rooted in instability and disposability of labour discouraged the settlement of the floating population. The thesis proposal conceptually commemorates the site of the Second Line, and pays homage to its crucial role in the urban and economic formation of Shenzhen. At the urban scale, it acts as a public infrastructure, providing a framework for interface between the segregated territories of the city. The social housing component of the proposal is an architectural response and challenge to policies that allow for the migration of rural workers without provisions for everyday life. The proposal subverts the divisive ideology of the boundary through inhabitation, and creates a space of dwelling on the Second Line.

This dissertation employs the theory of self-organizing criticality (SOC) into the study of Chinese cities. SOC was proposed at the end of the 1980s to explain system complexity by combining both self-organizing and critical behaviors. SOC has been broadly used in explaining phenomena in physical and social sciences. However, few attempts have been made to connect urban studies with SOC because of the extreme complexity of urban phenomena. This study develops a generalized SOC to study Chinese cities at both the inter-urban and the intra-urban levels. At the inter-urban level, this study finds that the rank size distribution of Chinese cities has followed Zipf's law since 1984. In addition, the rank size dynamics of Chinese cities experienced a spatiotemporal shift. Before 1996, city rank increases in a few small- and middle-sized cities because of favorable economic policies offered by the central government. After 1996, a majority of the Chinese cities began to be involved in this rank size shuffling. Cities with increasing ranks present clustered distribution, mainly along the south and east coastal areas. Part of the reason is that the market economy mechanism has transcended policy factors in determining the city competitiveness. At the intra-urban level, the study shows that Shenzhen's urban physical development is currently facing physical environmental thresholds, shifting the development strategies spatiotemporally from fringe and isolated growth to fringe and infill growth. The resulted urban patches show power law relationship both in the area-perimeter distributions and the magnitude-frequency distributions. In summary, this research proves the applicability of the generalized SOC in urban studies. At both the inter-urban and the intra-urban levels, the Chinese cities present the characteristics of SOC. Given a stable condition of power law, shifts occur in the inside dynamics of China's urban system and Shenzhen city. This study is one of the few empirical urban studies based on SOC. The study contributes to the literature on SOC theory and provides theoretical breakthroughs in studying Chinese cities. Finally, this study has potential implications on urban policies and urban development strategies.

In theoretical development history, the issue of “urban public space” is one of the central themes in the domain of urban planning and design, which has played as a medium for interdisciplinary discussions on the relationship between built environment and the social relations behind. In present Chinese cities, the market economic reform in recent decades has brought profound impacts on Chinese society, which is mostly represented by an infusing of private realm to the universal public realm in the planned economic era at all dimensions of space production. However, the production of urban space in China under market economic reform is not lead by an articulated theory of public space. The notion of “Chinese urban public space” remains as a technical definition, and the essential attribute, namely, the “publicness” of urban public space, seems to be conspicuously absent from theoretical discourses in present Chinese urban planning and design. This dissertation is an empirical study on Chinese urban public space in cities under market economic reform. It aims to find out how space production mechanisms in the economic reform period constitute the nature—the attribute of “publicness”—of Chinese urban public space. The study is built upon a set of theoretical underpinnings— the public space theories in urban studies and the theories on the relationship between built environment and the socioeconomic background. In particular, the study adopts the sociospatial perspective of the “production of space” theory established by French philosopher Henry Lefebvre as the theoretical rationale for the methodology. It takes a case study method for its empirical exploration, for which, the city of Shenzhen is chosen as the case study area. Through case investigations, the study demonstrates that the universal socialist publicness of Chinese urban public space in the planned economic era has disappeared with the market economic reform. The production of urban public space in Chinese cities is no longer a technical issue dealing with merely the physical dimension of space, instead, it represents a process of conflicts and contradictions, in which different actors, interests, and ideologies fight as well as interact for the use, interest, and representation of space, and wherein sociospatial relations are reconstructed. Further, through investigation on the institutional forces behind space production, the study demonstrates that there are institutional paradoxes in present Chinese space production mechanisms, which are roots of the conflicts and contradictions in the production of public space. These paradoxes have led to a general “loss” of “publicness” in Chinese urban public space, which are represented in some common and yet fundamental aspects of changes. The findings of this study are considered to have important implications for understanding the nature of Chinese urban public space in Chinese cities in the market economic reform era. It also contributes to a better understanding on the space production mechanisms as well as their relationship with the social-economic settings in present Chinese transitional society. / published_or_final_version / Architecture / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy