Metropolitics

Settling on the Financial Periphery: Alternative Housing Practices in Hegang, China

Yimeng Yang — 2025-06-17T05:00:00Z

Can valuing a home for its use value constitute a form of resistance to housing financialization? Considering the case of housing in Hegang, China, Yimeng Yang argues that the grassroots rejection of the logic of financialization is a form of resistance.
Hegang, a city in Northeast China known for its coal industry, rose to prominence during China's socialist era. It has faced economic stagnation, a population exodus, and plummeting housing prices over the past decade. This decline followed

- Essays / China, Hegang, Asia, financialization, real estate, housing, housing markets

The Politics of Urban Heritage-Making in the Yongqingfang Redevelopment Project in Guangzhou, China

Yimeng Yang — 2022-03-29T05:00:00Z

Yimeng Yang uses the case of a redevelopment project in Guangzhou, China, to interrogate heritage-led urban development, pointing to the conflicts such development strategies provoke among local residents, government actors, and developers.
China has been experiencing a dramatic “heritage boom” in recent years. As China's global aspirations grow, the government has become increasingly adept at using heritage to consolidate political legitimacy, construct national identity, and demonstrate

- From the Field / China, heritage, urban heritage, redevelopment, Guangzhou

Covid‑19 in China: A Civil Society in the Making

Beiyi Hu — 2021-05-18T05:00:00Z

Beiyi Hu examines responses to Covid‑19 in China, focusing on civil-society efforts at the social, political, and policy levels that emerged in Wuhan during the pandemic. She shows that, even in state-dominated Chinese civil society, there was widespread self-organized social and political participation that arose from below.
This article explores responses to the Covid‑19 pandemic in China and examines the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the changing operation of Chinese civil society.

- From the Field / China, Wuhan, Hubei province, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, civil society, participation, policymaking, public policy, political participation, social participation, mobilization

Made in China, Sold in West Africa

Anne Bouhali & Nora Mareï & Mamadou Dimé & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-05-31T05:00:00Z

From a small border post between Senegal and Mauritania, Anne Bouahli, Nora Mareï and Mamadou Dimé follow the journey of goods from Europe and China, as well as locally produced merchandise, with a view to examining and analyzing the different forms that globalization is taking in these little-studied areas.
Along the Tangier–Nouakchott–Dakar coastal corridor, the Rosso crossing on the Senegal River is both a border and a discontinuity in terms of transit. As the missing link in the

- From the Field / commerce, borders, mobility, globalization, Africa, West Africa, China, Morocco, Mauritania, Global South, Senegal

Beneath the Surface of Chinese Cities: Abandoned Places and Contemporary Ruins

Judith Audin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-09-28T05:00:00Z

Urban ruins represent a marginal subject of research within the field of Chinese studies, and yet are a precious reminder of the country's rapid urban development. By approaching these abandoned spaces through urban exploration, Judith Audin makes an original contribution to the analysis of the Chinese city.
Demolition, a violent but banal process in the Chinese urban landscape of the last 40 years, has produced the most common form of contemporary ruins in China (Meyer 2008). These

- From the Field / China, demolition, ethnography, photography, medium-sized cities, ruin porn, Shanghai, urban exploration, abandoned places, ruins, Asia, Beijing

Shanghai's West Bund Cultural Corridor Exemplifies the Opportunities and Risks of State-Driven Cultural Development

Siqi Tu — 2018-05-08T05:00:00Z

The West Bund Cultural Corridor in Shanghai is the latest entrant in a global competition to attract investment by combining cultural institutions with real-estate megaprojects. But arrangements between the corridor's private art museums and institutions of the local and national state remain ambiguous, raising questions about economic elitism and artistic freedom.
China's contemporary art scene is on the rise, as is the number of private museums in China, most notably in Shanghai. The Long

- From the Field / culture, urban development, China, development, neoliberalism, arts, global cities, Shanghai, cultural district, arts district, arts-centered development, cultural corridor

Bargain hunting in the “small-commodity city” of Yiwu, China

Alison Hulme — 2015-11-10T06:00:00Z

China's rise in the global economy has been largely based on the manufacturing of both cheap and expensive goods. Focusing on the growth of “function spaces” of mass production in Yiwu, Alison Hulme explores this “other” city and its challenge to the rise of the spectacular “image spaces” provided by established world cities.
Approximately three hours by train inland from Shanghai lies the “small-commodity city” of Yiwu—a promised land for the international wholesale buyer of low-end

- Essays / consumption, urban economy, China, new town, industry, economic development, global supply chain, function spaces, image spaces, manufacturing, specialization, commodity city

The Massive Death of China's Urban Villages

Stefan Al — 2015-03-17T14:42:46Z

As expanding Chinese cities engulfed their hinterlands, chengzhoncun—villages within the city—became an affordable residential choice for migrants seeking jobs in burgeoning commercial and industrial centers, especially in the southeast of the country. Dense, chaotic and crowded, they are well-located and well-priced entry points for the workers at the heart of China's astounding growth. Now they are being torn down. Stefan Al argues that this leaves most of their former residents with a bleak

- From the Field / urban planning, urbanization, China, demolition, migrant workers, urban villages, Chinese urban planning

Mass-Producing the World's Factory

Stefan Al — 2015-02-09T05:50:00Z

The economic transformation of China into a global manufacturing mecca has emptied many rural areas, creating tens of thousands of migrant workers who float between their hometowns and the giant city-regions, where factory workers are in high demand. Stefan Al explores the architectural and town-planning aspects of this seismic shift, documenting factories, dormitories, “urban villages” and the lives of the individuals who populate them.
In 2008, when a British man discovered photos of what

- From the Field / China, migration, workers, factory towns, global supply chain, migrant workers

The difficulties of housing the Chinese “sandwich class”

Jie Chen & Bernard Vorms & translated by Oliver Waine — 2011-12-21T06:00:00Z

In China, young people from the middle classes are said to belong to a “sandwich class”: they do not have enough resources to buy a property, and yet there are not enough rental properties to accommodate them. In areas where pressure on the property market is particularly high, state benefits fail to compensate a lack of assets.
China has chosen to make home ownership for all an unqualified priority, as well as the basis of its social protection and welfare system. Since 1998, and in less

- Debates / homeownership, housing, China