变化性和连续性 改革后的北京封闭社区形态调查

1 Full paper submitted to International Planning History Society 13th Biennial conference, Chicago Change and continuity: A morphological investigation of the creation of gated communities in post-reform Beijing By Qiang Dou PhD candidate Bartlett School of Graduate Studies Faculty of Built Environment University College London Abstract Alongside the socio-economic restructuring from a central planning system to a free market system, Beijing is being transformed into a “gated city of tomorrow” by building massive gated communities as a new form of private neighborhood planning and design. Although certain scholarly attentions have been received through the international debate over gated communities, there is a lack of systematic research on how these private urban landscapes are actually created at the micro-level and how their creation is related with historical development and social process. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the origin and nature of the creation of gated communities in the setting of Beijing through a careful morphological investigation. More exactly, a set of private gated community schemes and a set of public produced neighborhood schemes of the early socialist period will be cross compared according to the major neighborhood morphological components in order to reveal the differences and similarities in their morphology, or in another sense the change and continuity in their planning and design. Meanwhile, the ideas and logics underpinning the changes will be accounted. Finally, design origins and the links between the morphological changes and the broad social process will be discussed in light of the research findings. 1. Introduction Since early 1990s, China has undergone a dramatic socio-economy restructuring from a socialist planned economy to a socialist market economy, which has changed the way of urban development and management through the ‘privatization of the city’ legitimated through the public and private partnership. As the results, the use right of previous state-owned urban land was transferred into the land market; developers and property management companies have taken over the main responsibility for providing neighborhood facility, infrastructure and service previously under the charge of the local government and the “work-units” or state enterprises; and since 1992 the market reform of the housing sector from a socialist welfare system into a market-provision system has stimulated the boom of real estate industry and produced massive commodity housing developments. Commonly, these new commodity housing developments were produced with guarded gates, fences and certain facilities, and are often advertised as ‘communities’ in market rhetoric which response to the ethos of ‘community building’ initiated by government. Therefore they can be seen as the Chinese version of ‘gated communities’ which are originated in the USA as a form of private neighborhood and 2 now a global phenomenon. [1] In a political economy sense, a gated community can be seen as a kind of residential “proprietary community” which defines a “club realm” that “give[s] legal protection to the economic rights over shared neighborhood attributes”. [2] In Beijing, unlike the separated archipelagos of fortified enclaves in the US, gated commodity housing developments are the basic components or units of the newly master planned residential districts. The agglomeration of these gated residential developments is shaping Beijing into a ‘gated city of tomorrow’ proposed by Webster [3], which is “made up entirely of privately supplied communal space and local infrastructure – a patchwork of spatial club realms to match the patchwork of non-spatial club realms that have always characterized cities”. The rise of gated communities is often seen as a controversial alternative to conventional patterns of urban development, and has been received extensive debate from different perspectives. However, the current debate has mainly concentrated on the abstract social discourses with few on the overall morphology and design at the micro neighborhood level and its links with the historical development and the broad social process. In considering this deficiency, the specific setting of Beijing, and the important role of planning and design in shaping the new cityscape and the patterns of everyday life, this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the origin and nature of the creation of gated communities in post-reform Beijing through a careful morphological investigation of the designs of a set of new gated community cases (hereafter GC cases) against the designs of a set of non-gated public produced neighborhood cases of early socialist period (1949-1992) as baseline or benchmark cases. The specific question is: how and in what way is the morphology of the new private gated communities similar to or different from the morphology of the old public produced neighborhoods? The locations and general plans of all the cases are given in Figures 1 and 2. For the nine GC cases, they are all located along the green belt of the inner suburb, and they were created by nine different developers and nine different design teams after 1998 (the end year of the old welfare housing system) and sold on the market in or since 2003 for the upper-middle and middle income families. In a general sense, these cases represent a new type of gated living at the urban edge for the rising ‘middle class’ in post-housing reform Beijing. Furthermore, the cases selected are all piecemeal developments within one leased tract or ‘urban cell’, which has a site area at least above 9 hectares. In respect of the set of old public produced non-gated neighborhood cases, they are usually called “Xiao Qu” or “small districts” (hereafter SDs) in literal translation, which has an origin in the Soviet idea: ‘micro-rayon’ or ‘micro district’, which in essence similar to the idea of ‘neighborhood unit’. [4] According to the major urban building cycle and socio-economy changes, these SD cases can be further divided 3 into two sub-sets. One sub-set represents the early small district planning experiments in Maoist period (1949-1978) of a socialist planned economy which emphasizes on production and constrains consumption, and a communist ideology which values an equalitarian society and communal living. These pre-1978 SD developments were Figure 2 General plans presented at the same scale. Figure 1 Beijing city map and scheme location (red areas= small district cases; blue areas= gated community cases). 4 usually built together with workplaces and were developed by several work-units for their own needs. The second sub-set represents the further experiments after economic reform in 1978 and before the start of the housing reform in 1992. During this period, modernization became the priority of the socio-economic and cultural development. Meanwhile, with the government intervention, the project-specific planning of pre-1978 SD developments was replaced by comprehensive development carried out though more powerful city authority. In the following five sections, the findings of the comparative morphological analyses based on the careful visual inspection of the figure-ground cartographic representations and the basic qualitative and quantitative examinations will be presented in respect of the major analytic elements or components of neighborhood form, i.e. size, density, boundary, residential buildings, facilities, street system and open space. Meanwhile, the ideas and logics behind the changes and continuities in design demonstrated by the findings will be accounted. In the final section, the origins of the new gated community designs and the links between the morphological changes and the broad social process will be discussed. 2. Size and density According to the Code of Urban Residential Areas Planning and Design in China, which was first proposed in 1993 based on the earlier experience of SD planning and design, there are three levels of residential developments which were defined based on facility-catchment population. The first level is called ‘residential district’, which accommodates a population between 30,000 and 50,000 which is similar to the population of a Howard’s garden city; the second level is called ‘small district’, which accommodates a school catchment-population between 7000 and 15,000 which is similar to the population of a neighborhood unit suggested by Perry; the third level is called ‘cluster’ which accommodates a population between 1000 and 3000 corresponding to the population-catchment of a residential committee. With respect to this planning guidance, the majority of the SD cases can accommodate a population at the small district level; while for GC cases, the majority of them cannot accommodate a population at the small district level, and in one case it can only accommodate a population at the cluster level. In another sense, GC cases tend to not accommodate a school catchment population. The drop in population size is linked to population density (i.e. persons per hectare or PPH). The comparison of average values shows a trend of an increase in population density from pre-1978 SD (498 PPH) to post-1978 SD cases (733 PPH), followed by a trend of a sharp drop in GC cases (324 PPH), which is similar to the value of an apartment unit proposed by Perry (326 PPH) and below the value of a typical London urban district (400 PPH). 5 Next in respect of another kind of density – Floor Area Ratio (FAR), it is a gross one which counts the floor areas of both residential buildings and non-residential buildings. The average value comparison shows a continuing increase of FAR from pre-1978 SD cases (0.71) to GC cases (1.57) through the leap in post-1978 SD (1.443). Further it is worth considering the slight continuing increase in FAR from post-1978 SD cases to GC cases with respect to the parallel trend of a sharp drop in population density. Two physical factors which contribute to this countermove between these two kinds of densities can be suggested: 1) the increasing living area for each dwelling unit coupled with shrinking household size; 2) the increasing floor areas for commercial facilities. Moreover, besides these physical factors, there exists an incentive of real estate developers to pursuit more profit by increasing FAR. 3. Boundaries Commonly, the boundaries of all the GC cases and SD cases are defined by a hierarchical city thoroughfare network, which is like a deformed tartan grid. Therefore, the neighborhood unit principle of boundary definition by arterial roads was implemented in both SD cases and GC cases. However, the surrounding arterial roads in GC cases tend to be designed with more sufficient width on all sides. Meanwhile, in half of the SD cases, the boundaries were partially defined by the combination of boundary arterial roads and municipal green areas. While municipal green areas are also provided in three out of nine GC cases, it seems that there is a tendency to decrease the provision. Having examined the boundary delimitation, the following will look at how the boundary frontage as the physical interface between the city and the neighborhood was shaped. First, in two pre-1978 SD cases which were designed under the Soviet influence in early 1950s (i.e. S1, S2), their boundary frontages were mainly shaped by outward facing residential building frontages (Fig. 3a) in combination with a small proportion of institutional office building frontages. However, this kind of frontage Figure 3 (a-j) Boundary frontage forms. 6 was not survived in the following post-Soviet influence SD cases. In pre-1978 case S3 which was designed as a people’s commune, its boundary frontage was transformed into an inactive one (Fig. 3b), which was formed by brick walls, the back and side of residential buildings, neighborhood entry demarcation and gates of institutional office and industry building compounds. In the following post-1978 SD cases, residential building back and side were still the major form of their boundary frontages, and the similar neighborhood entry demarcation continued to exist (Fig. 3c); while brick walls were transformed into simple wrought iron fences (Fig. 3d), and the gates of non-residential building compounds can not be found in any case. Meanwhile, accompanied by the economic reform, active commercial frontage recurred in all post-1978 cases after its absence in all pre-1978 cases (Fig. 3e). For GC cases, the most obvious change is the transformation of the neighborhood entry demarcations into the guarded gates. Commonly, there is a guarded main entry gate formed by a gate house and other symbolic constructions (Fig. 3f), while the rest of the neighborhood entries are usually smaller in size as secondary entries, which, in some cases, are more like checkpoints controlled by simple vehicle barriers and gate-posts (Fig. 3g). In fact, the distinction between main and secondary neighborhood entry in terms of their sizes is also present in all post-Soviet influence SD cases. In respect of the residential building back and side, they are not appeared in any GC case. Instead, residential buildings stand behind the wrought iron fence which are more varied in form and style and even installed with CCTV or infrared boundary detectors (Fig. 3h). Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that, in some cases, few residential buildings along the boundary are outward facing (Fig. 3i). In respect of the commercial frontage, although it is present in the majority of the GC cases (Fig. 3j), it could be absent in certain cases which therefore have the similar inactive frontage of a people’s commune. Finally, it is worth noting a new element of boundary frontage presented in two GC cases: an underground parking entrance which is open directly onto the surrounding boundary roads. 4. Residential buildings In SD cases, in addition to the major private family housing, a small amount of social rental housing were provided at the periphery in the cases of the Soviet influence as ‘bachelor halls’ which were provided for single young people who worked in adjacent workplaces and in post-1978 SD case as ‘youth apartment buildings’ which were provided for the special housing need of young people. In GC cases, the old social rental housing forms have been replaced by a private rental housing form: ‘condominiums’, which are provided with more complete facilities and services, and their market target is not only on young people, but also on wider social spectrum, such as city migrants and commercial travelers. 7 In considering the architectural style of family housing, in SD cases, the traces of modern industrial design are obvious (Fig. 4a); while by imposing the Chinese traditional architectural elements, they become less obvious especially in the Soviet influence cases (Fig. 4b). For GC cases, the traces of both the monotonous modern industrial design and the decorative Chinese traditional elements can not be identified any more. Instead, their styles become much more varied even exotic, such as the European contemporary architectural style directly transplanted by European architects (Fig. 4c), the faked European classical architectural style (Fig. 4d), North American contemporary design and Mediterranean traditional style transplanted by North American architects (Fig. 4e&f), and the styles which can be identified in the housing design in Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore (Fig. 4g). Moreover, not just the overall variation, two different styles can coexist in the same development, such as Mediterranean tradition versus North American contemporary. To some extent, the creation of style differentiation can be seen as a means of increasing the marketability of the new phases of their developments or the whole development by creating distinctive images. Further, looking at the built form of family housing, multi-family apartment buildings with varied heights and shapes are the dominant form in both GC cases and SD cases. Meanwhile, a small proportion of single-family houses were built in one SD case of the Soviet influence in the form of row houses (Fig. 4h), and in one GC case in the form of row houses and detached houses (Fig. 4i) and a quasi single-family housing form in two GC cases (Fig. 4j), which basically is a four storey building structure with one two-storey maisonette over another one on the ground, which has its own accesses from outside. However, in SD case, single family houses were built as high standard welfare-housing for cadres who had high official positions within the work units; while in the GC case, they were built as high quality residence for who can afford them. Figure 4 (a-j) Residential building forms. 8 On closer examination of the built form of the multi-family apartment buildings, pre-1978 SD cases all take a mono-form: only low-rise apartment buildings (3 storeys) in the cases of Soviet influence, and only multi-storey apartment buildings (4-6 storeys) in the case of people’s commune. For post-1978 SD cases, despite the continuing presence of the mono-form of multi-storey apartment buildings, the overall form tends to be diversified by mixing low-rise, middle-rise (8-16 storeys) and high-rise apartment buildings (18 storeys and over) with multi-storey ones. In considering GC cases, first, the low-rise forms are not adopted. Second, the mono-form of multi-storey apartment buildings remains only in one case; while, there exists a new mono-form of middle-rise apartment buildings. Third, in the cases of a mixture of different types, the proportion of the mid-rise type tends to become the highest one not the lowest one, while the proportion of multi-storey type tends to become the lowest one not the highest one. Overall, in GC cases, the middle-rise form tends to become more favored than both high-rise and multi-storey forms. Furthermore, in respect of the quality of the multi-family apartment buildings, some architectural means were used to raise the standard of apartment buildings in GC cases. The first one is to provide ground floor entry hall for each apartment unit; the second one is to equip the multi-storey apartment buildings with lifts; the third one is to reduce the number of dwelling units connected to lifts in middle-rise and high-rise apartment buildings; and the fourth one is to provide larger dwelling units or loft living. On the whole, by using the distinction between single-family houses and multi-family apartment buildings, and the specific architectural means, a quality differentiation of family housing can be produced in the same development; and commonly the family housing of a higher quality are deployed in a central landscaped low density zone. The logic behind this commonality can be suggested as follows: 1) quality differentiation can broaden the scope of customers; 2) by bring customers of higher socio-economic status, the reputation of the developments can be raised and therefore the added value can be generated in the long run; 3) by building relatively higher quality housing close to the central natural amenities, there values will be further increased; 4) by concentrating the housing of different quality in a separated zone, the stage development and the provision of management or service at different level will be feasible. Finally, looking at the layout form of