Eine Plattform für die Wissenschaft: Bauingenieurwesen, Architektur und Urbanistik
Eine Plattform für die Wissenschaft: Bauingenieurwesen, Architektur und Urbanistik
Superscribing Sustainability: The Production of China’s Urban Waterscapes
This paper analyzes the linkages between urban waterscapes, nature aesthetics, and sustainability by delineating the re-emergence of shan-shui, translatable as ‘mountain-water,’ or ‘landscape,’ within contemporary urban China. I show how this aesthetic concept, originally emerging in third century Chinese landscape poetry, is used to reconfigure and reimagine sustainability and contemporary China’s urban landscapes. I draw on original mixed methods fieldwork, including interviews over a two-year period, digital archiving, historical texts and discourse analysis. Through these methods, I detail the emergence of shan-shui aesthetics then draw on the concept of superscription, the historical process of layering symbolic meanings, to understand the contemporary superscription of shan-shui with urban sustainability through the writings of prominent Chinese scientists and urban planning experts. Their productive work generated a new imaginary of teleological urban modernity that superscribes shan-shui with urban sustainability as the “shan-shui city.” Through two primary case studies, Tangshan Nanhu Eco-city and Meixi Lake, I show how the production of new sustainable urban waterscapes is linked with place making practices, territorial processes, and localized entrepreneurialism. Finally, I point to the limits of superscription, by highlighting the significant disconnect between the state framing of urban space and the lived experiences of urban residents, which I conceptualize as the osculation of the state. The paper, thus, intervenes in literatures regarding the historical transformations of cultural symbols, aesthetics, urban political ecology, and the political economy of place-making in China.
Superscribing Sustainability: The Production of China’s Urban Waterscapes
This paper analyzes the linkages between urban waterscapes, nature aesthetics, and sustainability by delineating the re-emergence of shan-shui, translatable as ‘mountain-water,’ or ‘landscape,’ within contemporary urban China. I show how this aesthetic concept, originally emerging in third century Chinese landscape poetry, is used to reconfigure and reimagine sustainability and contemporary China’s urban landscapes. I draw on original mixed methods fieldwork, including interviews over a two-year period, digital archiving, historical texts and discourse analysis. Through these methods, I detail the emergence of shan-shui aesthetics then draw on the concept of superscription, the historical process of layering symbolic meanings, to understand the contemporary superscription of shan-shui with urban sustainability through the writings of prominent Chinese scientists and urban planning experts. Their productive work generated a new imaginary of teleological urban modernity that superscribes shan-shui with urban sustainability as the “shan-shui city.” Through two primary case studies, Tangshan Nanhu Eco-city and Meixi Lake, I show how the production of new sustainable urban waterscapes is linked with place making practices, territorial processes, and localized entrepreneurialism. Finally, I point to the limits of superscription, by highlighting the significant disconnect between the state framing of urban space and the lived experiences of urban residents, which I conceptualize as the osculation of the state. The paper, thus, intervenes in literatures regarding the historical transformations of cultural symbols, aesthetics, urban political ecology, and the political economy of place-making in China.
Superscribing Sustainability: The Production of China’s Urban Waterscapes
Rodenbiker, Jesse (Autor:in)
30.11.2017
doi:10.6093/2531-9906/5409
UPLanD - Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & environmental Design; Vol 2 No 3: BLUE; 71-86 ; UPLanD - Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & environmental Design; V. 2 N. 3: BLUE; 71-86 ; 2531-9906
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
DDC:
710
Superscribing Sustainability: The Production of China’s Urban Waterscapes
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