A short history of the Chinese Central Business District

Abstract

The Central Business District (CBD) is one of the great governmental projects of Chinese cities in the early twenty-first century. In preparation for transition to an information-based economy and to accelerate such transition, major cities have sponsored the plans and infrastructure as well as some of the buildings of these new central places, in locations far removed from the heretofore central city. Over the 15 years of concerted building, there have been several distinct phases, as cities evaluated the previous effort and responded to new exigencies. These project phases can be distinguished by location and intention and in certain instances by formal expression. The late Modernist architecture of these places, punctuated with iconic structures and vast, representational open spaces, symbolize the national drive towards a globalized modernity. CBDs mark the latest generation of urban plans in hundreds of Chinese cities, although there is little doubt that Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen will remain the largest and most advanced. This article recounts the brief history of the emergence of the Chinese CBD in those first four cases, why new phases of development were deemed necessary, and how these new efforts can be distinguished in terms of internal characteristics and economic role.

Land Redevelopment and the Built Environment in Third-Wave Cities: Review and Synthesis

“…To be sure, there is currently much debate about the validity of cross-cultural referencing in urban studies, and, in a recent paper, Wu (2016) has correctly pointed out that the shape and form of China's cities have many unique features that reflect the country's very distinctive institutional and political character (see also, Roy 2009). Contrariwise, and in purely formal terms, China's cities are evidently coming to display at least some of the broad developmental outcomes described in this paper, such as aestheticized land-use intensification, gentrification, and post-suburban growth (See, e.g., He, 2010;Lin and Zhang, 2017;Liu et al, 2018;Wu and Phelps, 2011;Zacharias and Yang 2016). This is not the place to attempt to resolve this particular debate, except perhaps to say that as capitalism extends its hold over the global economic order, so certain basic forces and trends of land development (including ever closer cooperation between local governments and private financial interests) can be identified across a far-flung swath of cities.…”

Land Redevelopment and the Built Environment in Third-Wave Cities: Review and Synthesis

“…To be sure, there is currently much debate about the validity of cross-cultural referencing in urban studies, and, in a recent paper, Wu (2016) has correctly pointed out that the shape and form of China's cities have many unique features that reflect the country's very distinctive institutional and political character (see also, Roy 2009). Contrariwise, and in purely formal terms, China's cities are evidently coming to display at least some of the broad developmental outcomes described in this paper, such as aestheticized land-use intensification, gentrification, and post-suburban growth (See, e.g., He, 2010;Lin and Zhang, 2017;Liu et al, 2018;Wu and Phelps, 2011;Zacharias and Yang 2016). This is not the place to attempt to resolve this particular debate, except perhaps to say that as capitalism extends its hold over the global economic order, so certain basic forces and trends of land development (including ever closer cooperation between local governments and private financial interests) can be identified across a far-flung swath of cities.…”

Visibility and symbolism of corporate architecture: A multi-method approach for visual impact assessment

“…According to Saskia Sassen (2013), the global city is the outcome of the worldwide neo-liberalization process, boosted by the 1970s oil crisis, and the place in which social and economic polarization are progressively evident (Villani and Talamini, 2021). In this city, through social displacement and uneven development, the central business district (CBD) became a privileged place, a sort of autonomous entity within the city (Zacharias and Yang, 2016). Concurrently, under the principles of marketing logic, the commodification of the city’s image and the employment of architecture to support corporate branding goals served to shape an attractive environment for foreign investment and consolidate local power (Vanolo, 2017).…”