Changing Beijing

Abstract

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State policy and the globalization of Beijing: emerging themes

“…The spatial structure of the city conforms to the Chinese cosmology and geomancy: street networks and monumental architecture were aligned with the cardinal directions, and massive crenellated walls bounded most of the site (Gaubatz, 1995). The physical building structure also reflects the feudal ideology that the emperor is at the center of the universe.…”

Building a “Headquarters Economy”: The geography of headquarters within Beijing and its implications for urban restructuring

“…One of the critical characteristics of China's urban transformation has been the land-centered urban development (Lin, 2007). With land use reform, one significant change in Beijing from late 1980s onwards was the emergence of the Central Business District (Gaubatz, 1995), as well as the rapid increase in land prices in Chinese cities. Firms need to take into account land price when choosing a HQ location, even state-owned firms.…”

Envisioning Beijing 2020 through sketches of urban scenarios

“…Planning in this period placed new developments around large, walled work-units, based on the assumption that job and housing balance can be upheld within the work-unit compounds and that various basic functions of daily life can be provided within the work-unit community . After 1979, urban development in Beijing shaped the city into a set of spatially and functionally specialized districts (Chen, 1991;Gaubatz, 1995;Huang, 2004;Quan, 1991): the historic city core supported by extensive preservation efforts; the central built-up area, which hosts much of the rapid developments since the 1980s; the low-density greenbelt zone, which surrounds the urbanized area; the inner suburban development area, which serves as a bedroom community with a lack of mixed uses, employment opportunities, and public transportation services; and the outer suburban area with 14 satellite towns that retain strong ties with the central urban core area 1 (Fig. 1).…”

“…Despite the concerted efforts to adopt analytical frameworks ranging from centralplace theory to social-area analysis (Gaubatz, 1995), urban planning in the period was mainly geared to physical and land use planning. This focus of physical planning process is likely to be expanded with three major developments.…”

“…1 For a more detailed overview on historic and current urban development patterns in Beijing, see Gaubatz (1995). population policy 2 changes and the urbanization process continues.…”