THE NOBLE, THE TRADITIONAL AND THE COSMOPOLITE – READING BEIJING URBAN LANDSCAPE AND ITS GLOBAL MATERIALITIES

The noble, the traditional and the cosmopolite refer to some of the discourses and practices currently shaping Beijing urban landscapes. As the changing Chinese society is being ‘spatialized ’ and materialized in a fast transforming urban landscape, changes in the built environment are often envisaged as the predictable outcome of economic reforms and globalization. Yet, as Knox (1991) showed, urban transformations cannot be understood without taking into account a wide range of factors affecting the production and the consumption of built elements. Therefore, to make sense of Beijing new morphologies, we need to identify the relevant agencies and question how their actions are being materialized in particular urban forms. Drawing on Knox’s approach, this paper focuses on globalization as a way to account for the city’s growing presence on the world scene and its inscription as a node by not only receiving, but also producing mobile flows of a different nature that shape the cityscapes. We distinguish three different urban and architectural styles – the noble, the traditional and the cosmopolite – each of them embodying a particular way to conceive, practice and materialize the global link in the built environment. Specifically, we show how material and immaterial flows of images, professionals, discourses and consumers are being mobilized in different ways to produce residential spaces answering to Beijing’s particular social and cultural context