The social and morphological construction of a retail landscape in Tianjin, China

The dramatic reform of the economy is a watershed in history of China that is denoted notably by the commodification of housing and land-use right. This work explores to what extent the change in the economic policy brings a corresponding change in a urban landscape. It inquires more specifically on how an urban landscape manifests shifts in the social and economic dimensions. This study zooms into an ordinary neighbourhood in Tianjin, China, to focus on the morphological and social production of a new retail landscape. By building a typology of six retail building types manifested at the periphery of large housing estates, it documents the genesis of a retail landscape and analyses its spatial relationships with the residential built environment. An investigation on the production process of each type provides an understanding of how a shift in political economy had its impact on the built environment. The results also speak about a continuous cultural model carried out in the morphological process in spite of the changing social environment. The results suggest a dialectic between the social and economic dimensions of city building and the material form. Keywords: morphological process, social production, retail landscape, China