Urban Writing on Disappearing Alleyways and Courtyard Houses, Beijing, 1950-2008

Beijing has transformed tremendously in the recent four decades, and the decline of the signature residential space, alleyways and courtyard houses, is at the center of social and cultural debates. For some, it is an outcome of a profit-driven real estate market that favours international capital rather than local communities. For others, marketization and globalization have otherwise created a niche for the gentrified and commercialized vernacular space as a cultural selling point of Chineseness. This project poses the question differently: what is the role of the cultural intermediaries in this picture of decline with the market and capital on the one hand and the physical changes on the other? This project investigates the cultural intermediaries formed by the architectural trends, planning thoughts, policy tendencies, and heritage system that the capital and market depend on to concretely shape the cityscape. Focusing on multiple genres of texts in urban writing from the 1950s to the 2010s, this project examines them through metaphors. Urban amnesia reveals an architectural forgetting system that marginalizes alleyways and courtyard houses in the fifty years of architectural discourse. City tank provides a cautious approach to housing, land, and demolition and relocation policies that demonstrates how difficult it is for the vernacular space users to cultivate a long-lasting connection with their living environment. The city as organism shed light on the alternative planning practice to preserve vernacular space. Its adaptation into heritage policies in the context of cultural and historical city preservation ironically illuminates on the limitations of organic renewal. The meanings of these metaphors collectively present a complicated picture of how cultural intermediaries promote, oppose to, and negotiate with the erasure of vernacular space in urban redevelopment. To trace these meanings opens up new space to test ideas and practices that emphasize both architectural preservation and social preservation.Ph.D.2020-11-19 00:00:0