townization: in search of an urbanization paradigm in present-day china

townization: in search of an urbanization paradigm in present-day china
all images courtesy of yang dingliang

‘townization’ is a thesis project by yang dingliang that provides innovative research with a planning and proposal for town-township development in present-day china, which has won the harvard university graduate school of design 2014 urban planning thesis prize. the work consists of three major parts: the analyzation of an alternative urbanization paradigm, the planning strategy of a new urban network that combines town and city, and the formation of xiaoyi to demonstrate how urban design and architecture strategies can be effectively implemented. 

advocating from ‘city making’ to ‘town making’, the thesis commits to the issue of ‘townization’ by interpreting three salient questions: ‘why has the process been set as an alternative urbanization paradigm? how can people shape the ‘urban-rural landscape’ and deal with the relation between the two? what are the suitable urban planning strategies and design approaches for chinese town and townships with their network pattern can effectively implemented and contribute to reconfiguring chinese new towns?’

although the benefit of agglomeration has been hugely emphasized by the central government, which led to the majority of amenities and services, and the household-registration system (hukou) equipped the metropolis with more advantages, they exclusively focus on ‘megacity-making’. this eventually leads to density problems, environmental deterioration, and the urban-rural disparity. based on my preliminary empirical research and data analyses, dingliang has come to a conclusion that the above three major urban problems, together with the country’s continuous demand of urbanization to stimulate the economic development, are the four top important reasons that urge for central government’s policy reorientation. as a strong response, the thesis provides a ‘town network’ as the complementary system of the existing ‘city network’.

the proposal consists of 19,683 existing designated towns to help absorb the 300 million potential citizens that would be added to the population within the next 15 years. in addition, this would release the pressure of large cities, provide alternative lifestyle for constituents, and deeply stimulate the development of surrounding rural areas. 

dingliang strongly argues that ‘china’s townization should be based on the existing towns and the primary task is to upgrading them, instead of creating new communities in the middle of nowhere. furthermore, the thesis examines a series of successful precedents, including the famous river towns, historical towns and TVE (township-village enterprise) towns, and then generates a set of fundamental planning and design principles for china’s town making proposals. these principles take into account demographic and population criteria, scale, suitable distance to major cities, and appropriate support industries.’

site justification: urbanization rate and rural rate

the thesis translates its quantitative and qualitative analysis and its policy and spatial research into concrete urban design projects on an experimental site. by doing so, the work demonstrates how strategies can contribute to helping drastically and sustainably improve built environment and at the same time reduce the environmental pollution, protect the agricultural land, and preserve natural resources.

translating quantitative analysis to qualitative spatial design guidelines 

xiaoyi is located in the bengbu-huainan region, anhui, which remains one of the provinces with lowest urbanization rate in the area. the town is occupied by population of 46,266 people, 92.6% of which engage in agricultural processes. ‘this is a very typical condition of china that the rural town needs to be retrofitted and upgrade to modern town. so it is an exemplary case of rural consolidation where village clusters are being transformed into a new modern agriculture town. through the procedure of upgrading from a labor intensive agriculture town to an industrialized agriculture town release 57.5% surplus labor which can be townized into new industries. and with same process the part of land could be also townized into other land use rather than agriculture land. hydrology strategy, landscape strategy, transportation strategy and architecture strategy are four main strategies as the response to the four fundamental principles,’ dingliang states.

mapping of xiaoyi town 

proposed design area

town-city distance: the distance between xiaoyi and bengbu city with huainan city

design strategies

master plan before and after 

agricultural center rendering

town center

housing units

bird’s-eye view of xiaoyi

in conclusion, thesis comes to five key suggestions for the urban planning and design strategies for the implementation of ‘townization’ policy: (1) primarily about upgrading the existing towns and townships in china (2) within the interconnection of the larger urban network by faster transportation infrastructure (3) standard Living of small scale with proficient technology and amenities (4) offering an alternative lifestyle for both urban and rural population (5) local and suitable industry rather than resource extraction and pure raw agriculture production and providing the local employment opportunity.

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.