Zhu, Jingyi; (2021) Exploring the role of public space in Shanghai's urban transformation: Visionary narratives and everydayness in the quest for global excellence. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Situated in Shanghai’s ongoing urban regeneration that emphasises quality- and people-oriented development approaches, the research explores how public space development, as a key embodiment of these ideals, mediates between Shanghai’s visionary development narratives and citizens’ everyday use of space as the city strives to become an ‘excellent global city’. Starting from the critique of the normative conceptualisations of publicness, the research proposes an order-sociality model of publicness to aid the analysis of the multiple ways space exists as public. The two-fold empirical study comprises a typology of public space and two in-depth case studies, namely the Huangpu River waterfront public space connection project and the community public space micro-regeneration initiative. Utilising qualitative data from document review, observation, and semi-structured interviewing, the research frames the empirical study with a process-oriented approach to untangle the complex rationales, mechanisms and practices that shape public spaces. The research finds that public space development in present-day Shanghai not only opens up physical space for citizens’ daily enjoyment but also materialises the people-oriented ideals through the design/delivery of public spaces and discursively helps support the city’s visionary narratives of building an ‘excellent global city’. The ideal of participation is key to bridging the gap between the grand narratives of people-oriented urban regeneration and people’s daily experience of urban space, although the realities of participatory practices and the persistent power dynamics in the creation of material and discursive spaces complicate the delivery of these ideals on the ground. The research contributes to existing public space scholarship by critically examining the nature of publicness, reflecting on the making of public space in Shanghai as embedded in a dynamic development context and shaped by hidden power dynamics, and providing new insights into the many faces of urban regeneration within the complex and contested urban world, and notably in China.

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