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The ‘People’s City’
Author(s) -
Jun Wang
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
architectural design
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.128
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1554-2769
pISSN - 0003-8504
DOI - 10.1002/ad.736
Subject(s) - beijing , china , ideal (ethics) , communism , public space , space (punctuation) , property (philosophy) , phenomenon , urban space , sociology , political science , law , history , engineering , politics , regional science , philosophy , architectural engineering , linguistics , epistemology
Abstract The mid‐20th‐century communist ideal was for cities that were ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. Wang Jun , an editor at Outlook Weekly magazine and author of a best‐selling book on the planning of Beijing, describes how the ambition to accommodate public life in urban space is a relatively modern phenomenon that goes against the grain of a long tradition of landownership in China. Given this background, can the original notion of the ‘People's City’ ultimately survive the current wave of property privatisation? Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.