Urbanizing China: Structures, Situations, and the Land-Sea Divide
Description
This book explores how China's cities have been shaped by the enduring tension between maritime and continental worlds, and how this deep structural logic unfolds within everyday urban situations.
Rather than reducing urbanization to policy, markets, or rapid growth, Yanbo Li traces how multiple forces operate simultaneously in concrete settings-migration flows, administrative practices, redevelopment projects, community negotiations, and historical legacies. Within these situations, the contrasting pulls of coast and interior predispose distinctive patterns of expansion, transformation, and urban life.
Focusing on Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta-where China's historical shift between land and sea has been most intensely negotiated and rendered visible- the book draws on historical analysis and detailed cases to show Chinese urbanization as a dynamic process in which deep structural tensions become visible through lived situations, continually reshaping cities across time.
More details
Person
Dr. Yanbo Li is Associate Professor at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai. His research examines how long-term spatial structures shape China's urbanization and urban transformation. Trained in architectural history and theory, with postdoctoral research in public management, he combines historical analysis with sustained engagement in contemporary urban change.
Based in Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta, Li has spent more than a decade working at the intersection of coastal development, inland migration, urban redevelopment, and community governance-placing him at the frontline of China's most intense urban restructuring. Alongside academic research, he has worked extensively in urban heritage regeneration and community-based planning, placing him within the everyday negotiations through which large-scale structural forces are translated into concrete urban change.
He was a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and has lectured widely in China and abroad. Li's work bridges historical depth and frontline urban practice to develop structural perspectives on Chinese urbanization.
Content
Chapter 1: The World We Are Living in.- Chapter 2: The Globalization and China's Transformation.- Chapter 3: Between the Land and Sea -the Two Social Modes of China.- Chapter 4: Yangtze River Delta and Shanghai.- Chapter 5: Urban Community and Its Development in China.- Chapter 6: Urban Heritage Preservation and Its Challenge.- Chapter 7: The Transformation of Urban Development.- Chapter 8: The Collaborative Governance and Sustainability.