The Post-Covid urban scenario in China, debating challenges and proposals.

Author: María José Masnou. Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, and coordinator of the working group on ‘Urban, territorial development and sustainability’ of the China Chair and urban consultant.

In Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, the first large-scale outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic originated and, according to the images we have seen recently of the city, life has returned with a 'new normal'. However, we ask ourselves, what has this crisis meant for Chinese cities and their development?

The pandemic is the tipping point that has accelerated many needs that were previously in the works and brings to the fore the need to build more resilient, sustainable and resident-centered cities, both in China and Europe. The crisis unleashed by COVID19 has caused the need for honest reflection on urban governance and the new demands of cities and their inhabitants; It has become a symbolic point of change, as well as a revitalization of pending initiatives.

In recent years, since the guidelines of the XIII Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), with the slogan 'Adhering to green development and paying attention to the environment', we have witnessed a gradual commitment by China to sustain economic development in green strategies. President Xi Jinping has publicly expressed his commitment to a 'green revolution' with a decarbonisation calendar with deadlines such as reaching a peak in CO2 emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. This information was announced in September 2020, along with other aspects related to climate change and the preservation of biodiversity.

In addition, the statement of the Fifth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China expressed its interest in promoting a "green development" in harmonious coexistence with man and nature, but also supported by other needs such as: optimizing territorial development patterns, promote coordinated regional development, make a shift towards quality urbanization, and move towards people-centered development.

They are complex and large-scale objectives. Faced with these formidable challenges, there are some questions about how they will be implemented in the short and medium term in the post-COVID era. What instruments and policies are to be promoted? What will be the scale of their implementation? What is your political and urban agenda going to be?

The post-pandemic stage is crucial and poses numerous challenges that require long-term roadmaps and ambitious initiatives.

The speakers at the round table on November 26, hosted by the China Chair, drew a diverse scenario of the urban reality of the Asian giant, its problems, challenges and proposals for the future. The professional profile and research work of the participating speakers led to this diverse and complementary multiscale vision. The exhibition allowed a gradual step from a scalar macro reading of the impact of urbanization processes, to the local financing model of municipalities based on the development and auction of land rights, presentation of innovative housing projects for the new city of Xiong'An and the effect of confinement on the historic urban fabric of Shanghai. Presenting this complementary vision was my intention when organizing the round table and the debate. These were the main contributions of the speakers.

Rosa María Cervera, professor at the Alcalá de Henares School of Architecture, whose study she has carried out in China through winning competitions, described the urbanization process of Chinese cities as a process of intensification and construction speed against time. According to her, this process has prevented a maturation and critical analysis of the urban model to be followed, which has copied western urbanization patterns without questioning them and which has led to an extensive growth of high-rise typologies.

Zhi Liu, director of the China program at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy at Peking University – Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy, presented a clarifying view on the characteristics of urbanization processes in China.

Natasha Aveline-Dubach, CNRS professor of urban geography at the Géographie - Cités de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne research unit, provided an analytical view of the land economy in China and the framework that links the financing of local urbanization, its instruments and their link with the speculative processes of land development and housing construction, which he identifies as a vicious circle of dependencies.

Vicente Guallart, director of the Guallart Arquitectos studio, presented the winning project of a competition for housing blocks in the new city of Xiong'An, in the province of Hebei, where he introduces the concept of bioeconomy, with innovative typological, functional and constructive solutions .

Plácido Gónzalez Martínez, architect and urban planner, professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Tongji (Shanghai), specialist in architectural heritage, provided an analytical and very clarifying vision on the interventions in historical urban fabrics, with specific typologies such as the lilong (alley), within the framework of a global city like Shanghai. He impacted the description of how the pandemic has penalized the economic and social life of these traditional urban fabrics.

Some integrating conclusions from the papers presented allow us to recognize some structural contradictions between the financing framework for urbanization processes in cities and the global concept of sustainability. However, living with this contradiction we find the promotion of urban eco-projects widely spread today. As Natasha Aveline-Dubach mentioned, it is on the scale of some urban projects where a trend of change can be seen, while large-scale territorial and economic policies have another speed.

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