Haussmann and Le Corbusier in China: Land Control and the Design of Streets in Urban Redevelopment

This paper discusses China's current phase of large-scale urban redevelopment, using contrasting cases of morphological change and street design to examine the political-economic basis of urban design. The typical, superblock-centred approach is an outgrowth of local land use practices that were shaped by widespread collectivist expropriation of property from the 1950s into the 1970s, and drastic resident relocation policies since the early 1990s. A contrasting case, from a city where such levels of expropriation did not occur, reveals a very different, more street-centred approach to urban design that correlates with a more favourable compensation policy for residents.