Forms of Hybridity

Abstract

This thesis explores the possibilities of future inclusive urbanism by investigating how tradition and modernity—in socio-spatial and ecological practices—interact in Chinese urban contexts and what implicit values they carry in post-growth cities. Over the last four decades, accelerated state-led modernisation, accompanied by technocratic urban planning, has led to the making of a spatially homogenised ‘generic city’, often neglecting history and obscuring social-ecological inequalities. However, the persistence of thousands of villages in a city reveals a more complex urban reality, and the recent slowdown demands an inclusive approach to urban planning and design, making it necessary to document values of the past and present for the future.

Using the palimpsest analogy, the research conceptualises a city as a multilayered system with a nonlinear history, enabling the unravelling of historical and cultural layers from the past in present-day readings. It rethinks pluralisation of modernity as reflected in South China’s urban landscapes since the 1980s. An analysis of 50 empirical studies reveals that Chinese modernity is an evolving process entangled with traditions.

This entanglement is further elucidated through an architectural ethnographic investigation of Pingshan village in Shenzhen, focusing on the lived urban spaces, the surviving agricultural landscapes, and the omnipresent sacred spaces. Using ethnographic drawing, photography and interviews, the research reveals that traditions transform themselves while interacting with modern interventions in daily life, producing various hybrid spatial forms and practices. Reflecting on empirical findings, the research proposes hybridisation as the potential for building future inclusiveness in architecture and urbanism in China.