The Hybrid spatialities of post-industrial Beijing: Communism, neoliberalism, and brownfield redevelopment

Sustainability. 2020. Vol. 12. No. 12. P. 1–19.

Wang N., Golubchikov O., Chen W., Liu Z.

While the redevelopment of urban brownfield sites in China has received much attention, the role of political ideology in this process is usually downplayed or sidelined to a set of stylized assumptions. This paper invites giving a greater analytical focus to the evolving and nonorthodox nature of China’s politico-ideological model as a factor shaping urban change and redevelopment. The paper provides an analytical framework integrating multi-level and evolutionary perspectives while exploring the experiences of the formation and post-industrial redevelopment of brownfield sites in Beijing. The analysis demonstrates that neoliberal economic policies and the communist political doctrine are co-constitutive in the production of China’s post-industrial urban space. This produces a sense of spatial hybridity that combines and co-embeds what may be assumed to be mutually exclusive.

Keywords: China, post-industrial economy, Beijing, urban brownfield