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