The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City

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JD: There have been hundreds of SEZ’s and new areas established in China since the 1980s, but not even one comes close to Shenzhen. This has not deterred more ongoing efforts of economic or industrial zone developments in China. Viewing Shenzhen’s role as an industrial or economic zone only would be a mistake for anyone wishing to understand or emulate its development. Juan Du (2011). 10 Million Units: Housing and Affordable City. In Terence Riley (Ed.), 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture Exhibition Catalogue (pp. 26-27). N.p: n.p. JD: Shenzhen is an experimental city that can provide many valuable lessons for future cities. However it is not a model city in the ways in which it has been generalised – that of central planning, government control, foreign direct investment, etc. Baily, George (2020-03-14). "The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City". Asian Affairs. 51 (2): 436–442. doi: 10.1080/03068374.2020.1747878. ISSN 0306-8374. S2CID 219083556.

This remarkable exploration of modern China reveals the humanity hidden in the shadows of international finance and globalized architecture. It is the extraordinary story of ordinary lives surviving and thriving in one of China’s most dynamic cities.”—Austin Williams, author of China’s Urban Revolution and New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future

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Every great city – or city aspiring to greatness – has a founding myth, many so far-fetched that they are only found in the travel supplements of Sunday newspapers. Not so with Shenzhen, the Chinese megacity of 12 or 24 million inhabitants, depending on who you ask. Even serious commentators, architectural or otherwise, still reach for the oft repeated story of how the world’s second most important tech hub was ‘just a sleepy fishing town with 30,000 inhabitants’ before it was declared the country’s first experimental Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in May 1980.

Juan Du (2007). Urban Tools. In Hanru Hou et al. (Eds.), Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization (D-Lab 2), The Second Guangzhou Triennial (Conference Proceedings) (pp. 186-203). Guangzhou: Ling-Nan Arts Publishing House (In English and Chinese). There isn't really an argumentative point to the book, besides describing this miracle of transformation. The author kind of highlights the role of individual actors, including of the mayor Liang Xiang and his role in encouraging long term investments in education, schools, and hospitals. She also sort of takes a stance on the urban villages within Shenzhen such as Baishizhou, talking about how important they, and the illegal peasant housing built within them, were to the development and growth of the city as a whole, but there really aren't any strong claims made. Which makes sense because the title is just "The story of China's instant city".

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Juan Du (2014). 10 Million Units: Housing and Affordable City. In Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture organizing committee (Ed.), Architecture creates cities. Cities create architecture: 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (pp. 256-269). Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press. Later sections examine the modern urban development of the city, and the tension between lucrative redevelopment and the preservation of Shenzhen’s urban villages, which provide essential housing to newcomers to the city as well as being fortresses of vibrancy and diversity in a city which is becoming increasingly homogenized, at least in architectural terms. At all times the individual experience of the city is foregrounded, ensuring the reader retains a sense of the personal within the urban. Juan Du (2013). City Metamorphosis: Shenzhen Caiwuwei Research. In Ou Ning (Ed.), South of the Southern: Space, Geography, History & the Biennale (pp. 162-165). Beijing: China Youth Press.

Even at this point, the city’s destiny as the 21st century workshop of the world was far from certain. Du points out that despite the common view of the city being built on foreign direct investment, Shenzhen’s initial development in the 1980s was supported largely by investment from within China, and the value of the city’s extensive construction sector far outweighed that of manufacturing. For this reason, it was widely seen as a failure among anti-reform party dignitaries, who were looking for any reason to call the whole thing off because of its capitalist aspirations. Juan Du (2010). Quotidian Architectures: Hong Kong in Venice. In Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia (Ed.), People Meet in Architecture Biennale Architectura 2010, Exhibition Catalogue (pp. 194-195). Venice: Marsilio Editori s.p.a.

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Juan Du, ‘From Design with Nature to Design with Carbon? – A Brief History of the Low Carbon City (LCC),’ Urban Environment Design, 101 (2016): 228-235. PF: You challenge the idea of Shenzhen as a ‘blank canvas’ where nothing much existed before. What was Shenzhen, before it was Shenzhen? The book has eight chapters, organized into four sections. Chapters are named after landmarks and cultural aspects, which Du describes as "artifacts". [8]