ABSTRACT:
Three decades’ market reform has given rise to tremendous transformation in city space, urban governance and community activities in urban China. This talk will present my research concerning housing and community outcomes in urban China against the backdrop of market-oriented urbanism. On the one hand, China’s contemporary urbanism is associated with growing housing disparities among different social groups, such as locals and migrants. On the other hand, the dismantlement of socialist mode of community governance granted urban citizens greater autonomy of local affairs, motivating community participation. My empirical research points to a civic virtue of communal space and provides nascent evidence regarding neighborhood contexts of grassroots participation in urban China.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Yushu Zhu is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4) and Population Studies at Brown University, U.S.. She received her Ph.D. degree in Architecture from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and a master degree in Human Geography from Sun Yat-sen University in China.
Yushu’s overarching research interest lies in exploring the relationship between social processes and consequent spatial and community outcomes. She pursues this scholarship through empirical investigations of housing and community related issues at the neighborhood, regional, and national levels in the contexts of United States and China. Her work draws on multiple disciplines including urban planning, urban geography, sociology and political economy.
Specifically, Yushu is interested in examining spatial patterns of residential behaviors (e.g., migration) and outcomes (e.g., housing stratification) and the underlying mechanisms. Her other intellectual inquiry pertains to community building and urban governance. She looks at how the physical and social contexts at the neighborhood level shape local community governance, and how people perceive and interact with the built environment and others to make their own place.
View PDF Poster here.
RSVP here.
A light lunch will be provided for registered participants.
Sponsor: Centre for Chinese Research
By: Dr. Yushu Zhu, Brown University
Type: Seminar
