Abstract:
This thesis investigates and critically analyses the cellular disjunction of China's new real estate developments, focusing on the southern China's Pearl River Delta area which encompasses the major cities of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. This region is at the forefront of modern China's building boom, and spearheads the change to a market orientated Chinese economy. Chinese cities were driven by the ideas of utopia, this ideology fuelled Chinese communist urban planning in the 1960s and led them to create and adopt system of production focused spatial organisation models which were applied to almost all major institutions and industries in Urban China. These models borrow elements from traditional Chinese spatial planning techniques and contain many values of cultural significance which adds value to the real Chinese utopia: The idea of community and belonging. As the new economic reforms take hold of China, the old production spatial models and ideologies are altered to fit a new purpose: The model given precedent to new closed compound developments focused on walled residential developments each containing their own amount of privatized public space, a space characterised by exclusivity and seclusion. This thesis examines the possibilities of restructuring the space of such compound developments so that the phenomenon of the privatized public space is minimised while attempting to promote extensive use of public space and utilise any other supporting programmatic elements which can act as a catalyst to enhance the public realm further. This examination and exploration is conducted through a design project, a small district scale hybrid urban development located in the vicinity of the Pearl River in the city of Guangzhou.
