February 9, 2023

China Urbanizing: Book Talk and Panel Discussion

Livestream
past event


Recap

On February 9, 2023, the Penn Institute for Urban Research hosted a panel discussion on China Urbanizing: Impacts and Transitions, edited by Weiping Wu and Qin Gao, recently published in collaboration with PennPress as part of Penn IUR’s ongoing series The City in the Twenty-First Century.

China turned majority urban only in the recent decade, a dramatic leap given that less than 20 percent of its population lived in cities before 1980. Together, the book and the panel situated China’s urbanization in the interconnected forces of historical legacies, contemporary state interventions, and human and ecological conditions. The panel explored the complexity of the phenomenon of urbanization in its historical and regional variations, and explored its impact on the country’s socioeconomic welfare, environment and resources, urban form and lifestyle, and population and health.

In addition to the two editors of the collection, Weiping Wu and Qin Gao, the speakers included Alan Smart, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Calgary; Cindy Fan, Vice Provost for International Studies and Global Engagement, UCLA; Piper Gaubatz, Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, UMASS Amherst; and Scott Moore, Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives, PennGlobal, University of Pennsylvania.

For more information on and to order the book, go here.

Speakers

Image of Cindy Fan

C. Cindy Fan is Professor of Geography at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is also Vice Provost for International Studies and Global Engagement, and is the first woman and Asian to hold that position. As senior international officer (SIO), she manages UCLA’s international partnerships and agreements, represents UCLA globally, promotes international education and research, and oversees the 27 interdisciplinary research centers and eight degree programs within the International Institute. Dr. Fan was born in Hong Kong and received her PhD from the Ohio State University. Her research focuses on migration and split households, gender, and regional development, and she has numerous publications including the pioneering book China on the Move.  She is formerly co-editor of the journals Regional Studies and Eurasian Geography and Economics. Dr. Fan has received many awards and honors, including the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, Distinguished Scholar Awards from the Asian Specialty Group and China Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers, research grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and National Science Foundation, and an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Bristol.

Image of Qin Gao

Qin Gao is Professor of Social Policy and Social Work and Associate Dean for Doctoral Education at the Columbia University School of Social Work and the Founding Director of the Columbia China Center for Social Policy. Dr. Gao studies poverty, inequality, social policy, migration, and child development in China and their international comparisons. She currently leads The State of Chinese Americans Survey and is a core member of the New York City Longitudinal Survey of Wellbeing Study. She is also on the faculty of the Committee on Global Thought and Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University and a Public Intellectual Fellow of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. 

Piper Gaubatz, Head, Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, is an urban geographer specializing in the study of urban change, development and planning in East Asia. Educated at Princeton University, The University of California Berkeley, and Beijing University, she has authored three books on Chinese cities and carried out field work in dozens of Chinese cities over the past 35 years on topics ranging from the rise of cities in China’s frontier regions to transformations of socialist mass rally squares in the 21st century.  Her current research interests include analysis of the changing role of public space in Chinese cities, an analysis of the diffusion of urban and environmental planning practices and ideologies from eastern China to western China, and ongoing research on urban environmental history in China.  Her most recent work, a multi-year study of public space in Chinese cities involves fieldwork in a dozen different Chinese cities.

Alan Smart is a Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Anthropology and Archaeology at University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.  PhD in Social Anthropology from University of Toronto (1986).   Research interests include political economy, housing, urban anthropology, anthropology of law, borders, zoonotic diseases, smart cities and posthumanism.  Field research conducted in Hong Kong, China and Canada  Author of Making Room: Squatter Clearance in Hong Kong, The Shek Kip Mei Myth: Squatters, Fires, and Colonial Rule, Posthumanism: Anthropological Perspectives (co-author Josephine Smart), Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Informality and Geopolitics, 1963-1985 (with Charles Chi-keung Fong, in press) and numerous book chapter and articles.

Scott Moore is a political scientist, university administrator, and former policymaker whose career focuses on China, sustainability, and emerging technology. As Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, Scott Moore works with faculty members from across the University to design, implement, and highlight innovative, high-impact global research initiatives in areas including sustainability and emerging technology. Moore conducts research as an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China and The Water Center at Penn, and teaches in the Department of Political Science.  His first book, Subnational Hydropolitics: Conflict, Cooperation, and Institution-Building in Shared River Basins (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines how climate change and other pressures affect the likelihood of conflict over water within countries. His latest, China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores how shared ecological and technological challenges force us to re-envision China’s rise and its role in the world. Prior to Penn, Dr. Moore was a Young Professional and Water Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank Group, and Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for China at the U.S. Department of State, where he worked extensively on the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Weiping Wu is Professor of Urban Planning and Director of the Urban Planning programs in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. Trained in architecture and urban planning, Professor Wu has focused her research and teaching on understanding urban dynamics in developing countries in general and China in particular. She is an internationally acclaimed urban and planning scholar working on global urbanization with a specific expertise in issues of migration, housing, and infrastructure of Chinese cities. Currently, she is the chair of Planning Accreditation Board (PAB), which accredits university programs in North America leading to bachelor’s and master’s degrees in urban and regional planning. She was the President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) in 2017-2019, a consortium of university-based programs offering credentials in urban and regional planning. In addition to China Urbanizing: Impacts and Transitions, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in September 2022, other recent books include The Chinese City (2020, second edition) and The Sage Handbook on Contemporary China (2018).

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