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

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Juan Du (2011). Sustaining What? Communities as the Foundation for Social Sustainability and Development, Urban Flux New Perspective (Special Report), 20, 15-20. (In Chinese) the story of Shenzhen is not simply one of reforms and policies; it is a collection of stories of personal struggles and redemptions.

Nathan, Andrew J. (May–June 2020). "The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City". Foreign Affairs . Retrieved 2022-07-29. Ho called it "Engagingly written and artfully crafted", [8] and the book "shines" in portions where Du uses her knowledge of architecture. [16] Ho stated that she wished that the book examined other scholarly works on the subject. [8] PF: Shenzhen was so important to the early decades of Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening Up movement, but now with so many cities being designated Special Economic Zone (SEZ), what, if anything, remains unique and important about Shenzhen? PF: You talk about the ‘villages within the city’ – can you explain what these are and whether they are likely to survive?

The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City". China City Planning Review. 29 (2): 86–87. 2020. – Translated and edited by Li Caige and Liu Jinxin, while Liu Jiayan and Liang Sisi are the proofreaders. Shenzhen was certainly not a small fishing village, at least not during its past millennium of history. Juan Du asks whether Shenzhen is the blueprint for a modern Chinese city, and what lessons have been learned since Deng Xiaoping supported the opening up of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

As we try to read the runes of last summer’s announcement that Shenzhen is to become once more a pioneering model city for China, Juan Du’s book provides a nuanced and detailed historical grounding, drawing on a diverse range of sources and primary research. Blending the personal and the historical, it is an outstanding primer on the fascinating fortunes of a city which will only grow in national and global significance over the course of the next decade.Just prior to the designation as the City of Shenzhen in 1979, the approximately 2,000 square kilometres of land was known as Bao’an County, with a population of around 300,000 distributed across 2,000 villages, as well as small townships. As a result of Shenzhen's extraordinary economic success, the city was viewed as a land of opportunity. There was mass rural migration to the SEZ, and Shenzhen experienced immense population growth. By 2000, 20 million people lived in the Shenzhen SEZ. Despite Urban Villages having a negative stereotype (through 2016) because they didn't fit into the image of a well-planned city, the 300 urban villages - aka, peasant houses and villages in the city (6-7 floor "towers" & "nail houses") supplied half of the residential floor area, and provided affordable housing to its growing population. Additionally, within these communities, township and village enterprises (TVE) sprouted and became the industrial engine of Shenzhen's economy during the SEZ's first decade. Her works have been featured by wide-ranging media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Nature, Architectural Record, ICON, Domus, and Journal of Architectural Education. Her latest book The Shenzhen Experiment – The Story of China’s Instant City published by Harvard University Press, is recipient of the 2020 Book of the Year Award for Interdisciplinary Research by ASU’s Institute for Humanities Research. Juan Du. Beyond Classification. e-flux, architecture (2018). https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/urban-village/169804/beyond-classification/.

The idea that Shenzhen is a replicable model reinforces the assumption that cities can be politically planned and socially engineered from scratch,” Du writes. “But the Shenzhen experiment, as a singular successful case, has overshadowed the numerous examples of zone-based urbanization and developments which have not flourished in the same way.” An award-winning Hong Kong–based architect with decades of experience designing buildings and planning cities in the People’s Republic of China takes us to the Pearl River delta and into the heart of China’s iconic Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen. Juan Du (2018). Project Home Improvement: Movable Upgrades and Community Engagement in Hong Kong’s Subdivided Units. Domus China, 90-99.Juan Du (2007). One City, Two Systems. In Stan Fung and Ye Zhu (Ed.), Urban New Spectacle, Contemporary Architecture Invitation Exhibition Catalogue (pp. 70-71). N.p.: n.p. Juan Du’s research and writings have been published in Asia, Europe and the United States, including The Architectural Review, Volume, Domus, Journal of Architectural Education, e-flux, Time+Architecture, Urban Flux and Urban China. Her book The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City was recently published by Harvard University Press. Juan is a recognised scholar on China’s rapid urbanisation, and her works have been featured by international journals and media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, CNN, Wired, and Nature.

The book begins not with an abstract story of Shenzhen’s early history, but a personal tale which epitomizes its spirit of transformation. Jiang Kairui made his way to Shenzhen from the far north-east of the country in 1992, a few months after Deng Xiaoping’s now equally mythologized “Southern Tour”, in which the ostensibly retired leader toured Shenzhen and other nearby cities to affirm the policies of reform and opening which he had pioneered. Juan Du (2015). From Village to City: The Informal History of Shenzhen. In Re-living the City, Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (pp. 96-97). Over the next 14 years, I worked with various communities in both cities. The initial fascination of Shenzhen’s urban villages gradually developed into a more comprehensive understanding of the overall city and the surrounding region.

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An award-winning Hong Kong-based architect with decades of experience designing buildings and planning cities in the People's Republic of China takes us to the Pearl River delta and into the heart of China's iconic Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen.