Qing Su,  Manfredo Manfredini,  Ruyang Sun
School of Architecture and Planning, University of Auckland; 2SAFA Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University

A new Village-in-the-City Wave in China.  

I Villaggi Urbani di Seconda Generazione
in Cina. Da supplemento al “dormitory-labour regime” a ecosistemi dinamici collaborativi

in U+D JOURNAL n.20, 2024

CLICK HERE        Q Su M Manfredini R Sun

Abstract
In the context of rapid Chinese urbanisation,
stemming from the shift from a centrally
planned economy to a socialist market economy,
urban villages emerge as a phenomenon
of significant socio-spatial relevance. These
villages constitute unique informal ecosystems
dynamically modulating the organizational and
governance legacy of indigenous socialist rural
communes with those of the extractivist processes
of modern transnational capitalism paradigm
that progressively infiltrate every urban system.
Urban villages play a crucial role in sustaining
millions of rural migrants facing challenging
living conditions resulting from the perpetual intensification
of abstraction, fragmentation, and
isolation caused by deeply disruptive, irregular,
and multi-scalar urban restructuring rooted in
exploitative logics driven by imperative exponential
capital growth. Recently, in highly developed
regions, a second generation of antagonistic
settlements has surfaced, characterized
by the formation of antagonistic local networks
for the collective reappropriation of capabilities
and means of production. Our analysis focuses
on their mode of production, emphasizing their
unique systemic configuration, commoning
practices, and technologically advanced collaboration.
We operationalise agonistic solidarity
theories based on the recognition of the Right
to the city, underscoring the centrality of inclusive
relational self-determination. We demonstrate
how these transformations are situated
and conjunctural. We argue that their origin as
semi-enclosed, subsidiary spill-overs of the factory-
dormitory exploitation system facilitates the
formation of a counter-labour force that transforms
them into laboratories for independent,
relational, and translocal entrepreneurship. We
assert that these villages have developed unique
spatial practices of recommoning that oppose
the denial of the Right to the city, and provide
a multiperspective description focused on their
collaborative agonistic pluralism, cosmopolitical
differentiation, and creative transindividuation.