Summer 2010

This summer, six GSAPP students participated in a joint international workshop with China Lab, The Central Academy of Fine Arts and Chinese University Hong Kong. The twenty-student workshop focused its research on South Beijing, historically an underdeveloped region of the city that will soon be rapidly transformed into a densely-urbanized link with the city of Tianjin. By using South Beijing as a case study, the workshop proposed critical alternatives to the current trend of peri-urban expansion in China.

How can industrial areas be integrated into new residential developments? Is it even possible for secondary industries and residential blocks to coexist?

As Jiading and other industrial sites around Shanghai are transformed into residential superblocks, a new model for higher-density, hybrid land use and sustainable urban development is needed. This summer, Columbia GSAPP/China Lab researchers have been invited by the Jiading district government to work on a strategy report for the interaction of existing and future industrial sites with a new large-scale residential development.