PROGRAM

The four-week workshop will take place in Beijing, China, and will build on a number of research topics on large-scale development established during the previous China workshops as well as expand into new territories of urban investigation.

RESEARCH

a. Catalog urban development typologies.

b. In-depth fieldwork on several Beijing communities.

c. Mapping relationships of community-scale and urban-scale infrastructure and services (including GIS).

d. Diagrammatic analysis of large-scale development: spatial, demographic, social, political dynamics.

Saturday 6/13: The 2009 summer workshop was kicked off by a group session with Erich Schienke and Melissa Rock of PSU, and Neville Mars of the Dynamic City Foundation, in which research methodology and objectives were discussed.

Sunday 6/14: A central axis tour led from the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall and the newly-developed Qianmen, across Tiananmen Square, and through the Forbidden City. The afternoon lecture by Mary Ann Ray and Robert Mangurian was an excellent orientation to urban village life, through the lens of the B.A.S.E. Beijing experience in Caochangdi

Monday 6/15: A morning site visit to the mixed typologies of the Tsinghua University area--planned campus, supporting superblocks, and 6-story & row-house work-unit remnants from the Pencil Factory--and a round-trip ride on the Line 13 Subway oriented the workshop participants to both inner-city transformations and peri-urban conditions. A development north of the Huilongguan station was documented.