Mapping and understanding the effects of redevelopment on the port region of Shibati in Chongqing City
The contemporary phenomenon of Chinese city demolition and rebuilding is recognised as a natural process in the aggressive course of globalisation. The socio-political and spatial issues, and the consequences that have arisen through this process have gone largely unacknowledged. By taking Shibati, in the Central Chongqing City, as its site, Jue Chen’s project seeks to understand, critique and represent the aforementioned issues.
As the dominant port of arrival for Chongqing, and the only way to enter the city centre in the past, Shibati was historically and culturally significant during the formation and expansion of Chongqing City. Since 1997, rapid development and expansion has been taking place in Chongqing and, as a result, Shibati has gradually shrunk into a closed and isolated district with complex social and architectural layers.
Using a carefully conceived process of analytical and creative mapping, Chen’s thesis is based in the methodology of research through design to create a critical representation of the context being examined. The mapping is embedded in a rigid system of ‘layering’ that addresses issues such as social inequality and displacement. At the same time, it extracts and repackages hidden relations and identities, exposing the reality ‘on the ground’.
Every decision to inscribe into, engrave on to, or to peel back a layer is neither neutral nor passive. Each layer mediates between the map and reality, exposing, critiquing and representing the decisions which have led to entire communities being displaced. Acknowledging the latent urban strategy underlying this method, Chen’s critique of these decisions through mapping attempts to distil the impact of widespread and rapid demolition on existing communities. By carefully considering these issues, the thesis reflected on how the strategies employed in the future rebuilding of other cities could take these consequences into consideration to mitigate the dispossession and traumatic repackaging of other urban areas.
