Power and Policy Drive Space Design
"RENMIN (the people)" generally refers to all members of society, and the people mainly refers to "the basic members of society with the working people (main blue collar labor) as the main body.
"The concept of the people at this stage refers to all socialist workers, builders, and supporters of the socialist cause. Socialist patriots and patriots who support the reunification of the motherland."
-Mao Tse Tung
Research is still ongoing, so feel free to contact me if you prefer to communicate or collaborate: w.ymliu2241@gmail.com
The history and law of housing development in modern China found that the spatial composition and form of housing were closely related to the policy and background of each period. In the early days of the founding of the People‘s Republic of China (PRC), under the general direction of realizing collective ownership, people began to live collectively, and architectural space was naturally designed to meet the needs of collective life, with the emergence of the task force People’s Commune, where the state uniformly distributed housing; with the implementation of the Reform and Opening Up Policy, collective life began to disappear gradually, but the social structure of the unit as the primary model still allows people to live and work in a relatively collective space. State-owned enterprises provided housing for free or at a low rent. With the implementation of reform and opening up, collective living began to disappear, but the unit-based (Danwei) social structure still allowed people to live and work in a relatively collective space, and housing was provided by state-owned enterprises to workers free of charge or at very low rents; after the implementation of the marketization of land and the commoditization of housing in China in 1992, housing became almost purely private property, with households separated from each other, and with an emphasis on privacy and individual space. People are required to purchase housing at exorbitant prices, a rarity in socialist countries. Nonetheless, the land remained state-owned, and people were only given the right to use it, not to possess it.
As policies changed, so did China’s social structure. In the early years of the country’s founding, which emphasized the collective, people existed in a collective life based on production, where almost everything belonged to the collective, and the collective will was much higher than the individual. When housing was commercialized, the individual or family became the main component of the social structure. The diversity and individuality of individuals began to develop, and the need for space became diverse, with space needing not only an unchanging collectivized character but also the ability to carry different individually directed functions.
This independent research project began in the fall of 2021, and in the fall of 2023, I had the opportunity to consider my research systematically. Throughout the history of the People‘s Republic of China, the status of the collective home has ebbed and flowed with the times but has never disappeared in this land. When faced with the current state of economic difficulties in the world and within China and the mass bankruptcies that have begun in China’s real estate sector, the issue of housing has become more and more prominent in China. It seems to me that the attempts made by the central government to look back to the beginning would be the potential for the future development of housing in China.
Writing Sample
Research is still ongoing, so feel free to contact me if you prefer to communicate or collaborate: w.ymliu2241@gmail.com
However, due to the limited resources and time available during my undergraduate studies, I did not have the opportunity to take this meaningful research project to a deeper level, which was one of my greatest expectations in graduate school. My professors and recommenders, Luo, Le, and Leung, Richard, have inspired this independent research project in me, and I express my deepest gratitude to them.