![Sample our Geography journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5937/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Geography.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Workers’ villages are social housing districts built during the early period of New China for accommodating state-owned factory employees and their families. By borrowing the Soviet collective housing model, workers’ villages triggered significant socialist transformations architecturally and socially – shaping a new collective lifestyle. This article discusses the formation approach and manifestation of collective life in workers’ villages focusing on one case: Tiexi Workers’ Village in Shenyang City during the 1950s–1970s period. The evidence illustrates that through collectivization of living space and coordinating administration structure, a collective life represented by intense organized activities and personal interactions was indeed shaped in this pilot housing project. This paper sheds light on the collectiveness of the spatial pattern on the one hand, and the role it played in moulding everyday life under the socialist political/ideological circumstances of early New China on the other. This article concludes emphasizing the practical significance of this collective living model, which is more than just a historical proof of the past socio-spatiality but is also an important heritage beneficial to contemporary housing and communities.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Schmid et al., A History of Collective Living: Models of Shared Living, 14.
2 Lefebvre, The Production of Space.
3 Reid, “Communist Comfort,” 466.
4 Holm and McEwan, “Introduction,” 533–34.
5 Kotkin, “The Search for the Socialist City,” 235–39.
6 Humphrey, “Ideology in Infrastructure,” 39.
7 Engel, “Public Space in the Blue Cities in Russia,” 160.
8 Schmid and Hugentobler, “Collective Housing in the Soviet Union,” 102.
9 Crawford, Spatial Revolution, 148.
10 Ibid., 163.
11 Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 101.
12 May, “Planned City Stalinstadt,” 65.
13 Milasinovic-Maric, “Housing Development in the 1950s.”
14 Sendi and Kerbler, “The Evolution of Multifamily Housing.”
15 Iuga, “Reshaping the Historic City Under Socialism.”
16 Kim and Jung, “The Planning of Microdistricts in Post-War North Korea,” 204.
17 Shin and Jung, “Appropriating the Socialist Way of Life.”
18 The danwei单位 system was the most important institutional arrangement for regulating the distribution of social resources under the planned economy after the founding of New China (from the 1950s to the 1990s). The danwei, which were centered on state-owned enterprises and institutional entities, assumed a wide range of economic, administrative, and social welfare functions, including the provision of social security through employment, housing, health care, childcare, welfare, and pensions, as well as education, leisure, cultural, and sports facilities. People could not obtain these benefits from anywhere else. In addition, danwei had a political function as a media and means for the state to govern the people. Xiao, Liu and Chai, “Institutional spatial prototype of China’s Danwei System,” 38; Walder and Gong (trans), Communist Neo-traditionalism, 247.
19 Bray, Social Space and Governance in Urban China.
20 Lu, “Danwei and Socialist Urbanism.”
21 Jacoby and Cheng, “Urban Design and Spatialised Governmentality.”
22 Yang, From Model Community to Monumental Site; Liang, Housing Shanghai; Zhao, Socio-spatial Transformation in Mao’s China; Lu, “Architecture and Global Imaginations in China;” Cheng, “Collectivisation, Paradox and Resistance;” Hou, Building for Oil; Zhao, Socio-spatial Transformation in Mao’s China; Tan et al., “Third Front’ Construction in China;” Jacoby and Cheng, “The Built Environment, Spatial Will, and Heritage of the Third Front Movement in China.”
23 Yang, From Model Community to Monumental Site, 85.
24 Hou, Building for Oil, 123–25, 136.
25 Caoyang New Village is China’s first workers’ neighbourhood, but it did not follow the later-prevailing Soviet style which was characterised by perimeter block pattern and standardized housing design. It is because the Soviet architecture theories had not yet been imported into China when Caoyang New Village was designed and constructed in 1951. For more information, see Zhang, Schoonjans and Gantois, “The Emergence and Evolution of Workers’ Villages in Early New China.”
26 US$1 equals RMB¥ 2.227 according to the 1952 exchange rate. This was approximate 5.5 million $.
27 Liu, The changes of workers village – – The history of workers village’s changes for 60 years in Tiexi District.
28 Yang, From Model Community to Monumental Site.
29 “The development brings new happiness: The government is housing for workers,” Shenyang Daily 7 September 1952.
30 FAW is the abbreviation of First Automobile Works. It was initiated in 1953 and was China’s first automobile manufacturer headquartered in Changchun, Jilin Province. FAW Residential Area is the workers’ village affiliated to FAW factory.
31 China East Industrial Construction Design Institute, “Introduction to the Detailed Planning and Design.”
32 Zhang, Schoonjans and Gantois, “The Emergence and Evolution of Workers’ Villages.”
33 Floor plans of dormitories in Tiexi Workers’ Village are unavailable. Here another workers’ village, the Village of Powers in Harbin, is used to show spatial patterns of single dormitories.
34 Zhang, Holy Land Workers Village, 182–99.
35 Meerovich, Zhilishchnaya politika v SSSR i ee realizatsiya v arkhitekturnom proektirovanii (1917–1941 g.g.): ocherki istorii; Meerovich, “Vlast’ i zhilishche (zhilishchnaya politika v SSSR v 1917–1940 godakh.”
36 Gridded Party building dominates community governance innovation 网格化党建统领社区治理创新. See http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2014/1127/c40531-26105462.html.
37 During the regeneration process of Tiexi Industrial District from 2003 to 2010, only two Soviet-style blocks in Tiexi Workers’ Village were preserved. However, the residents of these two remained blocks were relocated (and are still being relocated) to somewhere else. In the government’s planning, these vacated blocks will not be residences but will be contain new cultural and tourism industry businesses.
38 Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution.
39 Guo, “On Collectivism and Collective Education,” 59–84.
40 See note 34 above.
41 Ibid., 7–8.
42 Morozova, “Obshchee zhit’ye;” Utekhin, Ocherki kommunalnogo byta.
43 Lu, “Danwei and socialist urbanism,” 348–66.
44 Chai et al., Danwei Perspective on Urban China, 76.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Yiping Zhang
Yiping Zhang is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven. His PhD project is on the collective spaces in workers’ villages in post-industrial Northeast China from a socio-spatial perspective. His research interest mainly lies in urban history, industrial heritage, collective space, and community regeneration.
Yidan Liu
Yidan Liu is a PhD candidate in the Double Degree Program at Tianjin University and Politecnico di Milano. Her primary research interests include traditional village revitalization, cultural heritage preservation, collective space reuse, and contemporary architectural design. She has worked on design projects in rural areas of China, including Guizhou, Heilongjiang, and Fujian.
Yves Schoonjans
Yves Schoonjans is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven. His research is structured in two lines (1) Practices and discourses in a recent and contemporary context – relation between theory and practices; and (2) Everyday local identity, spatial appropriation, and urban development.
Gisèle Gantois
Gisèle Gantois is Professor in Architecture and Development of Community Heritage at the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven. She is an architect who specializes in the restoration and adaptive use of built heritage. Since 2020 she has also taught on the post-masters course at Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC) at KU Leuven, Belgium.