Jie Guo: Reshaping Chinese Cities: Neoliberal Transition, Embedded Contestation, and Urban Renewal of LanzhouMichael Malzer

ASIEN – Nr. 160/161 (2021) pp. 241–43

LIT Verlag, 2020. 309 pp., 34,90 EUR

In her monograph on urban renewal in Lanzhou, the capital of China’s northwestern Gansu province, Jie Guo analyzes the interplay between different stakeholders during the relocation of industrial enterprises from the urban core to the outskirts of the city. While studies on Chinese urbanization largely tend to be concerned with metropolises in eastern China (p. 267), and urban renewal is often only associated with the relocation of residential housing (p. 261), this study specifically focuses on industrial restructuring in an understudied second-tier city. Just as the rest of the country, Lanzhou has witnessed a rapid expansion of urban space in recent decades. However, Lanzhou’s geographical location in a valley basin limits the natural growth of its core city (p. 155). Since the 1950s, Lanzhou had been developed as an industrial center and transportation hub (p. 148), and pollution by its industry was exacerbated by the limited airflow in the valley (p. 161). To free up land for residential and commercial development and to alleviate environmental problems, the city has relocated many of its factories to new Industrial Parks outside the valley …