The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City

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From serving as an important salt-production and administrative capital during the Han Dynasty to that of a major port on the South China Sea’s ancient maritime Silk Road, the area’s history was no less remarkable before it became Shenzhen. Architect Juan Du discusses Shenzhen’s migrant dwellers, city planning, and urban villages with Paul French.” CHINA-BRITAIN BUSINESS FOCUS, April 9, 2020 ( https://cbbcfocus.com/juan-du/). Juan Du and Janette Kim (2013). Safari SZHK: Hong Kong Base Camp. In Travis Bunt (Ed.), Beyond the Urban Edge: The Ideal City? (pp. 48-49). Hong Kong: HKIA, HKIP, HKDA. As a result of Shenzhen's extraordinary economic success, the city was viewed as a land of opportunity. There was mass rural migration to the SEZ, and Shenzhen experienced immense population growth. By 2000, 20 million people lived in the Shenzhen SEZ. Despite Urban Villages having a negative stereotype (through 2016) because they didn't fit into the image of a well-planned city, the 300 urban villages - aka, peasant houses and villages in the city (6-7 floor "towers" & "nail houses") supplied half of the residential floor area, and provided affordable housing to its growing population. Additionally, within these communities, township and village enterprises (TVE) sprouted and became the industrial engine of Shenzhen's economy during the SEZ's first decade. Downtown areas with skyscrapers and other high-rise buildings in Shenzhen city, South China’s Guangdong province, file photo. – China Daily/ANN

PF: You challenge the idea of Shenzhen as a ‘blank canvas’ where nothing much existed before. What was Shenzhen, before it was Shenzhen? Juan Du (2007). ‘City Metamorphisis’&‘Urban Ecologies.’ In Qing Yun Ma (Ed.), A Traveling Exhibition, 2007 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\ Architecture, n.p. Shenzhen: Shenzhen Press Group Publishing House. Juan Du (2015). Sustaining What? In Shi Jian (Ed.), New Observations: A Collection of Architectural Criticism. Shanghai: Tongji University Press. Endeavors to move beyond the caricature of Shenzhen as a historyless tabula rasa… Provides a nuanced and detailed historical grounding, drawing on a diverse range of sources and primary research. Blending the personal and the historical, it is an outstanding primer on the fascinating fortunes of a city which will only grow in national and global significance over the course of the next decade.”—Jonathan Chatwin, Asian Review of BooksIs it true that Shenzhen has no meaningful history? That the city was planned on a tabula rasa? Where the rural past has had no significant impact on the urban present? This book unravels the myth of Shenzhen, showing how the success of this modern “miracle” depended as much on its indigenous farmers and migrant workers as on central policy makers. Drawing on a range of cultural, social, political and economic perspectives, the book uncovers a surprising history—filled with ancient forts, oyster fields, urban villages, a secret informal housing system—and personal narratives of individual contributors to the city. The Shenzhen Experiment is an important story for all rapidly urbanizing and industrializing nations around the world seeking to replicate China’s economic success in the twenty-first century. As well as relating the personal stories of the city, The Shenzhen Experiment also endeavors to move beyond the caricature of Shenzhen as a history-less tabula rasa: a blank landscape onto which Deng Xiaoping simply drew a circle. The area which would become “Shenzhen” was a well-populated and culturally rich landscape, and its history is here outlined in detail. The author quite rightly comments: A major contribution to understanding a fascinating city.”—Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, The Wall Street Journal Juan Du (2007). Urban Tools. In Hanru Hou et al. (Eds.), Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization (D-Lab 2), The Second Guangzhou Triennial (Conference Proceedings) (pp. 186-203). Guangzhou: Ling-Nan Arts Publishing House (In English and Chinese). Juan Du (2015). ‘Low Carbon City Users’ Manual: An International Academic Research Project’ (pp. 160-169). ‘Low Carbon City – A Designer’s Manual’, by Juan Du, Phil Jones, Dorothy Tang, Ivan Valin, and Natalia Echeverri (pp. 170-179). In Seeking A Path To Future Low Carbon Cities, Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press.

Stein, Susanne (2022). "The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City by Juan Du (review)". Technology and Culture. 63 (2): 587–589. doi: 10.1353/tech.2022.0090. S2CID 248568510. PF: Many foreign companies with investments and factories in Shenzhen say it is the newness of the city – not just the buildings and infrastructure, but also that nobody has traditional ties to the city – that makes it a good place to do business. You butt up against far fewer social and cultural problems than you might elsewhere. Do you think this is true, even now after four decades of Shenzhen? Zhou, Taomo (2020). "The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City. By Juan Du. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2020. 384 pp. ISBN: 9780674975286 (cloth)". The Journal of Asian Studies. 79 (4): 982–984. doi: 10.1017/S0021911820002478. S2CID 230651396. For more than half a year, headlines have been crowded with reports of popular protests and police repression taking place in the most famous city in China’s Pearl River Delta, the former British colony of Hong Kong. For even longer, Western journalists have chronicled the area’s staggeringly ambitious local infrastructure projects, from impressive new high-speed rail lines to a bridge of record-setting length that runs from Hong Kong to the former Portuguese colony of Macau and from that casino-filled island to the city of Zhuhai in Guangdong Province.Nathan, Andrew J. (May–June 2020). "The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China's Instant City". Foreign Affairs . Retrieved 2022-07-29. Zhou stated that the book "is an inspiring addition to the study of Shenzhen in the English-language world". [19] Like all myths, Shenzhen’s has a relationship, albeit distant, with reality. However, the evolution of this city has been far less straightforward—and straightforwardly positive—than this founding mythology suggests. Juan Du. Urban Villages and the Special Economic Zone – How Formal Planning and Informal Development Generated the Exceptional Urbanism of Shenzhen. In Dai Chun (Ed.) Shenzhen Contemporary Architecture 2000-2015, 400-405 (Shanghai: Tongji University Press, 2016). She does, however, not give enough credit to Deng Xiaoping. Sure, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone is the product of its people and its historical and cultural context. But without Deng, it could well have been stopped.