Is Shenzhen now China’s most important city? In August of 2019, the country’s State Council released a statement announcing that Shenzhen was to be developed into a “pilot demonstration area of socialism with Chinese characteristics”, with the aim of it becoming a “global benchmark city”. The timing of the announcement was unsurprising; the government attention to be lavished on Shenzhen is in direct response to the current situation in Hong Kong. An editorial in the Global Times put it:

Juan Du, ‘From Design with Nature to Design with Carbon? – A Brief History of the Low Carbon City (LCC),’ Urban Environment Design, 101 (2016): 228-235. Juan Du (2016). Intervention into Hong Kong’s Urban Informality, Special Issue on Modernology Research in China, Urban Flux, 51 (5), 60-65. An award-winning Hong Kong-based architect with decades of experience designing buildings and planning cities in the People's Republic of China takes us to the Pearl River delta and into the heart of China's iconic Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen. The song would eventually become a huge national hit and forever entwined two images in the story of China’s economic reforms: Deng as a kindly “old man”, and the “miracle” of Shenzhen. Du teaches at the University of Hong Kong and also is an architect. She had done research and conducted interviews, [4] with work done in multiple villages in Shenzhen. [5] Du found inspiration exploring Shenzhen after she failed to get on board a flight. [6] Prior to that period, Du had never had a period where she was in a stay in Shenzhen which went past an evening into a morning. [7] Contents [ edit ]These challenges offered new perspectives on collaborative governance, inclusive community, flexible planning, the rural urban continuum; and brought about many government supported reforms. Shenzhen's story is a fascinating success story and I'd love to see it replicated, however, to date, no other SEZ has been as successful as Shenzhen.

Juan Du’s research and writings have been published in Asia, Europe and the United States, including The Architectural Review, Volume, Domus, Journal of Architectural Education, e-flux, Time+Architecture, Urban Flux and Urban China. Her book The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City was recently published by Harvard University Press. Juan is a recognised scholar on China’s rapid urbanisation, and her works have been featured by international journals and media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, CNN, Wired, and Nature. Juan Du asks whether Shenzhen is the blueprint for a modern Chinese city, and what lessons have been learned since Deng Xiaoping supported the opening up of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Juan Du. History of Shenzhen and the formation of Urban Villages, Special Issue on Design for the City/ Shenzhen, Urban Environment Design, 108 (2017): 34-39.

What Is Semantic Scholar?

Shenzhen was certainly not a small fishing village, at least not during its past millennium of history.

Ho called it "Engagingly written and artfully crafted", [8] and the book "shines" in portions where Du uses her knowledge of architecture. [16] Ho stated that she wished that the book examined other scholarly works on the subject. [8]

There isn't really an argumentative point to the book, besides describing this miracle of transformation. The author kind of highlights the role of individual actors, including of the mayor Liang Xiang and his role in encouraging long term investments in education, schools, and hospitals. She also sort of takes a stance on the urban villages within Shenzhen such as Baishizhou, talking about how important they, and the illegal peasant housing built within them, were to the development and growth of the city as a whole, but there really aren't any strong claims made. Which makes sense because the title is just "The story of China's instant city". Campbell, Joel (2021). "The Shenzhen experiment: the story of China's instant city". International Affairs. 97 (2): 589–590. doi: 10.1093/ia/iiab026. Juan Du. Shenzhen’s Urban Villages: A Micro-Political Tale from China’s Mega-City. In Sascha Delz, Rainer Hehl and Patricia Ventura (Eds.), Housing the Co-op: A Micropolitical Manifesto (Berlin: Ruby Press, 2020). Juan Du (2016). 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 (pp. 400-405). Shanghai: Tongji University Press. The book begins not with an abstract story of Shenzhen’s early history, but a personal tale which epitomizes its spirit of transformation. Jiang Kairui made his way to Shenzhen from the far north-east of the country in 1992, a few months after Deng Xiaoping’s now equally mythologized “Southern Tour”, in which the ostensibly retired leader toured Shenzhen and other nearby cities to affirm the policies of reform and opening which he had pioneered.