A Philip E. Lilienthal Book. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015. 235 pp. (Figures, map.) US$26.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-520-28448-7.
The pace and scale of urban development in contemporary China is unmatched in human history. The social and environmental implications of this are hotly debated. Many decry the forced displacement of long-time city residents or periurban farmers to make way for new construction, or the increased resource consumption that now makes China the world’s largest carbon emitter. Others point to the opportunity to build energy-efficient technologies and resource-conserving designs into new buildings and entire city plans. Such plans for an “eco-city” on Chongming Island, outside of Shanghai, inspired Julie Sze to apply a critical view to narratives around “ecological” urban development in China. She consciously draws on her background as both an American Studies scholar and a descendent of emigrants from Chongming to unpack the stories that international developers and the Chinese government tell about cities, technology, and globalization.
Fantasy Islands is organized around three case studies, each a fantasy in some sense: the Dongtan eco-city on Chongming, billed as the world’s largest such project but never built; the “One City, Nine Towns” projects that have incongruously attempted to replicate various European styles in real estate developments around Shanghai; and the 2010 World Expo that, like many prior world’s fairs, presents its host country’s vision of a global future. Sze punctuates her personal observations with details about the development ambitions of each site drawn from a wide range of academic and journalistic sources. The picture that emerges from the three cases is of American and European architects uncritically embracing the Chinese government’s ambitions to promote urbanization, globalization, and technological solutions to social and environmental challenges.
Sze draws on the theoretical framing of James Scott’s influential book Seeing Like a State (1998) and Warren Magnussen’s subsequent article “Seeing Like a City” (in the book Critical Urban Studies, 2010), which call attention to issues of power relations in state-initiated projects. The Chinese government’s development strategy is based in a “top-down and technocratic view of environmental development” (101). While promising to address urgent environmental problems—most notably, global climate change—it also has the potential to make a great deal of money for transnational architectural and engineering firms. These motivations can lead international environmentalists and developers alike “to a willful blindness to the negative consequences of projects that … end up creating or exacerbating other social injustices” (28).
Fantasy Islands offers a much-needed critique of the collusion between the Chinese state and key transnational developers, pointing out the language of “eco-desire” that permeates their public statements and promotional materials. However, while the book comprehensively reviews the secondary literature around the three case studies, we hear relatively few of the voices of the people displaced by these developments. Sze cites one example of a human rights case brought by a family displaced by the World Expo, but that is countered by an official statement that “the relocation has been widely acclaimed by residents” (127–128). The story of a family friend still living in a crowded, outdated apartment suggests “why some Shanghainese are … unsentimental about relocation and change, especially if it means more money, a little more privacy, and cleanliness” (49). No doubt that represents many urbanites’ views, but that perspective is not shared by the displaced farmers and villagers who are responsible for thousands of protests across China each year, some violent. Some have had their relocation stipends skimmed off by corrupt officials, or been displaced multiple times (Chongming itself was a relocation site for farmers displaced by the Three Gorges Dam project).
Even the urbanites’ attitudes about these new developments are shaped by the relentless state rhetoric that maps “urban” and “international” onto “modern” and “desirable.” The target of this rhetoric is primarily domestic, a point readers could miss in Sze’s discussion of the English-language marketing materials for the projects, such as the slogan for the World Expo (“Better City, Better Life”); as she does note, “the official meaning changes based on whether it is aimed at English- or Chinese-speaking audiences” (139) (a better translation of the Chinese slogan might be “Cities Make Life Better”). The domestic propaganda purpose of the fair is clear in the words of a designer of one of the pavilions celebrating urban life: fair visitors from across China “come here to understand the city and to know what the city is. This is the original goal of the expo and also why our country invested so much money in this expo to make Chinese people … realize their world citizenship” (145). Sze dismisses as vague bureaucratic language the official designation of the Chongming project as a “test point” for the construction of “ecological civilization” (38), but that term situates this endeavour in the Chinese Communist Party’s longstanding practice of using test points and model units to popularize various policies, a point that would not be missed by a domestic audience.
Fantasy Islands concludes with a conversation with the reader about the lessons of the book, gained from the author’s “uniquely American vantage point [as a] prototypical immigrant offspring, … an Asian American suspicious of China-bashing as much as a committed environmentalist” (162–163). In addition to meeting Sze’s goal of “interject[ing] some healthy skepticism into the eco-city trend,” the book succeeds in demonstrating how an American Studies scholar can bridge disciplinary and geographical boundaries to contribute to the ever-growing literature on the city in China. Her warning “against any simple design or technological fix” for environmental challenges will resonate as these urban models from Shanghai continue to spread across China and beyond.
Mark Henderson
Mills College, Oakland, USA
pp. 635-637