Collectieve ruimtes in arbeiderswijken in Noordoost-China: Een kritische sociaal-ruimtelijke analyse van de ‘Village of Powers’ in Harbin

The People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. After a short after-war recovery, China concentrated its national efforts on heavy industries during the first and second Five-Year Plans from 1953 to 1962. A workers' village is a living quarter constructed by the state or state-owned factories for industrial employees (and their families) in the proximity of the factory. Workers' villages played an important role in urban space production, collective lifestyle shaping, and socialist identity building in the 1950s-1970s period. It was a crucial mainstay for the novel collective life in synchronization with the collectivism ideology of the new State. The very small dwelling units/rooms were compensated by collective infrastructures and spaces to empower that type of communal life. From the late 1970s, China started its systematic market transformation. Consequently, in the 1990s the state-owned factories underwent a severe setback, resulting in extensive issues in old industrial living districts. Also, the ambitions towards ideological communal life from the State have partly changed. Along with the decline of work-unit (单位Danwei) system, the once-exclusive workers' villages changed into hybrid neighbourhoods. The former life, routine and administration approach characterized by the collectivism became diverse and complex with immigrants' (from rural areas) moving in. Those changes have put, and are putting, pressure on the original private and collective spaces, and reshaped the relationship among the inhabitants, and between the inhabitants and their living environment. In addition, due to the enormous urban regeneration and expansion, except for the few with the label of "official protected heritage identity", most workers' neighbourhoods were overlooked - being (partly) demolished or deteriorated. Nevertheless, they are China's recent heritage built for the crucial working-class of the urban population in the initial stage and still have a deep influence on contemporary social space and community life. This doctoral project focuses on a selection of workers' villages situated in Northeast China, which was "the cradle of socialist industrial construction" accommodating 56 factories out of 156 Key Projects assisted by the USSR in China's first and second Five-Year Plans. This part of China suffered the biggest shock during the remodelling period after the 1970s. In the era of the planned economy, due to the solid industrial foundation accumulated before 1949 and the geographical advantage of being close to the Soviet Union, Northeast China became the privileged region for New China's primary development centred on heavy industries. Thus, workers' villages affiliated with state-owned factories here received more support and developed more comprehensively in the 1950s. In addition, due to the full development of Danwei system, factory-Danwei communities in the Northeast were also considered to be the most extreme cases of the Enterprise Running Society企业办社会 phenomenon -- all affairs of a worker (from the cradle to the grave) were possibly carried out in his/her factory and affiliated neighbourhood. After entering the era of Reform and Opening Up, the difficulties encountered by these workers' villages in the Northeast are more severe and complex partly due to the lack of vision. The specific goal of this doctoral project intends to understand the collective space in the workers' village in Northeast China and its interplay with inhabitants' lives today of the Village of Powers in Harbin, Northeast China. Two other workers' villages - the Tiexi Workers' Village in Shenyang and the FAW Residential Area in Changchun - are examined in function of comparison. From a socio-spatial perspective, this research seeks to at first unveil the historical phenomenon of the emergence of collective living space (workers' villages) in the 1950s, and the connection with the novel socialist lifestyle and the promoted collectivism ideology during the 1950s-1970s period. With the deepening of national reforms, great changes have taken place in Chinese society since the late 1970s that also impacted the collective space and its use. The thesis then discusses the impact of these changes on three Northeastern workers' villages to reveal how they evolve in the new context. The main body of this doctoral research is to investigate currently performed societal activities and dwelling in one case - the Village of Powers (Harbin), and by this to disclose the complexity and significance of the collective space. Through the collective space we explore, the project also provides an understanding of how this knowledge can contribute for the future development of the workers' villages. Essential in this PhD is the understanding of the original concept linked to the built environment of the design of workers' villages of which the collective space was an essential part, if not the most important. The materiality of the built environment gives the condition of the collective spaces, not only in the past decades but also for the relation between the people and the heritage today. The focus of this research lies in the socio-spatial understanding of the contemporary state of the workers' villages, based on the historical analysis.

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