PSU – China Innovations in Urbanization

Internship Report 2015 Hannah Silver

Introduction When I applied for the PSU-China Innovations in Urbanization internship at the beginning of this year, I presented and responded to the following quote from Yu Hua’s book China in Ten Words: “When society undergoes a drastic shift, an extremely repressed era soon becomes a very lax one [. . . and] it’s like being on a swing: the higher you soar on one side, the higher you rise on the other.” I speculated whether China’s restriction and resulting reflexive binge on urban development, technology, and pop culture could swing so far to again push the country into a reverse. After my short stay in Beijing this summer, I had hoped to have gained some insight into the country and culture that Americans consistently both laud and condemn... but mostly ignore. Several months and an internship later, I could not claim that I have any special knowledge of China’s trajectory. In fact, I would now probably argue that China's "binge" is nothing worse than anything America is up to. I can note in myself a somewhat humiliating shift in perspective. While I considered China a powerful entity prior to my visit, I do not think I had a full understanding of what it means for China to be a world superpower. I grew up in the United States, with exposure mostly to American and sometimes British news sources, so my understanding of China has been shaped by the voices of the media. These voices have a tendency to present China as an “almost there” - a country that aspires to the levels of production, development, and cultural prominence that America exhibits. The view from over here is that China is trying to catch up with an established norm. I am sorry to say that from the other side, it only looks that way part of the time. China has its own plan. China’s size and population mean that companies operating just within China, serving just Chinese people, really don’t need the rest of the world to make it. China is visibly testing the waters to see if it needs the rest of the world - limiting trade, trying to draw its expats home. Yes, Chinese urban planners and architects revere American and European design. On the other hand, in everyday life, Chinese people do not feel like they’re missing out without the amenities American’s consider essential, such as Google or Facebook. The reality is that China has the power to do everything their own way. For example, they have Baidu, a company as advanced and powerful as Google, fulfilling the Chinese people's’ technological needs. While we may not hear about it in America, millions if not over a billion people are actively using it in China.

In my daily work at my internship at China Architecture and Design Research Group (CADG) this summer, I mostly studied qualities of the built environment that encourage development of thriving public spaces. I did not simply delve into European and American theories on placemaking, but did on the ground research in a park in Beijing. Without this first-hand knowledge, which was heavily informed by my Chinese colleague’s knowledge of Beijing streets and Chinese culture, my research would have been useless. This was actually quite heartening for me, as my impression of design and planning in China had been that it sought something Western-inspired. In practice, all of the planners and designers I encountered were quite enthusiastic about what they could learn from the rest of the world, but were excited to blend it with Chinese design solutions. I felt that the strongest quality of those planners and designers was their sincere earnestness to build successful communities. Their limitation was time and government regulation. Most of these workers are in the office until 8 PM, doing their best to pump out project after project. They work incredibly hard. It’s also incredibly hard to find honest demographic information and map layers. These enormous design firms answer directly the the government. While I do worry about those aspects of the sector, that earnestness is an incredibly hopeful sign that China just may have the opportunity to develop some very creative solutions to building an urban landscape that supports its 1 billion plus residents. But that is all development on the Chinese end of things. When I reflect on my experience in China, I feel that most of my perspective gained was about America and how it presents itself to the world. While nearly all of the schoolchildren in China learn English and keep up to date about happenings in America, Americans seem to have little awareness of China at all. While answering simple questions about daily life and cultural norms in America for my Chinese friends, I found my explanations were often difficult to convey and helped to flip my understanding of how China’s millions might see us. President Obama’s announcement this last week that a new program will aspire to teach a million American schoolchildren to speak Mandarin Chinese by 2020 will promote an enormous leap in our country’s perspective of China and relationship with the nation. More Americans need to comprehend that the “other” they can’t quite understand from their perspective is actually representing a far greater piece of the world than we are; i.e., America is not the norm. It is not the only hub of culture. It is not the only world leader. It is simply a mid-sized piece of the world puzzle. I am unendingly grateful for the support that the PSU-China Innovations in Urbanization program, ISS, the Internationalization Council, and the Nickerson Scholarship provided to make this internship possible, as well as the incredible help and support I received at CADG this summer. Living with Less If you’ve had longer than a 15 minute conversation with me in the last 6 months, you’re probably familiar with my recent minimalist manifesto. Overwhelmed by the pure excess of a typical American life – too many clothes, belongings, items on the to-do list, commitments, goals, social networking accounts, etc. – I’ve decided to make a conscious effort to streamline my life and belongings into activities and items that serve to bring me joy and utility. A secondary effect is usually having a smaller impact on the environment, simply by buying and wasting less, but of course, if I emphasize travel as my activity, well… who knows where my ecological footprint stands. The point is to just minimize distractions and be present with what you are doing and what you have. While it’s definitely a challenge–in no way do I claim to be a pro at it–I’m feeling like I’ve made some major steps in the last year to own less and be more proactive about doing that which is good for me.

One of the things I really like about travel is that it forces you to live a minimalist lifestyle. I brought to China only one large carry-on backpack full of clothes and supplies + my overly-large purse full of my computer and miscellany. I did a bit of construction-type work in Mongolia before I started my internship in Beijing, so my few items of clothing are generally multipurpose; i.e. my black office pants are technically outdoor Columbia gear, and most of my shirts happen to be dri-fit. I’ve done my best to not buy TOO many things while here, though on occasion I’ve found that I just might benefit from having a pair of scissors, or a towel, or a set of silverware – those little things, which I intend mostly to leave with people here who can use them. (Oh, also a couple of pieces of clothing because I realized that despite being very utilitarian, my outfits were completely unfashionable in a company that employs a lot of architects and urban designers–like I said, I’m definitely not a pro at this.) Unfortunately, China seems to be the land of single-use stuff. The towel I bought was a minimal investment, yes, but by the time I’m done using it after two months, it’s probably going to be falling apart. This leaves me boggled by Chinese consumption. I’m finding that people here do not own much, which I think is pretty great. The clothes line I walk by on the way to work has the same few dresses on it every few days and the people at work often wear the same shirts several days in a row (GREAT for people like me who own just a few shirts… take a moment to think about how weird it is that we don’t do this in the U.S., even when they’re perfectly clean). However, most of the belongings people have are still pretty cheaply made and expected to be replaced at some point – they’re just not made to last. Obviously that means production is cheap, the item is cheap, great for people who don’t make a lot of money. But if you’re constantly buying items that are built for only a handful uses, you reinvest repeatedly, and that is a LOT OF WASTE. There is a LOT of trash here. People buy a LOT of bottled water and a LOT of this low-quality plastic stuff and there are a LOT OF PEOPLE. Not all that different from America, but there are just a lot more millions of people making a lot of waste here. On the other hand, people here don’t use very much space. I live in a dorm building and there are families living in what I imagine are the same-sized rooms to what I have. When you need to fit 22 million people into one city, inevitably each person gets a lot less space than the we’d find in the average American single-family detached home. One of my colleagues is currently a graduate student in the school next door to CADG, and she is in a dorm room the size of mine (which I have to myself) with FIVE other girls, in three bunk beds. And that doesn’t mean they have less belongings than your average girl in a dorm, they just fit it all in pretty tightly in a maze-like fashion. One of my colleagues has what is a comparatively nice apartment (has a kitchen!), but to make the cost work out, she shares a double bed with her friend from high school. So I’d like you to think about your most unpleasant roommate situation you’ve ever had, then imagine what it would have been like if you had to SHARE YOUR BED WITH YOUR ROOMMATE. I’m assuming these two get along pretty well, but you’re bound to have some off days, even with your best friend, and going to sleep with them right next to you is a pretty grating thought, in my opinion. That’s because I’m a completely spoiled Westerner and used to a lot more personal space. I think Chinese people in general are used to crowds and sharing space because it’s kind of unavoidable. My friend who studied in Scotland had a Chinese friend there who was very off-put by the stillness even of Edinburgh, which is, as you know, a city…. just significantly less crowded than Beijing. Though I find it unlikely that I’ll miss the crowds, I think I’ll bring back to my U.S. life a strengthened appreciation for the minimalist and tiny home movements (though I’d prefer a small, rather than tiny, home), and a drive to encourage others to think similarly. Part of it is that I don’t think I need as much stuff as American consumer culture makes me think. The other part

is that I am terrified of the impact that our Western consumer culture is having on Chinese culture. It’s simply not sustainable. If you don’t have a good sense for the difference between what WE own and what the REST of the world owns, read this article and let me know what you think… The average U.S. household has 300,000 things, from paper clips to ironing boards. U.S. children make up 3.7% of children on the planet but have 47% of all toys and children’s books. Pretty darned striking. Couple of questions: If everyone in China strives for the same Western lifestyle, what sort of a percentage increase in STUFF will we have? (With more given numbers, this could be an SAT question.) If you own approximately 300,000 things (or maybe 50,000-75,000 to count for the other people in your household) and pack two bags to spend two months in China, how many of those things will you actually bring or need? How many of them would you forget you have once you can’t see them? I didn’t do a count, kind of wish I had, but I’d estimate that I have something like 100 individual items. Wish I had some of my other belongings, but… hopefully point taken. In theory you could live with <300 items and still be fashionable and functional. So this is an urban planning blog, you say? Well, let’s think about how we use space, why don’t we? Let’s think about how to design housing that is not only small and exclusive to certain users (i.e. micro-apartments and studios) but also family-sized housing (multiple bedrooms, not just housing for childless couples) that is well-designed to support more people – it doesn’t need to be a whole house. What about duplexes? Quads? What about designing more and better parks so people don’t have to have their own yards? What about better and more community spaces, public spaces, etc, so people get out of the house? How about thinking about how we can support more local businesses and industries that support the production of higher-quality items instead of big box stores that sell cheaply made, CHEAP stuff? How about supporting higher minimum wage so people can actually afford that higher-quality stuff? I definitely don’t have an answer for how you can teach the whole world to buy better stuff instead of more stuff, since that’s probably most peoples’ go-to, but…. I didn’t claim to have an answer here. I’m just pondering. CADG Street Park Project I thought I should give you a run-through of what we’ve been working on at CADG in Beijing. Since I arrived, I’ve hopped in on a project that Jasmine had started to work on with a colleague, Yang Huiyi. The project is to profile a thriving urban street that strikes a balance between private and public (commercial and residential, lots of public open space) in Beijing. We’ve settled upon Huangchenngen Relic Site Park, which is a street park (aka a linear, or long straight line of a park that follows a street) fairly close to the Forbidden City in the center of Beijing. This should be a fairly replicable study that could be done in 9 other cities to profile other thriving public spaces – our office Director plans to turn the 10 park reviews into a publishable work down the road. Our two major components of the project are to:

• Develop a site assessment based on quantitative (physical/built environment) data using urban design and social interaction-based criteria with distinct metrics – i.e. walk around the park and give it a score based on if it meets certain urban design standards having

to do with safety, accessibility, openness, complexity, etc – the things people tend to like in their parks that can be somewhat quantified.

• Gather data about users of the space and activities done there through a more personal data collection – more on this later.

Then, we pull together these two major elements, do some analysis of how the built environment can support people’s needs and activities, and make some recommendations. Here are some quick shots of the park, which is in total over 2.5 km long (over a mile, for you non-metrics), so there is a lot of variety in the space, and a lot of different activities. We’ve honed in on just a small portion of the park that would be more manageable for our small study, but these give an idea of the total vibrancy:

Just a casual right-of-way napping obstruction. Note how the placement of the tree in the sidewalk makes this a pretty useless path anyway unless you and your friends walk everywhere

in single file.

Awesome historic buildings adjacent to the site, and a bike lane!

Looking in from the sidewalk.

Guys playing chess.

Weird closed off underground walkway – this helps to cross the very busy intersection just above it, but apparently it was closed after someone set a fire in it….

One of our rainy site visit days – I just liked the twin babies wearing matching clothes. :)

Entrance to a residential area immediately adjacent to the chess area.

Practicing calligraphy. Hopefully it doesn’t say anything inappropriate because I plan on using this image in the report.

Mmmm yep two crows in a cage at the convenience store at the end of our section of the park.

Lots of nappers throughout the park during the hot afternoons.

The components that we have worked on thus far are developing the system of criteria (how to rank the built environment to show whether it is conducive to safety, activity, etc – Jasmine did most of this), working out a few interview questions for people to ask about their perceptions of the space, mapping the site, taking tons of photos, doing interviews, doing people counts (trying to see which parts of the selected area are most popular and connecting that to the built features). The component that I’m very excited about is the interviews section of the report. When we had initially discussed the project and report, the plan had been to develop the built environment criteria and an intercept survey. My thought around the intercept survey was that it would be difficult to get enough people who were willing to take a survey, have it translated effectively (i.e. if Jasmine and I worded it very precisely and then had it translated to Chinese it may lose the original connotation of the questions), etc… On top of that, a question I kept asking about our data collection was: WHY? Thanks to Professor Bates, I know to seriously consider the questions we are hoping to answer with data collection before jumping into it. I wanted to make sure that doing a survey was really in our best interest given how much time it would take. Ultimately, I felt that we would be better served with more descriptive, more personal information about how people use the park. When you think about it, given China’s massive population, system of governance, and general collective approach to things, the common theme about data collection being more aggregate-oriented, or focused on the larger sample size, is not surprising. I feel that a narrative-based approach to information collection will give an completely new angle to the project and show that not everyone uses the park the same way. The variety of individuals and their activities may help to reveal the park’s successful elements, which is our ultimate goal. Urban design projects here tend to be MASSIVE, but they ultimately serve human beings – so I hope that this angle of our report helps to humanize that design a little bit. I proposed that we do several “user profiles” in our report. This way, we would need to ask just a handful of different users to answer a few questions, but allow for the conversation to be more natural. If you’re a fan of Humans of New York, you’ll know the kind of look had in mind. I was thinking we could do a snapshot of the person and a summary of what they had mentioned in their conversational interview: what they were doing in the park, what they like or don’t like about the park, thoughts about the park in general, how often they come there, etc. So far we are still transcribing results of the interviews, but we do have some lovely photos of a wide variety of users, and we’re really excited to include this in the report!

Hilarious kid who just moved to the city to join his mother here, as she had moved to the city to

work before him. We’ve seen him several times.

Two ladies who lead a dance group in the park 2x EVERY DAY. They learned the dance on the Internet and gathered a few friends originally. Without any word of mouth beyond the people they see in the park, the group was at about 30 people when we counted one evening!

Security guard in our section of the park – when we asked him when he comes here, he said he pretty much works all the time, so he knows many of the regulars.

Some nice grandmas who gather in the park every day to chat. They were pretty upset that Jasmine and I didn’t speak Chinese and wanted to ask a ton of questions through Yang. Another part of the project that I’ve spent a ton of time on is mapping our section. We needed the map for our people counts and also just as a reference. Unfortunately, the Google and Baidu maps available for this area are not very detailed, so I’ve walked top to bottom about a million times

measuring and drawing out all of the space’s details. It’s about a .5km stretch, I think. For the first few days, I was actually measuring with footsteps, knowing approximately how many centimeters my shoes were. Once I got a measuring tape, I found I was generally accurate enough to hang onto my old measurements, WHEW! Here’s a process image….

I know, it’s like I learned nothing in Architecture school…. my handwriting, right?? Ew.

And what that has been turned into with the help of Sketch Up and Adobe Illustrator…. still a major work in progress, as this is only about 1/6 of the section of the park we’re looking at…. :/ Now I am spending time setting up a document in InDesign (my favorite!!! kind of serious) so we can turn all of our collected information from several longgggg days on site (left at 9pm on day, arrived at 7am on another…. and it gets hot out there, people!) into this nice report. Jasmine leaves next week :( so we need to make sure we get much of it pulled together with Yang before she goes. And then on to the next project!

Benefit of long days on site = putting dinner on the project tab.

Architecture Nerd I wanted to share some of the photos I’ve been taking as I’ve explored around Beijing. Much of what I’m interested in is urban design and architecture, so a lot of my photos are of buildings, etc. I’ll try to add in some human interest photos, as well. These are some of my highlights from the last few weeks!

First day of work at CADG! We are in a very attractive building that is just about a 10 minute walk from our dorm. Thanks to Jasmine for taking the obligatory photo.

Enjoying this Le Corbusier (famous architect for you non-nerds) call-out at the edge of the tennis courts right next to my dorm.

Very exciting structure dedicated to a queen mother (or something?) at Beihei Park, where I went to run one Saturday morning. Despite being there at the moment the gates opened, the

park was already packed and I had to dodge people on the path the whole time! Still a fun place to visit.

Jasmine, expressing the pure joy we felt when we were given plastic gloves to eat our

sandwiches. We’re thinking of bringing the sand-hand craze to America. You know you never actually wash your hands before you eat with them, just admit it…

Got caught in a crazy rainstorm in the NW part of the city with Rae-Leigh’s wonderful friend Althea. Of course two native Portlanders colliding in Beijing would cause a massive downpour!

It’s only natural.

Beautiful art museum right near our site. I decided to check it out one day.

The subway station at Olympic Park…

… where we had a picnic with some colleagues.

Here’s a reminder of another thing that is at Olympic Park (the Bird’s Nest stadium, designed by

my company!).

And another thing at the Olympic Park, don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a lookout tower, also designed by an architect at our company! And in exciting news, CADG has also designed and will now get to build another stadium for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Everyone is very excited to

have received the bid, as you can imagine!

And this is what I looked like behind the camera for a lot of those above photos, though I have

to admit that I’ve stopped wearing my mask most of the time. I figured breathing the air here will be like picking up smoking for just two months of my life, so I’ll be fine so long as I don’t

continue to breathe polluted air once I go home – pretty sure I’ll be doing just fine in the fresh Pacific NW!