This book provides a definitive overview of contemporary developments in our understanding of urban life in China. Multi-disciplinary perspectives outline the most significant critical theoretical, methodological and empirical developments in our appreciation of Chinese cities in the context of an increasingly globalized world. Each chapter includes reviews and appraisals of past and current theoretical development and embarks on new innovative theoretical directions relating to Marxist, feminist, post-structural, post-colonial, and 'more-than-representational' thinking. The book provides an in-depth insight into urban change and considers in what ways theoretical engagement with Chinese cities contributes to our understanding of 'global urbanism'. Chapters explore how new critical perspectives on economic, political, social, spatial, emotional, embodied and affective practices adds value to our understanding of urban life in, and beyond, China.

Chapter 1: An introduction to critical perspectives on Chinese urbanism Part One: Space and place Chapter 2: Towards critical urbanism: urban public space in modern China Chapter 3: Urbanism as a state project: lessons from Beijing's Green Belt Chapter 4: Nature, housing and everyday life in Chinese cities Part Two: Identity, lifestyle and forms of sociability Chapter 5: Encountering strangers: prostitution and urban life in Dongguan, China Chapter 6: Greening the Chinese city: young people, environmental activism and ChinaNet Chapter 7: Interstitial spaces of caring and community: commodification, modernisation and the dislocations of everyday practice within Beijing's hutong neighourhoods Part Three: Consumption and urban cultures Chapter 8: Tasting, savouring, signalling: articularing the luxury brand experience in Chinese cities Chapter 9: Food, alcohol and the 'ideal' home in urban China Chapter 10: Pop-up urbanism: selling Old Beijing to the creative class Part Four: (Im)mobilities and materialities Chapter 11: Urban cross-border mobilities: geopolitical encounters and bordering practices of 'Taiwanese compatriots' in China Chapter 12: Contested (im)mobilities and rhythms of Chinese cities: urban transformation and 'slow life' in Sanya Chapter 13: Chinese urban informality and migrant workers' negotiation of work/life balance Part Five: Bodies, emotions and atmospheres Chapter 14: Embodying Chinese urbanism Chapter 15: Noisy cities Chapter 16: Creativity and Chinese urbanism: the moral atmosphere of Lishui Barbizon Chapter 17: Afterword: critical Chinese urbanism for the twenty-first century Bibligraphy Index