Spatialization of Happiness in Chongqing Watershed. A critical analysis of the mechanisms of urban space production in relation to the current local management of the waterscape

Despite the vast research on the recent urban development of Chinese coastal cities, little has been written on the current process of urban metamorphosis taking place in south-west China. Literature is predominantly focused on tracking down the changes in local urban planning through the explanation of zoning and gentrification patterns that are often depicted as a mere copycat of some “Western” megacities. Furthermore, the landscape is rarely considered as an active participant of the changing phase, being rather seen as the background on which human agency imposes itself: Despite offering a much more holistic vision of the problem, the relation between water and land management in urban areas is often underestimated in the field of Chinese studies.
The area of research is located along the Yangzi River Basin, in the sector of the Chongqing Municipality, which is situated between the river and its local major tributary, the Jialing River. The watershed ecosystem created by the hills that surround the city, includes the aforementioned rivers as well as other tributary rivers, ditches, natural and artificial lakes, hot springs and underground water flows. This thesis investigates current practices of re-styling the image of the city of Chongqing through an analysis of urban and sub-urban district distribution of spaces of exclusion, i.e. gated communities, as a particular phenomenon entangled in new “comprehensive urban-rural planning” logics. Specifically, it is analyzed how the local administration makes use of the lakes, the main river shores, and the hot springs to carry out the urbanization process based on a pattern of gentrification and zoning. In fact, the watershed plays a fundamental role in determining the monetary value of an estate as well as its potential in suggesting an “atmosphere of happiness”. Therefore, in this thesis the relational mechanisms that favor the production of urban space for the elite and the mass consumption through the overall commodification of the environment are unraveled. The main questions it addresses are: How is Chinese institutional transition affecting the relationships of man-nature and natural resources-economy? How does “ideology-based governance” work at the urban level to benefit a particular developmental strategy based on land monetization? What kind of discourses are structured to enforce the local government territorial vision? Are there any forms of resistance to the phenomena of zoning and gentrification?
Rhetorics inspired by a sense of modernist renaissance and Chinese classic tradition (made tangible through propaganda posters and advertising), the technocratic blueprint in water/land management, and the spatial achievements of the upscale real estate sector as supported by the law, have been the three fields of inquiry. The eleven-month period of fieldwork between September 2014 and July 2015 in Chongqing was based on participant observation, photographic monitoring and archival research. Discourse and visual analysis following semiotics have been the methods employed to examine the data. This was combined with a social media analysis of unofficial data, and space analysis.
The overarching argument of the dissertation is that because of its peculiar characteristics, the Chongqing watershed has been strategically absorbed into an ideological experiment of urban planning where nature as representation is performed in fetishized manners. The waterscape as imagined space is extremely loaded with ideological power, favoring the acceptance of those individualist living behaviors that have deteriorated the sense of responsibility toward the equal management of natural resources, compromising those local social practices based on a previous set of values no longer shared by the elite. The socio-political request for environmental protection is linked to discourses that emphasizing wealth, hygiene, and security, should constitute the fundamental of material and spiritual happiness.
The significance of this study is that it informs our theoretical understanding of contemporary urban planning in south-west China by introducing a focus on the relational structure of water and land management hitherto lacking, as well as on mass media influence in the process of creation of new urban spaces. It also informs our empirical understanding of the Chinese state-building practice in the terms of a recursive pattern seeking to prove historical continuity through a selective knowledge of tradition and culture, whose outcomes are institutionalized at the urban level to legitimize the local politics and make sense of the spatial changes.