What’s in a name: The “new village” in Shanghai, 1930-1980

Abstract

New residential villages appeared in Shanghai as early as the 1920s, and by the 1930s, they were already an important part of the geography of residential life in the city. In this process, business capital, corporates, and local government consumed the original utopian space characterized by the symbols of equality, justice, hygiene, and health, while absorbing the idea of the ideal Garden City. This idea was adopted by the Chinese communist party and it was the symbol of the working class becoming the master of socialist society in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a radical break with the old capitalist city space. The authors use Lefebvre’s idea to analyze the consequences of the new residential villages for the production of social and physical space in Shanghai from 1920 to 1980.