The National New Area as an Infrastructure Space: Urbanization and the New Regime of Circulation in China

Abstract

This paper proposes an infrastructure analytic for exploring the urbanizing landscapes of China's national new areas. In an effort to develop a less city-centred approach to the transformations underway in these spaces, I consider the new area as an infrastructure space in which the conventional distinctions between rural and urban have become increasingly meaningless. Such an approach draws our attention to the ways large-scale infrastructures of connectivity are driving a decentred form of urban development in which the livelihoods of residents are shaped by access to networks more than proximity to city centres. Based on case-study research of urbanizing villages and the rapid transformation of rural livelihoods in Gui'an New Area in Guizhou province, I suggest that an infrastructure analytic sheds light on the ways national new areas can be understood as particular events in an unfolding regime of circulation that has come to dominate urban forms worldwide.