Gerardo Semprebon

With the turn of the millennium, Chinese central government issued arrays of policies targeted to promote virtuous cycles of vitalization in rural areas, mitigate the socio-economic gap with urbanised regions, and face the problem of food security. The current transition is leading China to have an ever-saturated land where the boundaries between human settlements are elusive and blurred, shaping what is scholarly labelled as an urban-rural continuum. The settlement’s schemes realized over the last years, that consists of small or medium size towns as the result of natural villages relocation or new agglomerations, intercepts the call for urbanity, and its related amenities in terms of infrastructure and services – or, in aword, the desire for ahouse in the city – emerging from the marginalized rural citizens. The authors found that such controversial practices are shaping the new Chinese countryside which, conceived as aform of sustainable development by national programs, turned out to impact significantly on the people lifestyle as well as the built environment. Based on several months on-field observations and recent literature, the paper reveals atwo-fold degree of resilience: weak about the real production of space for dwelling and robust about the intangible culture composed by indigenous beliefs and symbolism entangled with the concepts of home and family

In 2010, the municipality of Shanghai started the “Huangpu River Comprehensive Development Plan”, a large regeneration initiative including the Expo site, targeted to revitalize the river banks and generally the urban environment, making Xuhui waterfront one of the six key construction areas of the 12th Five-Year Plan in Shanghai. Formerly one of the largest industrial districts, the so-called West Bund area has experienced a process of substantial transformation, currently still ongoing. Particular attention has been paid to the rehabilitation of the riverside, as a source of landscape enhancement, providing a system of open spaces and public facilities able to meet the dweller’s demands and to attract touristic fluxes. For this reason, the West Bund Project represents one of the most relevant regeneration initiative currently taking place in Shanghai. This paper aims to investigate, starting from this specific case-study, the role of water in the definition of cultural and natural elements, revealing new perspectives for the revitalization of the urban environment.