ABSTRACT
During the twentieth century Chinese urban parks germinated and then flourished against the backdrop of fluctuating social and political contexts. This short-narrative outlines the history of Nanjing’s urban parks from the 1900s to 2000s. Its broad chronological phases can be summed up as follows: Initialization propelled by the early modernization (mid-nineteenth century -1911), Embodied nationalism in the capital’s construction (1912–1937), Desolate and stagnant places: the 2nd Sino-Japanese war and the Liberation War (1937–1949), Merit, then evil in the fluctuating propagandas (1949–1979), Commercialized and open space (1980s–2000s). The establishment and transformation of urban parks in Nanjing is mainly attributed to the elite, authorities and planners’ interweaving involvements etching on the urban palimpsest and historical geographical features, conditioned by the unstable social-political process.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this article, Dr Lingyun Han for her insightful suggestions, and Dr Emily Hayes for English editing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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Zhen Xu
Zhen Xu, PhD, State Certified Urban Planner of China, is an associate professor at College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University (China). His field of interests are urban morphology and open space, landscape history, healthy places and historical-GIS. He was PI of NSFC project Research on Open space morphology of Nanjing with historical-GIS approach and visiting researcher at CGA of Harvard University and IURD of UC Berkeley working on open space in Nanjing during the twentieth century. Currently, he is PI of NSFC project Research on physical activity in urban open space with HIA approach, and exploring landscape analytics for urban design and territorial planning.