Production of Railwayscape in urban environment:Analysing railway heritage tourism potential in Siliguri City,India

For a long time,it has been argued that the theories and practices devoted to urban planning and management should conform to the fundamental role of planning policies in the production of urban space,but not merely the spatial distribution of the produced services.Towards this wider connotation,this study introduces the notion of Railwayscape,grounded on the theory of‘The Production of Space’,to examine the role of railway station districts as catalysts of urban development through the social production of urban space.The present research sets out to establish the notion of Railwayscape and apply it in a railway heritage,i.e.,the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway(DHR)and its point of inception,Siliguri City,India.Accordingly,a criteria-based evaluation of four railway station districts(New Jalpaiguri,Siliguri Town,Siliguri Junction,and Sukna)in Siliguri and its surroundings was performed.The information regarding the selected four railway station districts is obtained through field observation and key informant consultation,supplemented by published literature and remote sensing data.This evaluation is succeeded by the strengths,weaknesses,opportunities and threats(SWOT)analysis accentuating the potential strengths,weaknesses,opportunities and threats associated with the selected four railway station districts and their prospects to become the potential Railwayscape.The results of this research show that there is no railway station district in Siliguri that can fully meet the demands of the locals and tourists,therefore,relfecting a lack of awareness of the historical values of these districts.The results also indicate that there are significant differences in the relative potentials of railway station districts to become the Railwayscape in urban environment.The outcomes of this research,therefore,are expected to encourage policy-making insitutions and practitioners to realise the‘place value’of some railway station districts and their potentials to yield better economic,social and structural virtue for a wide range of actors.

Community Planning Based on Socio-Spatial Production:Explorations in “New Qinghe Experiment”

Rapid urbanization and the booming of diversified community development requirements have challenged the development of community planning in China from theory to practice. Community planning, especially with localized and practice-oriented characteristics, is now facing many limitations. These include aspects such as traditional urban planning techniques that mainly focus on space, a restricted research perspective, as well as basic planning theories that are mostly imported from the West. Using the perspective of socio-spatial dialectic for reference, this paper summarizes the evolution process of Chinese modern residential space planning and design from residential district planning under the planned economy system, to housing estate planning in the real estate development, and to community planning in the new era, presenting an important characteristic of transitioning from "producing space" to "production of space," with "society" gradually replacing "space" and returning to the goal of production. Based on the analysis on the main limitations and problems in the former work of community planning in China, the paper takes the practical exploration on community planning in the "New Qinghe Experiment" in Haidian District, Beijing for an example. Aimed at the prominent problem of an extreme imbalance between "urbanization of space" and "urbanization of population" in the current Qinghe area, the key objective, means, and technical path of new-type community planning are proposed, within which three significant transition features are demonstrated, including going from "need-oriented" to "capital-oriented," from "interest intervention" to "relationship intervention," and from "community construction" to "community building."

Post-Reform New Town Development in China

In this paper, we present an overview of urban practice in China since the late 1970s and come up with a refreshed concept regarding "new towns" as existing in a widely different politico-economic context. With the urbanization of capital being the theoretical backbone of this paper, we attempt to reveal basic laws inherent in the emergence and proliferation of various forms of urban spaces within a rapidly modernizing country. Considered from various viewpoints such as land institutions, national policy designs, and the fi nancial capital and bank system, our paper covers: a historical overview of China's post-reform new towns, a theoretical framework to explain related phenomena, empirical approaches to interpreting the contributory factors, and a theoretical outline for further research.