Suchergebnisse

This dissertation documents the processes and outcomes of Chinese government efforts to address national environmental problems through master planned "green development" projects. These large-scale spatial planning projects include eco-city and eco-industrial parks, and integrate goals for industrial, urban and rural development. Such efforts explicitly attempt to simultaneously "green" the economy, society and space; that is, to reduce the negative environmental impact of economic growth, to produce the social norms to support optimized use of resources, and to construct the human-ecological places where an "ecological civilization" can flourish. I find that the ideology of green development, taken from international and national sources, is projected onto local processes of place making. This process works to construct environmental resources at trans-local scales, and to justify rural dispossession as environmentally rational. I then document how national environmental governance agendas target rural society and space as backward and as the necessary site for intervention. I argue that green development in China extends practices of rural dispossession and deepens patterns of urban-rural inequality. Furthermore, I demonstrate that these patterns present significant negative environmental externalities as local governments transform rural landscapes to provide cheap land and financing for projects of China's "Green Leap Forward." To explore the policies, institutions and practices that make up these processes, this dissertation focuses on Yixing, a third-tier city in Jiangsu province, where the construction of eco-city, solar and other `green' industry projects have been yoked as the engines for rural transformation. To begin, I describe the national and regional contexts of environmental industry construction and eco-city planning. I document the growth of solar manufacturing, eco-city construction and linked projects for agricultural modernization and ecological conservation that have required the enclosure of over 330 square-kilometers of rural land and the displacement of over 55,000 residents since 2006. The local government expects to displace another 50,000 residents in master planned rural-urban transformation by 2020. I further document how these primarily state-led processes of dispossession and development planning refigure rural state-society and social-environmental relationships in the rapid construction of "new" ecologically rational city-regions. I argue that these processes are fundamentally linked to a revaluation of rural environmental resources and forms of agrarian transition that entail dispossession and the elimination of the land ownership system, which is bifurcated between state-urban and collective-rural structures. I analyze three processes through which this strategy unfolds. First, I examine the construction of a model of green development based on master-planned eco-urbanization and rural environmental governance at regional and national scales. I document and analyze the institutionalization of green development in the national policies of the Chinese government, the practices of municipal agencies, and in the approaches of transnational experts and businesses operating in China. I demonstrate that this model envisions a reallocation of rural land resources for master planned urban expansion. As its primary rationale, the model seeks to address the historical environmental failures of China's present model of industrial modernization and is predicated on restructuring municipal authority over rural land use.Second, I document how these changes shape agrarian transition by revaluing rural land as an environmental resource. I examine the environmental justification of rural dispossession and the dissolution of collective land tenure rights as economically and environmentally untenable. I argue that as rural livelihoods come to be designated as environmentally irrational and rural land is made into an object of planning, environmental value is paradoxically abstracted and divided from actual landscapes. I demonstrate that rural cash assets as well as land are enclosed into green development and contribute to circuits of accumulation based on "exporting sustainability." I show how the processes of eviction and resettlement re-inscribe historical urban-rural inequalities into a new geography of peri-urban segregation and class differentiation.Third, I argue that environmentalization in China is fundamentally tied to structural changes in territorial-administrative authority. Through an examination of local governmental practices in planning and land management, I document the construction of spatial uniformity and land resources at the national scale. I argue that in deploying a national land-use quota system, local governments fundamentally reshape the land management regime so that instead of managing the land itself, abstracted quanta of land are the objects that are being governed. This leads to negative social-environmental consequences that manifest in specific localities, and that undermine goals of sustainability at all scales. As a case study, I examine the rapid state-facilitated construction of the solar photovoltaics industry in Yixing through subsidies in land, infrastructure and finance capital. Such practices link rural dispossession in China to the global green economy. Additionally, large-scale and rapid construction on greenfield sites produces direct and indirect land-use change impacts on the carbon efficiency of solar photovoltaics manufactured in Yixing and elsewhere.

As urbanization and industrialization continue to spread through China's countryside, the central government has officially declared the construction of master planned eco-industrial zones and eco-cities as primary strategies for accelerating the transformation of industrial structure and the prevailing model of economic development, as well as for "constructing a socialist economic, politically, culturally… and ecologically civilized… harmonious society" (NPC 2011: chapter 1, np). Based on recent fieldwork, this paper demonstrates how these strategies extend beyond the "green washing" of rural land enclosure and transformation, arguing that processes of rural dispossession are linked to the commodification and circulation of natural capital. This paper analyzes processes of environmentalization and enclosure as linked state-led strategies for governing economic growth, rural transformation and interventions into global market-based solutions to climate change as integral problems of Chinese national development and modernization. As a basis for theorizing the relationships between Chinese models of "green development," forms of environmental governance and new circuits of accumulation, the paper utilizes a case study of Yixing city, where eco-city, renewable energy and ecological conservation projects are being planned in tandem, enclosing over 300 square-kilometers of rural land and displacing over 50,000 residents since 2006. The technical and discursive "dividing practices" (Foucault 1972, 1977) of local government planners are examined in conjunction with the scalar construction of rural land as a fungible national "resource" under central government policies for renewable energy development, food security, "ecological withdrawal of agriculture" and arable land reclamation quotas (e.g. State Council 2007). Following Marxian scholarship on the enclosure of access to land and the establishment of property regimes as ongoing moments of "primitive" accumulation and state-territorial projects (Thompson 1975; Harvey 2003; Hsing 2010; Peluso and Lund 2011; Corson and MacDonald 2012), this paper argues that rural land enclosure in China functions in different circuits of accumulation corresponding to varied constructed scales of environmentalization. The paper analyzes such environmentalized transformations, including ecological set-asides, non-fossil fuel energy generation, and high-intensity non-village agriculture and the requisite conversion of collectively owned rural land into state controlled urban land, as a process of territorialization. Drawing upon the work of Poulantzas and recent scholarship on environmental enclosures (e.g. the volume by Peluso and Lund 2011), I argue that the construction of discrete environmental functions for—and apart from—rural land is fundamental to the constitution of "homogenizing enclosure" and territoriality as the "institutional materiality of the state" (Poulantzas 1978: 93–107). Following Lefebvrian analysis of the production of space (Lefebvre 1991[1974]; e.g. Roth 2008), I find that such abstraction refigures the local in a process of territorialization, highlighting the importance of state power to the establishment of market-based forms of environmental governance and the circulation of "natural capital."

AbstractIn this article we portray and unpack the fabric of urban expansion in contemporary Luanda. In doing so, we examine interdependencies and complementarities between the organization of oil extraction off the coast of Angola, the emergence of particular modalities of modernist city planning for the expansion of its capital city, and the proliferation of cement blocks in the making of new urban forms throughout its burgeoning peripheries. By showing how urban development has unfolded through the interconnected realization of multiple kinds of systematizing blocks—namely oil blocks, city blocks and cement blocks—we analyse key material components in the production of new markets and urban spaces in the Angolan capital. By tracing forms of capitalism and modularity in the making of contemporary Luanda, we develop the concept of blocos urbanism to draw attention to modes of standardization and the production of legibility in contemporary processes of urbanization. Through this study, we aim to contribute to the conceptual apparatus for deciphering our global urban condition.

Purpose To explore the physical activity level of community environmental volunteering (CEV) participants and the differences in physical functions and daily activity patterns between the older adults who engaged in intensive CEV (≥15 hours/week) and non-intensive CEV (<15 hours/week) groups. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Three recycling stations in Taiwan. Sample In total, 113 community-dwelling older adults who regularly participated in CEV. The response rate was 53%. Measures The ActiGraph wGT3x-BT accelerometer for the percentage of sedentary, light, and moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) of CEV time and awaken time; the Jamar hand dynamometer for grip strength; and the MicroFET3 muscle testing dynamometer for knee extension strength. Analysis Analysis of covariance with the baseline characteristics as covariates. Results Overall, MVPA, light, and sedentary activities accounted for 53.73%, 41.10%, and 5.23% of CEV time, respectively. The intensive group (n = 61) displayed greater dominant handgrip strength ( P = .004) and higher MVPA percentage in daily life ( P = .044) than the non-intensive group (n = 52). Conclusion CEV provides sufficient opportunities for older adults to perform physical activity. Intensive CEV is related to greater handgrip strength but not lower limb strength. Further study is needed to establish the causal relationship between CEV and health variates.