Negotiating Urban Space

Cambridge, Massachusettes: Harvard University Press, 2009. Later printing. Octavo in gray cloth, gilt tiles to spine; 361 pp: illustrations (b&w); 24 cm Fine; a clean and tight copy. Hardcover. ISBN: 9780674035614

"Urbanization was central to development in late imperial China. Yet its impact is heatedly debated, although scholars agree that it triggered neither Weberian urban autonomy nor Habermasian civil society. This book argues that this conceptual impasse derives from the fact that the seemingly continuous urban expansion was in fact punctuated by a wide variety of "dynastic urbanisms." Historians should, the author contends, view urbanization not as an automatic by-product of commercial forces but as a process shaped by institutional frameworks and cultural trends in each dynasty." --Publisher | Contents:, A New Approach to Chinese Urbanism, "We Must Be Taxed", To Wall or Not to Wall, Imaging Nanjing : A Genealogy, Nanjing Through Contemporary Mouths and Ears