Negotiating the urban and rural: village-based transformation strategies in Panyu

Abstract

Lying at the heart of the Pearl River Delta, Panyu is neither here nor there: an in-between landscape of industrial estates, villages, and farms, superhighways and ancient canals, populated in equal measure by villagers who have deep historical roots in the region, and by more recent migrants who have flocked to Panyu’s manifold workshops, factories, and back offices. Located on the fringes of larger urban centers such as Guangzhou, Foshan, and Dongguan, Panyu’s polycentric, heterogeneous landscape is often overlooked, or worse, discounted as a backwater, filled with antiquated reminders of Guangdong’s rural past that have ‘not yet’ been urbanized. However, that it is precisely these overlapping ‘in-between’ valences—between rural and urban, between agriculture and industry, and between villagers and migrants—that make Panyu an excellent lens for interpreting broader changes in the social, aesthetic, and economic landscapes of China’s megacity regions. Rather than charting a progressive and irreversible urbanization of the countryside, our study of Panyu demonstrates how the creative juxtaposition of rural, urban, and suburban functions has produced an exceptional heterogeneity of spatial arrangements and village transformation strategies. An exploration of four archetypal forms of village increases awareness of the social and spatial experiments that are conducted on the margins of major urban centers.