Harvard East Asia Urban Forum: “Social Housing in China: Explorations, Practices, and Dilemmas”

Since the implementation of housing reform in the 1990s, China’s urban commodity housing market has been gradually established and is now relatively well developed. Meanwhile, urban social housing in the country has also continuously undertaken explorations and practices, formulating its own system of policies and building techniques, albeit at a comparatively slower pace and has yet to fulfill the enormous needs of the citizens in reality. However, with strong interventions and directives set by the central government in recent years, there has been a surge in the quantitative production of social housing, resulting in the emergence of new and unexpected dilemmas…

Through interpretations of China’s social housing policies and a presentation of various social housing case studies, the lecture seeks to provide a systematic summary and analysis of the contemporary urban social housing system in China and its developments.

Prof. Yifan Yu:
One of the most achieved scholars in the field of social housing in China, Yifan YU is a Professor at Tongji University Department of Urban Planning and the Vice-President of the Urban Planning Association of Shanghai. She is also a Research Project Director at the Natural Science Foundation of China, as well as a Research Fellow of Université Paris-Sorbonne.  Her publications include “The Morphology of Habitation”, “Social Housing’s Double-Marginalization Trap”, and “Approaches to Urban Design” etc. She received her PhD from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Moderated by Prof. Peter G. Rowe:
Peter G. Rowe is Raymond Garbe Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. Rowe served as Dean of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard from 1992 to 2004.

Harvard East Asia Urban Forum; China GSD; Japan GSD; MIT China Urban Development

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