Joint City: cross-border planning diffusion, local elites, and planning practices – case studies of Kouang-Tchéou-Wan and Swatow, 1898–1945

This comparative study on urban planning in Kouang-Tchéou-Wan (Guangzhou Wan) and Swatow (Shantou) in the first half of the twentieth century can offer insights into the dialogue between colonial and historic cities. Kouang-Tchéou-Wan and Swatow are cities that features ‘collaboration’ – between the government and local elites in urban modernization. This collaboration significantly impacted the adaptation and expression of urban planning in new temporal and spatial environments. The collaboration occurred in ‘underdeveloped public domains’, including public institutions and spaces. This study confidently offers the following conclusions. First, negotiation plays an essential role in ‘collaboration’: the Municipal Council is identified as the primary organization responsible for negotiations; realism, project feasibility, and mutual interests are the main themes of these negotiations. Second, ‘collaboration’ can create irreconcilable contradictions in the landscape, which can be seen as the result of specific historical contexts: the struggle for discourse in public spaces and the transition from spatial zoning to new class categorizations. This study further discusses necessary conditions for a dialogue between colonial and historical cities: being at a similar ‘nation-locality’ transformation stage, such as decentralization from the state to the localities; close communication within regional societies; similar local social environments and urban development foundations.