MEDIUM's Events
11-15 September 2017
Datong Seminar
Photo by Sabine Zillmer
The next MEDIUM scientific seminar, scheduled during the period 11-15 September in Datong, will focus on the understandings of the local context including a three-day field visit. A series of meetings with local governments officials and representatives of local companies will give the consortium the opportunity to get some insights on the challenges of the Datong urban development.
To mention only a few of the presentations scheduled: The development prospects of real estate industry under the "Internet+" situation; The study on countermeasures of developing tourism and sports cultural industry in Datong; The Value Analysis and Platform Utilization of Abandoned Industrial Factor - Taking Datong Coal Mine for example.
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MEDIUM Community
Call for applications
Financial support for fieldwork in China! - Deadline 29th Sept. 2017
Géographie-cités, UMR 8504, in the context of the MEDIUM project, is offering a financial support to doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, or people conducting research in their professional context to do fieldwork in China.
If you are a Ph.D candidate with a scholarship, a postdoctoral fellow or if you are conducting research on urban issues in your professional context (local governments, UN agencies, public or private research institutes etc.) you are welcome to apply.
Candidates working on city adaptation to ageing population, housing, habitat, or urban governance may be given priorities.
S/he will be requested to work on one of the three MEDIUM case studies (Datong, Hangzhou or Zhuhai) and s/he will be supported by one of the hosting universities for any practical or scientific related issues.
The ideal candidate(s) will have:
- The nationality of one of the EU-28 Member States;
- Background in geography, urban planning, urban engineering, political science, media/communication or other related social sciences ;
- Quantitative or qualitative profile alike ;
- Knowledge of China’s urban context ;
- Advanced level in spoken and written English ;
- Chinese proficiency will be a plus.
In addition s/he will:
- Commit to stay for a minimum of 3 months in China ;
- Commit to start the fieldwork at the latest by May 31st, 2018 (funds are available immediately and until August 31st, 2018).
The selected candidate(s) will be awarded 2 100 euro/month. This amount is a flat rate covering all expenses, including the air fare from Europe and domestic travels in China, accommodation, visa expenses and any ancillary costs in China.
This does not constitute or can substitute a monthly salary. The selected candidate(s) must be able to prove that they will be paid by their host institutions.
The application should include a cover letter, a CV (including a list of publications), and one letter of reference. The two first documents must be provided in English. All documents should be sent to Natacha Aveline, with copy to Florent Resche-Rigon
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MEDIUM's Events
16-18 June 2017
Guangzhou International Conference
Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) hosted the second international conference of the MEDIUM project, Urban China and the challenges of sustainability, which took place from 16 to 18 June, 2017.
In the opening ceremony, chaired by MEDIUM scientific coordinator Natacha Aveline, the Vice-President of SYSU and the Consul of France in Guangzhou both called for an enhanced cooperation between China and the European Union in every scientific fields; in that respect they welcomed the partnerships developed in the context of MEDIUM which facilitate the exchanges between universities and researchers.
Laurent Bochereau, Minister Counsellor/Head for Science, Technology and Environment at the Delegation of the European Union to China, stressed that China-EU cooperation for science, in particular for urbanization, has become more prominent these past years and this is reflected by various initiatives among which the development of the EU-China innovation platform for sustainable urbanization, supported by the European Commission and aimed at promoting exchange of best practices, transfer of technologies and know-how.
The opening ceremony was followed by a round table animated by Sabine Zillmer and Erik Gloersen (Spatial Foresights); the MEDIUM team involved in the organization of the participative workshops discussed the challenges of stakeholders’ participation in urban planning in China and in Europe.
The conference was divided in 6 different sessions addressing a great variety of topics such as internal migration and social inclusion of migrant workers, living arrangements for old people in cities, indicators for sustainability, emerging models of urban governance or modelling of urban systems.
The conference featured 26 presentations by 29 researchers representing 20 institutions from China and Europe. The conference gathered more than 80 participants.
You can find the programme and the full report of the conference on our website.
The presentations are available upon request.
Photos below by Cinzia Losavio
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MEDIUM's Actions
12-14 June 2017
Training session in Datong
Photo by Cinzia Losavio
The training session in Datong was organised on June 12-14, 2017 on the campus of Datong University. It was facilitated by Erik Gløersen and Sabine Zillmer from Spatial Foresight GmbH. The other members of the MEDIUM project team that were present were Professor Natacha Aveline, and two young researchers, Judith Audin and Cinzia Losavio. A large and diversified representation of urban development stakeholders, including different types of companies, public authorities and the chamber of commerce took active part into the training session.
Built around methods previously tested in Hangzhou and Guangzhou, and focused on the general principle of ‘learning by doing’, the training session has been articulated into four major phases: priming, identification of needs, elaboration of objectives and targets, development of actions to meet them and, finally, refinement of actions with an analysis of actors.
The training session gave raise to lively discussions on development perspectives for Datong, and participative techniques were widely recognised as an innovative and promising instrument for future urban planning.
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MEDIUM's Actions
Prof. Zhang Weiliang (HZNU) introduces MEDIUM project in Hangzhou Summer Program
Photo by Zexia
Prof. Zhang Weiliang, from the Hangzhou Normal University, has given a lecture to international students attending the 2017 China Studies International Summer program organized by the School of International Education at the Hangzhou Normal University last July 2017. Nearly 30 students coming from USA, UK and Slovenija attended the program. Prof. Weiliang's lecture focused on the course of urbanization in China and its development features. Prof. Zhang also introduced the “New Pathways for Sustainable Urban Development in China’s Medium-sized Cities” (MEDIUM）project and its research contributions.
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MEDIUM's Actions
11th June 2017
Free dialogue in Tangjia town
Photos by Valentina Anzoise
Tangjia town is one historical town in the North-East of Zhuhai city. With the development of Zhuhai, Tangjia town has been integrated in the high-tech development zone in Zhuhai. With the development of the district, more and more migrants came to work in the high-tech zone and live in this town. However, the social integration between the local people and the migrants and between the historical culture and the migrants’ culture has become an important issue for the protection and the development of Tangjia town. Besides, Zhuhai City is also a critical city for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area initiative, which has been first addressed in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) and focus on the development of regional cooperation and advanced international communication networks in the Pearl River Delta. Zhuhai inhabitants pay more attention to all these issues and organize more discussion with the local associations.
As Zhuhai City and its high-tech zone have also been chosen as study case for MEDIUM project and there are researchers of MEDIUM based who are studying the housing provision system for migrant workers to better asses their integration process in the urban area (Cinzia Losavio - CNRS), and the sustainable development of the high-tech zone, and more in particular how different stakeholders perceive the area’s rural-urban transition and are involved in it (Valentina Anzoise - UNIVE). Prof. Jean-Pierre Gaudin (Sciences Po Aix) and the MEDIUM researchers have been invited by Prof. Luo Chencheng (Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai) who has done researches about the protection of historical sites of Tangjia town to have a free dialogue together with local residents, entrepreneurs and representatives of groups and associations involved in the protection and valorization of Tangjia town in order to exchange experiences from Europe and China.
The meeting revolved around the following subjects:
Presentation about MEDIUM Project (by Jean Pierre Gaudin, Liao Liao and Valentina Anzoise); presentation of the book by Prof. Jean Pierre Gaudin, entitled as What is governance? (in Chinese 何谓治理); presentation about Tangjia town historical background and current situation; discussion on the local activities carried out by citizens and Government for the protection of Tangjia town and exchange on similar experiences in Europe.
After the discussions, Prof. Luo and other members of the association of Protection of Tangjia have learnt more about the European experiences of protection in France, in UK or in Italy and have been inspired from these experiences as the current policy and practices for heritage protection in the Chinese context are quite different from the European ones. This meeting has been a very good opportunity for all the MEDIUM participants to have a better understanding of the local context and issues and to deepen the fieldwork research.
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MEDIUM Community
Welcome to Marco Pesce - MEDIUM Young Researcher joins fellows in China
Marco Pesce holds a PhD in environmental sciences and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. He holds a PhD degree in Environmental Sciences. His research now focuses on the implementation of environmental strategies for companies aiming to introduce sustainability into their corporate strategy. Recently Marco obtained the necessary certifications and developed expertise in the implementation of organizational management standards (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO 14001). In the framework of MEDIUM, Marco will conduct an evaluation on the state of implementation of the ISO 14001 standards on environmental management in China, and specifically in the industrial estates of selected case studies among the ones investigated in the project: Zhuhai, Hangzhou and Datong. Industrial zones are an important reality of many Chinese cities, and their environmental impacts have important repercussions on urban sustainability. The ISO 14001 standard provides a framework to implement, maintain, and improve an environmental management system able to identify and control the environmental impacts and to continuously improve the environmental performance of companies. Its application can help Chinese industrial estates to minimize their impacts in the face of worsening environmental problems. The study will focus on investigating the state of application, the reasons for seeking ISO 14001 certification, the perceived benefits and risks, and the critical factors and extent of difficulty in implementing ISO 14001 in the selected case studies.
See Marco's profile.
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MEDIUM Community
Subjective approach to a quickly mutating transportation system
Fieldwork synthesis
One main axis of my fieldwork research in China was to get a subjective view of multiple aspects and layers of the complex and ever-changing public transportation system, in Zhuhai as an illustration for local transportation but also at larger scales in China. Indeed, transportation network modeling or data analysis such as accessibility studies or land-use transport interaction models I develop as the main focus of my thesis, generally fail to grasp microscopic aspects that can become crucial when it comes to the effective use of the network. For example, multimodality can be made effective in practice through self-organized informal transportation modes that solve the "last-mile" kilometer problem that seems to be often forgotten in the planning of newly developped areas in China. Or in the contrary, practical details such as ticket booking or check-in delays can drastically change use patterns. I made several trips to understand how the High-speed rail (HSR) network works. Since 2008, China has achieved the largest HSR network starting from nothing, with a huge success and currently saturated lines. These answer to primary demand patterns in terms of city size, but other dimensions have been taken into account in their planning, such as the development of tourism. This way, the Guangzhou-Shenyang line has seen the construction of stations specific to the development of tourism, such as Yangshuo in Guanxi province that has seen its frequentation strongly rising. One year after the station opened, the road link with the city is still in construction, but most of trains stop in the week-end – more than one per hour, and are full more than two weeks in advance. New patterns of mobility must be induced by this new offer, as shown by a Guangzhou inhabitant I interviewed in Yangshuo, that was coming with co-workers just for the week-end as a ``team-building'' trip financed by their startup in information technology. I observed a similar strategy must have been employed for the line Chengdu-Emeishan, which principal objective for now is to desserve the highly visited touristic destination of Leshan and Emeishan, although the missing link from Leshan to Shenyang is already well advanced and will complete the direct link between Guangzhou and Changdu. The complexity of the network is increased by the diversity of missions and congestion, and maximal potential speeds seem to be not systematically exploited. Regional branches such as the Guangzhou-Zhuhai line can be interpreted in-between a long distance service and regional proximity transportation, depending on the modulation of stop distribution. On top of that still exists the classical train network, and some connections require for now to use both and urban transportation, such as Zhuhai-Hong-Kong that I experimented by terrestrial transport only. The local urban network and real estate development operations are planned in close conjunction with the new train network : Zhuhai new tramway, of which a single line is today open and in test, aims at participating to a “Transit-oriented development” (TOD) approach of Urban Development which aims at promoting the use of public transport and a city with less cars, as claimed for example by the High-Tech Zone planning committee in charge of the development around Zhuhai North station. Observing the surroundings of Tangjia station, also constructed in the same spirit, the anti-urban atmosphere and unpractical setting can lead to question the effectiveness of the approach and wonder if it is not more a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, as suggested by the advertisements for new real estate to sell highlighting the role of the train line. Other field observations, such as in Hong-Kong new territories, witness of an efficient and well achieved TOD, with the smart combination of heavy transit and local light rail, together with high urban densities around stations. These observations recall the complexity of urban trajectories coupled with network development, and how one must be careful before drawing any general conclusion from particular cases.
Captions: Juste Raimbault (in order from left to right and top to bottom)
(1)Tangjia HSR station in Zhuhai, with a huge advertisement for real estate suggesting the importance of the train connection, what can also be used as an argument for higher prices
(2) HSR line in Zhuhai, deserted bus station and new real estate project in a difficultly accessible area
(3) Yangshuo station, in the middle of nowhere on the High-speed line, recalling the “betterave-TGV” stations typical to France
(4) Advertisement for HSR in Sichuan, at Chengdu international airport station on the line to Leshan and Emeishan
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MEDIUM's Actions
Chinese urbanization: audiovisual technologies and personal media in fieldwork practice
Valentina Anzoise, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, has given a lecture on Chinese urbanization: audiovisual technologies and personal media in fieldwork practice within the 2nd series of lectures and workshops on Asian Community organized on 26-27th April 2017 by La Sapienza University (Rome, Italy).
All lectures have discussed countries in Asia from their historical, economical and political perspective, with a focus on comparative approaches for a better understanding of the area.
This year the organization of the Workshop Asian Community: Encounters between Korea, China and Japan has been above all a chance for scholars to meet and discuss how to conduct research on and with Media in Asian societies.
Each speaker presented for 1 hour and half (including Q&A) and the audience mainly consisted of students and academics in Asian Studies of ISO (Italian Institute of Oriental Studies) of La Sapienza University (Rome, Italy).
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Upcoming conferences
MEDIUM members will participate to the following external events
- Natacha Aveline and Nicolas Duay will participate to the 9th FCPAE Europe forum Smart city - Green Life, 25-26 September 2017, Paris. The conference is organised by the Franco-Chinese Association for Sustainable Urban Development.
- XII Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation (WIVACE 2017), 19-21 September 2017, Venice. I. Poli, D. Slanzi e V. Anzoise will present a paper on Modeling emerging topics on sustainable urban development perception: the case of Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City.
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This newsletter has been produced with the assistance of the European Union under the project EuropeAid MEDIUM GA ICI+/2014/348-005.
Contents are the sole responsibility of MEDIUM partners and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.
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