Temporarily Cities

Today, urban life has become the default choice of more than half of thehumanity. Urbanization, a journey from the countryside to cities, takes place on bothmaterial and spiritual fronts.In this thesis, the author aims to study urbanization process in human mentality.The author detects a much stronger In-transit Mentality in urban environment relativeto the countryside which is characterized by a more stable Resident Mentality. Tobetter decipher the evolution of cities, the author decides to look in the attributes ofcities defined by their In-transit Nature.The author holds that the unique accumulation of In-transit experience makesthe building blocks of future cities. The experience can be both positive and negative.By upholding the positive accumulation of the In-transit experience and holding downthe negative ones, the cities will embrace more constructive development.Moreover, the author takes note of the extensive and intensive incidents of theaccumulation of In-transit experience in the urbanization process of today’s China.Such accumulation carries unique features which offers insights in directing the pathfor the development of future cities and should not be regarded as counterproductive.Based on the findings, the author tries to explore the feasibility of developing a modelof urbanization to be called the “In-transit Cities” in line with the overarching themeof the social-economic dynamics of contemporary Chinese cities. The model not onlytouches on the specifics of urban and space planning, but also take into considerationthe dynamics of social-economic relations in future cities. The “In-transit Cities”model aims to synchronize the development of both the urban environment andindividual lives by employing the positive accumulation of the “In-transit” experienceas the driving force. Consequently, the “In-transit” city is a Sociable city in its truemeaning.