Innovation without fracture: A study of spatial negotiation in Chinese new urbanism and traditional urbanism communities

Chinese new urbanism is changing the way people live and identify with their living spaces, shaping social identities away from tradition. As a result, new spatial practices are forming, which will have serious repercussions on the way people live together, and interact with each other, and eventually on the meaning of communal living. Through new design of communities, new/contemporary urbanism in China interrupts the traditional modes of interacting in public and private spaces, and makes communities developed as fractured entities. In particular, it fixes the boundaries between private and public spaces leaving no room for individual and collective negotiation. Traditional Chinese urbanism, instead, allows for endless negotiation between private and public spaces which permit the development of dynamic individual and collective identities. New urbanism in China should learn from tradition, and include in the design opportunities for negotiation between private and public spheres.