- From “Insertion” to “Incorporation”: the Hangzhou Example of the Transformation of the Railway in Chinese Urban Life   745 kb by    He, Shan | shan.he@uwa.edu.au    Short Outline This paper takes Hangzhou City as case study to review the relationship between rail and urban life in contemporary China. The conclusions illuminate today’s practice of planning and design of new towns around station nodes of high-speed rail infrastructure. Abstract Since the first introduction of railways during the late 19th century, China has witnessed a transformation from “insertion” to “incorporation” in terms of the relationship between railway and city. The traditionally closed Chinese cities were substantially reshaped by the penetration of the railway, particularly the urban life around station nodes. This paper will take the example of Hangzhou City, capital of the Zhejiang Province, to examine such a transformation. The history of Hangzhou’s railways and stations will be explored, dating back to 1909 when the first line linking Shanghai and Hangzhou was laid outside the perimeter of Hangzhou’s city walls. The penetration of walls was rejected by the local authority over concerns about the destruction of the city’s “defence system”. However, 104 years later, Hangzhou is now embracing one of the largest stations of its scale in China, serving lines connecting all major cities nationwide. Moreover, an entirely new town has been established around this new station, customising new economies oriented at the high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure in the future. Through literature and comparison studies, a transition of relationship between railway and urban life in four chronological periods is found during the past century. They are Insertion during the late imperial and early industrial period (1900s-1930s), Isolation during the Communism industrialisation period (1950s-1970s), Marginalisation during the recent urbanisation period (1980s-2000s) and Incorporation today. The analysis section will discuss the factors that powered such a dramatic shift in relation to the political/economic backgrounds of the four chronological periods. Through comparing the different historical roles of railway in urban life, conclusions are made that today’s rail transportation in China is fully focused at the national scale while rail hierarchy at the metropolitan and regional scales is weak or incomplete. These conclusions will illuminate today’s practice of planning and design of new towns around station nodes of the HSR infrastructure, aiming at inventing a new urban life fully integrated with the railways. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper