The emergence and evolution of workers’ villages in early New China

This paper focuses on the emergence of China’s workers’ villages, and their changes over time in the 1950s in terms of residential planning and housing design characteristics. The new socialist regime realized in the 1950s numerous workers’ villages around China. Along with the fluctuant Soviet impact and China’s domestic realities, workers’ villages built in different phases during this decade show diverse features in their plans and styles. In this article, the characteristics are analysed by selecting typical cases in each phase. The findings show the workers’ village in early New China was driven mainly by triple reason: realistic demand, political commitment, and ideological instruction. In the first years, before the design and construction were Sovietized, the neighbourhoods were realized by following a western way. Since 1952, Soviet models were applied in China’s workers’ villages. But quite rapidly Chinese architects nationalized the Soviet prototype. From the mid-1950s, workers’ neighbourhoods were gradually simplified due to political and economic policy adjustment. By analysing the evolution of worker villages impacted by multiple factors, this article sheds lights on China’s socialist architectural discourse and supplements the existing scholarship on the transnational socialist architecture.