PhD Candidate
Title: Interpreting
Everyday Life: The Social and Spatial (Re)Production of Urban Space in
Contemporary Chinese Cities and Cinemas
After interpreting
the strong relations between urban space, people and everyday scenes in both
real and reel cities, this thesis will spotlight people’s everyday lives, which
are barely mentioned in the discussion of many architects and urban designers
in China. The aim of this research is to analyse the social and spatial
(re)production of everyday spaces in contemporary Chinese cities, especially in
Hong Kong, with investigating the social construction, representation and
understanding of these everyday practices and urban spaces in cinemas, in order
to examine the social diversity and the transformation among Lefebvre’s the
three-fold spaces. Furthermore, it explores the relation between ordinary
people’s everyday lives and urbanism in China, as well as the mutual support
between films and urban practical works. Through interdisciplinary
investigations from photography, literatures, scripts, films and documents to
landscape, architecture and urban spaces, the project tries to understand
Chinese cities and people’s actions or tactics at the intersection of spatial
production, sociological theories and cinema studies.
Zhouzhang Li's doctoral study is funded by the Joint Liverpool/CSC award.