User:Julian3jara/Urban planning in communist countries

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From 1960 to 1976, due to the political climate changing, development of urban planning in communist China had suffered severe catastrophes: planning institutions had to cease, planners were assigned to support development in rural areas and planning documents were destroyed or discarded. During the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s, the utopian socialist planning development which particularly overemphasised large-scale urban development was seen as superior to Western-style planning. However, due to the severe limitations of fiscal and labour resources, the first priority of urban planning was given to utopian socialist principles and then the second place to people's livelihood. Thus, giving little attention to the establishment of residential amenities and facilities, there were significant social and physical imbalances resulting in urban development. For instance, in the historic hutong neighborhoods in Beijing, courtyards were routinely replaced with new residential structures in order to accommodate more residents. By the end of this phase, about 30% of these courtyards had residential structures placed on them. Additionally, some anti-urban movements, a typical example being the People's Commune Movement, took place in communist China during this period. The purpose of setting up a commune, seen as a sub-community within cities, was to spread industrial values from urban to rural areas so that eventually the urban-rural gap would be eliminated.