by Edmund Downie:
There may be no more striking display of uniformity in American architecture than Levittown, New York, and Levittown, Pennsylvania. Both developments sprung up early after World War II, taking their name from their builders, the firm Levitt and Sons. The developers filled Levittown with affordable housing that was mass-produced using just four distinct designs — two-story Cape Cods, Colonials, and two types of rancher. The residents were as homogeneous as the houses themselves: white, middle-class, and youngish, with an eye towards starting a family. Today’s Levittown includes racial and architectural diversity, but the name remains a symbol for the ideals of American suburbia.
In China, Levittown couldn’t exist. It’s not because the Chinese wouldn’t want to live in Levittown. Rather, it’s a reflection of the contrasting structures of land distribution in China and America. The feudal system that dominated China for centuries divvied up land outside the cities among warlord families, with the rest of the population renting out small strips of land to farm as peasants. Without land of their own, peasants gathered in villages at the center of these lands. Meanwhile, commerce took place in the cities under even more crowded conditions. Throughout, land remained in the hands of a few and served as a major symbol of wealth.
In contrast, white settlers coming to America found land cheap and readily available. As a result, though land enjoyed a similar level of economic importance, settlers could amass larger swaths of land, which discouraged the centralizing process that spurred the development of the Chinese rural village. American small towns (note that it’s never a “village” — that’a a feudal term) served more as meeting places and centers for commerce, but our rural farmers had their own land to return to, or to sell, when developers like Levitt came along.
At the same time, however, certain real estate developers are trying to bring American suburban stylings to China, especially for the wealthy. During my semester in Beijing, on the bus ride from my school to Beijing University, I saw an advertisement for newly-built villas on the outskirts of the city. Many of these sorts of developments cater to expat families, but China’s wealthy are also taking interest; the advertisement was located in Zhongguancun, a high-tech zone in the west of Beijing whose population is mostly Chinese. To be sure, a bunch of villas at the edge of Beijing isn’t a Levittown, for America’s suburbia is the province of the middle class. However, the dreams of land, space, and newness that made Levittown so attractive are equally prominent in these new developments.
Attached are two photos from my travels through Jiangxi Province, a rice-farming province in southern China, which gives a sense of the general appearance of rural villages in this part of the country.