Boundary Space as Virtual-Actual Connection: A Case Study in the Jiugulou Neighbourhood of Beijing Old City
Abstract：
The refinement of urban planning has posed new challenges to contemporary spatial practices beyond the construction of material spaces, requiring the management of complex information and the mediation between heterogeneous actors and their re-creation of space through use. Urban research is being challenged to provide appropriate theoretical tools. While mainstream assemblage thinking effectively describes how actual assemblages change, it lacks methodologies for representing, analysing and evaluating the concrete genesis of change. To fill this gap, this paper revisits Deleuze’s concept of “the virtual” as the ontological source of change and introduces the notion of “boundary space” as an analytical tool for urban planning. Taking the Jiugulou neighbourhood of Beijing Old City as an example, the study traces the changes in the material spaces, residents’ activities, individual memories and the broader urban history before and after the “Relocation, Remediation and Improvement” initiative. Through a series of maps, we discover that boundary space tends to maintain the consistency of the nodes of virtual networks and actual assemblages of a particular urban site. This paper reminds practitioners of urban regeneration to heed this natural force of boundary space.