| 英文摘要 |
This paper engages with the Foucauldian governmentality framework through the lens of semi-liberalism in contexts of political transition. Drawing on Julier’s (2005; 2014) concept of the designscape, it reconceptualises the evolving emergence of the planningscape in post- 1980s China, in the wake of the country’s market reforms. The analysis interrogates shifting power configurations between the socialist past and the neoliberal present, focusing particularly on the role of urban elites as“crafters”of planning knowledge and design authority under the circumstances of political and institutional contingency. In addition, the paper argues that a semiliberal governmentality approach offers a nuanced perspective on these dynamics, allowing for a critical rethinking of disciplinary power - from a regime of truth to“regimes of representation”that sustain aesthetic hegemonies and westernised modernist planning discourses, essentially embodied by Tongji University experts. Furthermore, this approach highlights both the agency and the governmentalisation of planning practices within the ambiguities of semi-liberal governance. In doing so, the paper contributes to ongoing debates on the designscape introducing a semiliberal governmentality lens to the study of urban planning and knowledge production. |