Piper R. Gaubatz, gaubatz@geo.umass.edu

 B.A., Princeton, 1984; M.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1986;

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1989.

 

  Associate Professor

Urban Studies, China, Japan, and U.S.

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Research

Piper Gaubatz is an urban geographer with research experience in China, Japan and the United States, a background in sociology, architecture and Chinese studies from Princeton University (B.A. 1984) and geography from the University of California, Berkeley (M.A. 1986, Ph.D. 1989), and language skills in both Chinese and Japanese. 

 

Since 1986, she has conducted seven major field research projects in China, Japan and the United States, and she is continuing fieldwork-based research projects in all three countries. Her 1986-88 fieldwork in China provided the basis for her book Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontiers (Stanford University Press, 1996, 378 pp.), and she is currently preparing a book manuscript based on her 1992-99 China fieldwork, Globalization, Urban Development, and Urban Change in the Reform Era. She began her research career working on U.S. urban issues with fieldwork for a senior thesis at Princeton University on community participation in planning and an MA thesis at the University of California, Berkeley on neighborhood change in Oakland, California. She continues to conduct research in the U.S., and is currently examining urban change and high-tech industrial development in Silicon Valley. Beginning with her dissertation (1989), however, she has made the study of East Asian urban geography her major research focus.

 

Her approach to geographical theory and research is grounded in a critical reading of cities as representations of power, knowledge, culture and society within and beyond the urban community. She has drawn on the work of a wide range of urbanists to develop an integrative approach to urban analysis. She is actively involved in an international interdisciplinary effort (the International Seminar on Urban Form) produce a "new urban morphology" which builds upon the geographical traditions of urban morphology (the analysis of urban form) as practiced by M.R.G. Conzen, Saverio Muratori and James Vance and engages with current geographic thought by moving beyond early urban morphology's focus on the physical structures of the city to reconceptualize urban form as the spatial expression of an integrated set of relationships between global, national, and local political, economic, social, and cultural forces, the built form of the city and urban ecology.

 

 

Research Projects:

     (click on the links below)

  • Globalization, Urban Development, and Urban Change during China's Reform Era
  • Globalization and Chinese Urban Planning
  • Development Zones and the Transformation of Chinese Cities: a Comparative Analysis of Large Cities in the Core and Periphery
  • An Environmental History of Hohhot and its Hinterland (1572-1911)
  • Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontiers
  • Community, Modernity, and Urban Change in Japan and the U.S.: Toyokawa and Cupertino in the Late 20th Century
  • Reshaping a Japanese Metropolis: Peripheral Urban Development in the Nagoya Metropolitan Region

    • Representative Publications:

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (forthcoming, 2004) "Globalization and the Development of New Central Business Districts in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou" in Wu, Fulong and Ma, Laurence, eds. Restructuring the Chinese City: Changing Society, Economy and Space, Routledge Press.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (2003) "Community, History, and Modernity in Japan and the U.S.: Toyokawa and Cupertino in the Late Twentieth Century" in Stanilov, Kiril and Scheer, Brenda, eds. Suburban Form: an International Perspective, London: Routledge Press.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (2003) "Planning the Chinese City: Vision, Implementation and Form" in Petruccioli, Attilio, Michele Stella, and Giuseppe Strappa, eds. The Planned City? Volume 3. Bari, Italy: Uniongrafica Corcelli Editrice, pp. 805-810.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (2002) "Looking West Toward Mecca: Islamic Enclaves in Chinese Frontier Cities" Built Environment, 28(3): 231-248.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (1999) "Understanding Chinese Urban Form: Contexts for Interpreting Continuity and Change" Built Environment, 24(4): 251-270.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (1999) "China's Urban Transformation: Patterns and Processes of Morphological Change in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou" Urban Studies 36(9): 1495-1521.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (1998) "Mosques and Markets: Traditional Urban Form on China's Northwestern Frontiers", Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 9(11): 7-22.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (1996) Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontiers (Stanford: Stanford University Press) 366 pages.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (1995) "Urban Transformation in Post-Mao China: Impacts of the Reform Era on China's Urban Form" Davis, D., Kraus, R., Naughton, B. and Perry, E., eds. Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China Woodrow Wilson Center Press Series, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 28-60.

     

    Gaubatz, Piper (1995) "Changing Beijing" Geographical Review 85(1): 79-96.

     

    Courses:

     

    Undergraduate:

    Graduate:

    • GEO 604: Geographic Theory and Analysis
    • GEO 670: Urban Geography Seminar.  Rotates yearly between several different semester long themes, such as:
                 "World Cities: Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Shanghai,"
           "East Asian Urban Development" and 
           "Housing and Urban Development (U.S. focus)

     

     

     

    Last revised 13-Nov-2003 -- webmaster@geo.umass.edu


     

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