Towards weird verticality: The spectacle of vertical spaces in Chongqing

Critical scholarly attention to vertical urbanism has expanded greatly in recent years but seldom engaged with the variety of high-rise urban forms developed mainland Chinese cities following demise socialist political economy. This paper introduces case study Chongqing as a critical example cultural significance post-socialist city, examining how supposedly ‘weird’ spaces density are materially and discursively constructed. undergone rapid expansion since 1990s within narrow mountainous terrain, resulting number extraordinary instances extreme city. These sites have subsequently become ‘spectacles’ themselves, widely photographed discussed on social media. surveys online discourse imaging these categorise them examples connection, compression luxification. Verticality is used construct imaginaries futures, designations verticality differ between outsiders locals. Such may also obscure history restructuring which gave rise first instance, conflicts public private space emerge from this restructuring. The provides an important demonstration everyday, historically grounded contested environment rather than imposition residual horizontal way life. concludes call for greater ethnographic weird qualities such production new theory.