The article gives an account of the reasons why the special issue “Rereading The Production of Space” is launched. First of all, it is dedicated to memorize the Master, Henri Lefebvre. His classical work The Production of Space has already become the milestone which contemporary urban and spatial research cannot evade. However, misreading and misinterpreting have accompanied with its increasing reputation. Moreover, it is the problematique Lefebvre opens up in his theory and its intrinsic connection to Chinese realistic situation that has the important implication. Unlike other issues of Master anthology, this issue neither limits itself in the sheer discipline category of urban planning and design, nor aims to achieve some standard understandings. It is the totality and openness inherent in Lefebvrian thoughts that determine the characteristics of the issue. Through the research, we hope the urban and spatial research could remain the totality and openness.

This article examines the three hitherto neglected aspects that are crucial to an understanding of Lefebvre’s theory. First, a specific concept of dialectics that are grounded on the German dialectics of Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche; second, his own Nietzsche-oriented theory of language; third, the influence from French phenomenology. Based on the analysis, this article reconstructures and underlines the three-dimensionality of Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space. The author analyses the three-dimensional figures from the linguistic perspective, which are spatial practice, the representation of space, and the space of representation, and the other three-dimensional ones from the phenomenological perspective, which are perceived space, conceived space, and lived space. With reconstructing the theory of space production, this article criticizes some of today’s most influential interpretations, which, including that from Harvey, Soja, Shields, and Elden, contribute more to confusion than to clarification.

How to understand the terminology “the production of space” is central to Lefebvre’s work The Production of Space. Firstly, Lefebvre reveals a “spatial” connotation in production and a “productive” one in space, that is to say, why production has spatiality and space is productive, and why space is the production of social space. This is because of the intrinsic spatiality in production and the intrinsic productivity in space. Secondly, Lefebvre understands “the production of space” in triple senses. The first is in the sense of historical materialism, which means every mode of social production has its matching socio-spatial form, that is, every society must produce its own social space. Thus, there is a theory of the history of space. The second is in the sense of the critique of political economy. While human societies evolve into the capitalist society, the mode of social production converts from “the production of things in space” into “the production of space itself”, in other words, the abstract production of space becomes dominated historical force. The first two understandings are widely known, however, the third sense is relatively ignored, namely the sense of visions of future society, artistic creation, and architectural design. The prospect of human society tends from homogeneity, singleness, hierarchy, and fragmentationdetermined by the capitalist abstract production of space towards various-possibility, multi-scale, and differential production of space based on body experience, artistic creation, and urban revolution. The most serious misunderstanding of Lefebvre’s “the production of space” is no more than to treat it as urbanist practices under capitalist modernity. To understand the terminology moves to and fro between the competing modes of the critique of political economy and cultural study, and consists in a vulgarized understanding resulting from misunderstanding the mode of material production in traditional historical materialism.

“The production of space” is the most important and influential doctrine by Lefebvre. In the last three decades since its emergence, the theory has gone through three major waves of its reception in the context of AngloSaxondom. In the first two waves, it was misinterpreted to a degree by Manuel Castell, David Harvey, Edward W. Soja, and other theorists. Likewise, such misinterpretation also occurs in its Chinese dissemination, especially in the fields of urban planning and geography. In the name of “the production of space”, most of papers actually lay an emphasis on spatial political economy insisted persistently by Harvey. Through examining the epistemological origin of the misinterpretation, and essential and fundamental conceptions such as knowledge and ideology, dialectics and logics, anti-logos and poetry, space and production, this article gives its critique on the misreading in urban planning and clarifies the understanding of the production of space, with briefing a new analytical perspective of “counter-hegemony”.

According to different laws’ status and their scopes of adjustment objects in the legislative systems, the legal body model is mainly divided into three types: the single-act law model, the basic law model and the code model. Based on a review of the evolution and current situation of China’s territorial spatial planning legislation, this paper conducts a comparative study on the experience choosing a legal model for territorial and spatial planning legislation in foreign countries and the experience of domestic laws in choosing a legal model, which reveals that the choice of legal model is determined by the relevant legislation and the implementation of the law. Thus, three main criteria, namely, the convergence of legal insurable interests, the completeness of basic legislation and the cohesiveness with other legislation, together constitute the standard framework for the selection of legal system model for territorial spatial planning.

In recent years, coordinated regional development carried by urban agglomeration has become main front for the new type of urbanization. The role of airport as traditional transportation gateway is shifting to new power sources. California has the fastest growing urban agglomeration in the United States, where its airport clusters are the important platform for internal traffic organization of the West Coast and even North America, at the same and the gateway to the Asia-Pacific region, shaping an important node area for the global supply chain. Thus，it is the important space for the US to achieve global strategy in coordinating the development between world-class urban agglomerations and airport clusters. This paper begins with analysis of spatial relationship between world-class urban agglomerations and airport clusters, then defines the spatial scale and basic research unit for the coordinated development between them, analyzes the coupling characteristics of their service levels, functional division and spatial distribution, with the aim to summarize the functions and planning layout for world-class airport clusters and provide reference for the spatial layout planning of world-class airport clusters in China.

The construction of pedestrian network is of great significance to the efficiency and vitality of urban space in Metro Hub Areas. Firstly, this paper discusses the topological model of distribution and circulation in Metro Hub Areas, and then the both principles of High Efficiency Weaving of Path Network and Organic Coupling of Nodes System are analyzed on the macro scale. On this basis, Diverse Layered Strategy based on environment is discussed from the three aspects of Underground Dominating, Air Dominating and Multi-dimension Dominating combining typical cases, and Relation Integration Strategy of walking network and urban elements is also discussed from the two aspects of At-grade Level Optimization and Multi-dimension Network Link.