"Civilizing Chengdu examines urban planning and administration during modern China's first age of city-centered politics. Between 1895 and 1937, the management of cities emerged as one of the Chinese state's chief challenges. Through a detailed study of the process as it took place in Chengdu, a key provincial capital in the interior, this book shows how urban reformers sought to remake Chinese cities by promoting a new type of orderly and productive urban community in population centers that before had been treated mainly as hubs for trade and seats of central government"--BOOK JACKET.