Beijing Unfinished Metropolis: Backdoors entry points to detect the multi-scalar perspective of the upcoming Chinese urban spaces

Exploring the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and cybersecurity, the concept of architectural backdoors introduces architects and urban planners as "urban/archi-coders" and proposes a novel approach to urban design. Inspired by digital security strategies, where backdoors provide unconventional entry points to bypass security protocols, it advocates for the speculative perception of cities as programmable entities composed of layers where socio-spatial conditions define a complex palimpsest. ¹ ² From theory to application, the method involves a framework that is not fixed but rather iterative, adapting to specific urban contexts. The Chinese urban revolution serves as an emblematic case study to assess the backdoor concept. Specifically, Chinese metropolises are currently experiencing a slowdown in expansion projects, grappling with zones encapsulated within the infrastructural network where construction has not been completed. These areas are shaping a vast stock of unused built space, impacting local communities, buyers, and investors, and falling short of governmental expectations. These unfinished areas, flaws in traditional Chinese planning, require thorough investigation to evaluate the implementation of urban design and governance tools for contemporary Chinese cities in the post-pandemic era. In the past, assessing the implementation of planning tools under market pressure revealed the necessity for municipalities to place strategic plans alongside statutory procedures. Today, these liminal spaces demand approaches where the neighbourhood scale, negotiation of local conflicts, and resolution of specific issues cannot be addressed without dedicated new public-private alliances and the development of processes that beyond the practices used in the post-reform period. The objective of this paper is to map Beijing through the lens of the unfinished. It explores utilizing historical, statistical, and spatial data to re-code the urban environment by identifying specific backdoor spaces for re-entry and exploiting the correlation between design interventions and their long-term physical impacts.