Under the planned economy the danwei, or work unit, became the basic cell of the socialist city: a walled compound combining a workplace with housing, canteens, clinics, schools and shops for its members. Often laid out as low-rise superblocks influenced by Soviet planning, danwei delivered services and social control together, so that one's employer was also one's landlord, welfare provider and neighbourhood. The pattern produced an introverted, compound-based urban fabric quite unlike the open street city. Market reform later dismantled most danwei housing, but the superblock grain persists.
The danwei fused work, dwelling and governance into the defining spatial unit of the Maoist city and a lasting template for the Chinese superblock.
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