Anatomizing the Institutional Arrangements of Urban Village Redevelopment: Case Studies in Guangzhou, China

Dinghuan Yuan,Yung Yau,Yongshen Liu,Ting Liu,Haijun Bao

doi:10.3390/su11123376

Abstract

Given the increasing scarcity of urban land, the Chinese government has been initiating large-scale redevelopment of urban villages that are commonly regarded problematic for their low land use efficiencies and negative externalities. During this process, the emerging neo-urbanism in China demonstrates the heterogeneity of institutional arrangements, with different levels of transaction costs incurred. To explore the transaction costs incurred in different institutional arrangements of urban village redevelopment projects, this study anatomizes three projects in Guangzhou from the perspective of neo-institutional economics. The project duration and level of conflict are taken as two key variables to evaluate the efficiency and equality of the projects. With this research design, this study illustrates that institutional arrangements significantly affect the project outcomes. The conclusion suggests that the local and central governments alter the existing institutions with a view to lowering the transaction costs.

Highlights

The rate of urbanization in China jumped from 36.2% to 56.1% during 2000–2015 [1]
This study aims to examine if different institutional arrangements of village renewal projects bring about different project outcomes
The institutional change in Liede Village began on 26 November 2002, when Liede abandoned the village committees and established the Liede Economic Development Company (LEDC)

Summary

Introduction

Still there exist over one million villages within 662 cities in China. These villages are generally clusters of human settlements for the rural population. Among these villages, urban villages, known as the “villages in the city,” “villages amid the city,” “villages encircled by the city,” or chengzhongcun in Chinese, are a special product generated from the process of urbanization [2,3,4]. To curb urban sprawl in Chinese cities, the local governments promote redevelopment of existing urban villages to optimize land use [4,8,9,10]

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion