Blending Bottom-Up and Top-Down Urban Village Redevelopment Modes: Comparing Multidimensional Welfare Changes of Resettled Households in Wuhan, China

Qing Yang,Yan Song,Yinying Cai

doi:10.3390/su12187447

Abstract

Urban village redevelopment has multidimensional impacts on resettled households. These impacts can reflect the sustainability of urban village redevelopment. This study empirically compares the gains and losses of the welfare in economic conditions, living conditions, natural environment, psychological conditions, and social security in bottom-up and top-down urban village redevelopment cases in Wuhan, China. The results show that a bottom-up redevelopment mode with participative residents caused negative effects in economic welfare but positive effects on living conditions, natural environment, and psychological condition, thus promoting higher comprehensive welfare and satisfaction. Top-down redevelopment led by the government provides villagers with shared dividends through collective economic reform and thus, contributes to gains in economic conditions and social security. However, top-down redevelopment with less participation of residents leads to welfare losses in living conditions, natural environment, and psychological conditions, which results in lower welfare and satisfaction levels overall. Therefore, a middle-out redevelopment mode with a combination of government efforts and public participation are proposed as a solution for sustainable urban redevelopment.

Highlights

The concept of urban redevelopment originated in a specific strategy for the economic revival of old industrial cities in developed countries and has subsequently been expanded to slum-upgrading and informal housing redevelopment in developing countries [1,2,3]
Results show that welfare in living conditions, natural environment and comprehensive welfare haven been gradually increasing over the time
Rather than adopting the methodology of previous studies to evaluate the sustainability of urban village redevelopment policies based on the balance of different stakeholders, this paper establishes a welfare index to test whether the multi-dimensional welfare changes of resettled household have reached the three goals of sustainable development: economic sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability

Summary

Introduction

The concept of urban redevelopment originated in a specific strategy for the economic revival of old industrial cities in developed countries and has subsequently been expanded to slum-upgrading and informal housing redevelopment in developing countries [1,2,3]. The influence of urban redevelopment is dominated by the social system, leading roles of government or market, natural conditions, and regulations of the city itself [7,8,9,10]. Social systems such as value systems, decision-making tendencies, and uncertainty have significant impacts on urban renewal [11]. Wuhan is a typical city with certain achievements in the urban village redevelopment, regardless of the time, scale, or mode of redevelopment. Unlike only the government-led model in Beijing or only the market-oriented model in Shenzhen, the redevelopment of urban villages in Wuhan adopts both the top-down government-led mode and bottom-up self-organized mode [3,23,32,45]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion