Chapter 4 Metropolitan Governance, Real‐Estate Projects, and Capital Accumulation

Abstract

AbstractChapter 4 shifts the geographical focus to the urban edge of metropolitan centers, and from urban to rural land. It outlines the land battles between expansionist urban governments at the municipal and district levels and rural governments at the county and township levels. The struggle between urban and rural governments is set in the historical shift in which industrialism has largely given way to urbanism since the late 1990s. Drawing on the changing political discourse, urban governments have moved to incorporate scattered industrial estates formerly controlled by rural governments. As a result, the urban fringe becomes a primary site of capital accumulation, territorial expansion, and consolidation vital to urban governments' local state‐building projects. The urban government's logic of property‐based accumulation and territorial expansion builds on itself and finds expression in massive‐scale mega projects like “new cities” and “university cities” built on former village land in the outskirts of the city.