Abstract
This paper engages with civic development in urban neighborhoods in China after the period of reform that began in 1978. Examining the collective civic petitions that have occurred in urban neighborhoods, the paper offers a comparative analysis of changing trends, internal mechanisms, and their spatial distribution between two different-tier cities. Data pertaining to the collective civic petitions was drawn from open archives in two municipal bureaus, and related to the years 2013 to 2015. The data was then split into three types of petition typology—claim, protest, and hybrid. Certain similarities and differences emerged from the analysis relating to the types of petition that have occurred against different petition counterparties, namely, state authorities, real developers, and property management companies. Similarities among the two cities could be capable of indicating advancing urban civic developments with internal mechanisms among petition typology and contexts of individual petitions. Differences among the two cities could be related to various differences in their urban contexts, and may also reflect different levels of citizen civic consciousness and behavior.
Highlights
Since the market-oriented reform that commenced in 1978, China has undergone rapid industrialization and urbanization
The general research aim of this paper is to explore the current urban civic developments within Chinese different-tier cities, through the perspective of collective civic petitions that have occurred in urban neighborhoods
Having cross-tabulated the petition types and petition counterparties, the mapping results suggest the existence of further similarities and differences with further spatial concentrations in the petitions, it can be noted that, in Nanjing City, most targeted petitions were raised against state authorities, with fewer being raised against real developers (RDs) and property management companies (PMCs)
Summary
Since the market-oriented reform that commenced in 1978, China has undergone rapid industrialization and urbanization. Civic engagement is highly connected to urban civic development at the urban neighborhood scale, and is commonly defined as citizens’ collective awareness and participation in achieving common goods [2,3,4,5]. The urban neighborhoods, as the typical units of analysis in studying urban civic developments, are highly affected by the differentiated urban civic developments that have occurred among different-tiers cities. This further impacts upon individual’s differentiated civic awareness and their behavior [16,17,18,29,30,31,32,33,34]. The third research question is about how those targeted petitions were spatially distributed within the cities
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