Housing wealth change and disparity of indigenous villagers during urban village redevelopment: A comparative analysis of two resettled residential neighborhoods in Wuhan

Abstract

Urban village redevelopment has become an attractive way to supply land for municipal governments in China. However, the subsequent process of housing resettlement can change the status of the housing wealth of indigenous villagers. Extant studies on urban village redevelopment tend to focus on informal housing development and its impact on the housing choices of low wage migrants. However, relatively little research pertains to the housing differentiation of villagers during redevelopment. This paper examined the change and disparity to the housing wealth of local villagers under redevelopment based on a comparative study on two typical cases in Wuhan, China: a case of government-led redevelopment with compensation baselines, and a case self-organized market-driven redevelopment. Empirical results confirmed that there were downward and upward trends in housing wealth with government-led redevelopment and self-organized redevelopment, respectively. Government-led resettlement baselines helped to alleviate housing disparity among villagers caused by informal development. However, this disparity was not exacerbated by self-organized redevelopment based on market forces. Overall, housing disparity was not alleviated by redevelopment. We conclude that adopting well-designed policies and suitable modes of redevelopment will help to mitigate the growing disparity among villagers caused by informal housing development, and to alleviate the housing wealth inequality within villages.