Influencing factors of spatial conflicts in the Chinese urban environment from the perspective of spatial politics: empirical study based on NCA and fsQCA

Abstract

In the ‘environmental era,’ the ubiquitous spatial conflicts in the urban environment have become a typical dilemma hindering sustainable urban development and inhibiting local governance. Based on the theory of spatial politics, with the use of Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) and fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), this article analyzes empirically 40 typical cases of spatial conflicts in the Chinese urban environment, to examine what conditions and their combinations contribute to the occurrence of environmental conflicts. It is found that a ‘lack of communicative space’ and a ‘lack of government trust’ are the sine qua non for urban environmental spatial conflict and that the existence of ‘spatial cognition differences,’ the use of ‘discourse framework,’ ‘technological power,’ ‘organizational strategies,’ and ‘social actors’ are found to be sufficient causes for the occurrence of spatial conflict in urban environments. Accordingly, the article constructs five contextualized models to explain the formation of spatial conflict in urban environments. In contrast to the traditional ‘institution-centered,’ ‘culture-centered,’ ‘identity-centered,’ and ‘media-centered’ approaches to the study of environmental resistance, this study based on the theory of spatial conflicts shall enhance our knowledge and understanding of the ‘spatial dimension’ in the phenomenon of environmental resistance. They reveal the political and social nature of the spatial production of urban environments, thus providing a theoretical framework for understanding the occurrence of environmental resistance from a spatial perspective, while providing a compatible and holistic insight into the ‘politics of elite resistance’ and the ‘politics of subaltern resistance,’ and outlining the possibility of bridging the theoretical differences.