Institutional logics of ungating communities in China

Abstract

Setting against the global trend of gated communities, this paper uncovers the phenomenon of ungating communities in China and discusses its rationale from the institutional logics perspective. With focuses on work unit compounds and commodity housing estates, the paper provides an understanding of gated communities as the interplay of state, market, and community logics. It attributes the rationale of ungating to 1) institutional entrepreneurship in the urban profession for intensive land use; 2) structural overlap between the professional logics of sustainable urbanization, the state logics of governance legitimacy, the market logics of continuous economic growth, and the community logics of distributive justice; 3) event sequencing through a series of policies to shift the societal focus-of-attention from scale and speed of urbanization to sustainability and justice. Challenges of ungating communities exist in the scale of spatial subdivision, the legitimacy of club goods, and the managerial and democratic turn of urban governance. In contrast to the neoliberal assertion of the weakening professions and the spreading market logics, this paper reveals the power of professional logics in promoting ungating communities and its potential of triggering more profound societal changes.