Abstract
Gentrification is a widespread urban phenomenon across the post-industrial world. However, rural gentrification has been explored insufficiently in the context of China’s unprecedented urbanization. By reviewing the redevelopment processes in Zengcuoan village, Xiamen City, China, this study empirically reveals that the socio-spatial transformation of this village has been mainly led by artists and villagers based on institutional arrangements of land ownership. Rural gentrification, which involves refurbishing houses and public spaces, has played a key role in social life and the engagement between indigenous villagers and artists. As active rent-seekers, indigenous villagers contribute to gentrification in a combined effect with China’s rural land property rights. Contrary to Western findings, villagers in China act as landlords who benefit from rural gentrification, which in turn causes grassroots artists or young people to move out because of the increasing rent or property prices. This paper attempted to enrich the extant understanding of rural Chinese gentrification and broaden the analytics of gentrification studies of the institutional arrangements from a land-ownership perspective. Contributing to the literature on rural gentrification, this study highlights the excessive commercialization of rent-seeking as the trigger of gentrification.
Highlights
Gentrification is an inherently complex spatial phenomenon that involves changing economic, demographic, social, physical, and cultural landscapes
This study empirically examined the sociospatial transformation processes in Zengcuoan village to explore principles of the sustainable reconstruction of village space and improve our understanding of rural gentrification from the property rights perspective
Rural gentrification plays a key role in the engagement between
Summary
Gentrification is an inherently complex spatial phenomenon that involves changing economic, demographic, social, physical, and cultural landscapes. Studies have investigated various aspects of China’s village redevelopment [35], many of which focused on the evolution process in rural gentrification [6,7], but few examined the joint bottom-up effect of artists and villagers in driving rural gentrification from a property rights perspective. Rural gentrification mainly occurred through the transformation of villages where the establishment of new commercial housing was accompanied by the entry of a large number of groups of “gentry”, but was less promoted by artists and young entrepreneurs, indigenous villagers, and others. Questions during the interviews focused on three issues: (1) the local social, economic, and demographic structures in Zengcuoan; (2) economic relationships between artists and villagers in terms of housing provision and changes in house rent prices; and (3) the role of various social actors in Zengcuoan’s socio-spatial transformation.
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