On the hampers of redevelopment of 'Transitional Community&rsquo|under the high-speed urbanization in China: Cases in Guangzhou and Shenzhen

Abstract

Facing the huge gaps between the urban villages and urban area around them in land use efficiency,landscape,social life and planning control,local developmental states initiate institutional transition—land ownership is changed from collective owned to state owned land,villagers are admitted as citizens and collectives are reorganized as companies to manage their assets.'Transitional Communities' thus emerged.Simultaneously,redevelopment of the physical environment of transitional communities is launched.This research aims at identifying the existing problems of land use in transitional communities,and analyzing the hampers for redevelopment.It has been revealed that institutional transition has not eliminated the hampers for redevelopment but aggravated them.This conclusion is based on three facts as follows: 1.land ownership of new 'state-owned land' is incomplete,and could not promote land users to redevelop;2.legal and illegal land is interwoven,increasing the cost for land assembly and redevelopment;3.cost and revenue for land use in 'transitional communities' are disequilibrium for different land users,causing the low proportion of public facility provision by the collectives,the high density development of villager houses and low quality of factories and workshops.According to this,the research suggests that,1.local governments should provide public facilities in which collectives could hardly burden and reclaim the cost by introducing public facility tax,etc.;2.the governments should punish the former urban villagers for illegal housing development to avoid overuse of the land;3.complete property rights should be offered to land in 'transitional community' to increase the value of the land and crease incentive for higher and better development;4.redevelopment area could cover not only previously collective owned land but also some state owned land to make overall plans and take all factors into consideration for redevelopment.