Politics of urban renewal: An anatomy of the conflicting discourses on the renovation of China's urban village

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyse the politics of urban renewal through the anatomy of the conflicting discourses on the changes in China's urban villages. Specifically, this paper investigates the case of Liede Village, Guangzhou, a typical urban village in China, and its innovative reconstruction model. Based on the methods of participatory observation, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis, this paper finds that the official media conducted a top-down construction of Liede Village's reconstruction as a mainstream social and economic activity from which a modernised model for Chinese urban renewal has been strongly established; the villagers also respond to the strong construction of the official media coverage by conducting bottom-up protests that aim to safeguard their rights through alternative discourse constructions. In this sense, this study found that urban renewal is not only physical or socially related but politically related. There are significant differences in the discourse construction methods and operational logic of different power subjects. To resolve these conflicts, the discourse knowledge systems within urban villages should be reformed so that the Chinese government can more effectively govern these complex social spaces. This paper provides an alternative understanding of China's urban renewal from the perspective of discourse politics, which enriches existing studies on urban sustainability, social justice and urban governance for the wider human geographers, urban scholars and sociologists, especially the wider discussions on urban renewal in other countries.