Research on governance structure and benefit balance concerning urban regeneration in Beijing, China: Analysis of the best practical cases

Abstract

While proposing the national strategy of implementing urban regeneration, the Chinese government put forward requirements such as preventing large-scale demolition and construction and protecting historical architecture, indicating that the previous urban regeneration methods of demolishing low-rise and old buildings and building high-rise and new ones are no longer applicable. As the capital city, Beijing is facing more stringent constraints on reduction-oriented development and historical protection, and the problems of insufficient motivation and unclear paths for market players to participate in urban regeneration have become more prominent. Based on a systematic review of the main theories and practices of market participation in urban regeneration, this study builds a market-oriented mechanism analysis framework for urban regeneration of “governance structure-benefit balance.” In this study, we compared 34 cases that won the title of “The First Beijing Urban Regeneration Best Practice in 2022” and conducted further in-depth analysis of three typical cases by semi-structured interviews, field research, qualitative analysis, and quantitative comparison. From the study, we identified three typical governance structures of welfare protection, economic growth, and comprehensive development during the emergence of market participation in Beijing’s urban regeneration process and found that different governance structures have different cooperation and interaction mechanisms, value promotion orientations, and benefits distribution, which are respectively applicable to facilities and public space regeneration projects that implement social public welfare responsibilities, industrial regeneration projects with ample economic value-added space, and regional comprehensive regeneration projects where quasi-public goods and private goods coexist. We believe that the coexistence of multiple governance structures is an inevitable choice for China’s market mechanism of urban regeneration. The value-added space of urban regeneration projects should be further improved, the distribution of interests among multiple subjects should be balanced, and the sustainable and normalization of urban regeneration actions should be promoted.