Abstract
The past decades have witnessed a number of informal land developments on the urban fringe in China although many strict state regulations have been made to control this. The dual urban rural land system is widely believed to be one major determinant of informal developments in the existing literature. However, the important role of local villages and townships are often neglected. This paper aims to shed light on this by looking at the gated informal housing communities in Beijing as a case study. It investigates the role of villages and townships in informal land development and the conflicts of interest that arise with state regulations in the context of political decentralization. The results of analysis show that township governments have an ambivalent attitude or even give tacit approval to informal land development in villages since these informal developments actually bring economic benefits to local villagers and themselves. The situation seems to be worse as townships have poor fiscal capacity and a growing administrative responsibility for improvement of local development in the context of decentralization. Villages are keen to capture economic benefits from informal land development with help from private developers. As a result, a local, informal coalition between townships, villages, and private developers emerged at the grass roots level. This presents a major challenge to the state regulations designed for sustainable urban growth management.
Highlights
Informal land development in China usually refers to urban development on land without land use permission or planning approval from the state, or development on land that does not comply with land use planning and development regulations
It is apparent that “local-state corporatism” and urban entrepreneurialism do exist in China, but may merely occur at the level of the city government
This paper discussed the phenomenon of informal land development, which has taken place since the 2000s, and considered the implementation of state land development regulations at the grassroots level, such as by village and township governments
Summary
Informal land development in China usually refers to urban development (housing or industrial development) on land without land use permission or planning approval from the state, or development on land that does not comply with land use planning and development regulations. In particular, accounted for 20% of the total land used for housing in China in 2010 [1], while informal land development in general has seriously jeopardized sustainable development, causing the loss of arable land [2] and land loss by farmers [3], as well as spurring informal housing [4,5] and urban sprawl [6] In this context, informal development may be a spontaneous response from villages to a shortage of fiscal revenue and the need to find ways to improve local people’s livelihoods. The issues surrounding informal land development go beyond land development as such, having become a political issue for China’s governments with respect to social stability
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