Abstract
AbstractUrbanvillages are a unique product of China’s rapid urban expansion. They provide a new way of life sustained by property rental income for local villagers. More importantly, urban villages provide cheap accommodation for millions of rural migrant workers in most large cities. Recently, with the increasing demand for land by commercialdevelopers and public projects, urban villages have become the targets for redevelopment. This chapter uses a case study village in Beijing as an example to assess the social and economic impacts of urban village redevelopment on both the original local inhabitants and migrants in rented accommodation. The case study village went through a very long and complicated redevelopment process from 2004 to 2017 involving different stages of demolition and relocation. It provided a rare opportunity to evaluate the effects on the local population, both pre- and post-redevelopment. The study involved several field visits, observation and interviews with village residents. It shows that urban village redevelopment offered no positive benefits for migrant workers who often lost their homes to demolition. For local villagers, redevelopment and relocation into new flats may improve their living conditions. However, most suffer from the loss of long-term economic and income generation opportunities. Moreover, the new property rights for the replacement flats confer no additional rights of citizenship for the relocated villagers who remain ‘second-class citizens’ within Chinese cities.
Highlights
Urbanisation, industrialisation and globalisation have rapidly transformed China from a traditional agricultural-based society into a global economic powerhouse over a period of just 30 years
Before we look at our case study for urban village redevelopment, it is important to have some understanding of the Chinese rural and urban land management system
We looked at the impacts of the process on the original village residents and migrant workers
Summary
Urbanisation, industrialisation and globalisation have rapidly transformed China from a traditional agricultural-based society into a global economic powerhouse over a period of just 30 years. These villages have been physically absorbed into towns or cities, but they retain many traditional characteristics in the composition of their buildings and populations This distinctive phenomenon within Chinese urbanisation has changed the simple dichotomy between the rural and the urban, to create a third category of residential space: the ‘urban village.’. In Shenzhen for example, 80% of post-1990 buildings constructed in urban villages by individual families were between 6 and 9 storeys high Another 5% were over 10 storeys, and some even reached 20 storeys (Shenzhen City Urban Village Redevelopment Planning Working Group 2004). In the inland city of Xi’an, for example, among the 624 administrative villages located inside the six urban districts and four development zones, 286 were officially classified as urban villages in 2010 These urban villages housed 370,000 rural residents. I visited the original village and replaced housing estates between 2009 and 2018 and conducted interviews with residents before and after relocation
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