Redevelopment Of Urban Villages Research Articles

Tripartite Evolutionary Game and Policy Simulation: Strategic Governance in the Redevelopment of the Urban Village in Guangzhou

The scarcity of land drives urban village redevelopment projects, which involve interest redistribution among stakeholders with distinct demands. This paper utilizes evolutionary game theory and simulation methods, constructing a tripartite game model under the institutional arrangement of bottom-up with private developer funding. This study identifies the stable strategies and evolutionary trends of the tripartite interactions under four distinct scenarios and validates these strategies through simulations. The redevelopment of XC village validates the assumptions of the model and theoretical analysis, suggesting that when private developers adopt forced demolition strategies, although villagers ultimately choose to sign the contract of property exchange, it can easily lead to social conflicts. These research findings can enlighten the government to form a tripartite alliance to smooth urban village redevelopment.

Remaking urban village through culture: the politics of urban aesthetics in Shenzhen, China

ABSTRACT This paper delves into the evolving governance dynamics of urban villages in China through a case study of the heritage-rich Nantou urban village in Shenzhen. Drawing on the Rancierian politics of aesthetics, the study examines the government’s repositioning of urban villages as cultural and aesthetic assets. The research highlights the state’s emerging approach to urban village redevelopment which combines aesthetics regime and cultural governance. The intricate interplay between consensus construction and dissensus destruction reveals the fluid and porous boundaries between policing and politicization. The findings contribute to a more dynamic approach to analyzing urban village governance in China, expanding the frameworks for understanding the diverse possibilities inherent in urban redevelopment.

Impact of Urban Village Redevelopment on the Migration Patterns of Rural Workers in China: A Policy Study

In China, to improve the quality of urbanization development, the government has carried out a series of urban village renovation programs, to achieve sustainable urban development. However, the renovation of urban villages has also caused new social problems, one of them is that many rural migrant workers may choose to return to their hometowns due to the displacement or unaffordable housing and living costs in urban areas. Considering the factors affecting the stay and departure of rural migrant workers, this study will focus on urban housing security policies. By analyzing the different urban village renovation policies and residential housing security policies in Beijing, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, it can be concluded that the policy reasons leading to the loss of rural migrant workers as mainly as follows: inadequate housing security policies with low coverage, policies not reflecting migrant workers' needs, and insufficient government-subsidized housing supply, making affordable urban housing scarce for these workers. Therefore, completing the housing security policy for rural migrant workers and providing them with suitable housing is the key to preventing a larger scale of rural migrant workers leaving urban areas.

Policy Capacity for Urban Village Redevelopment in China: A Two-Case Case Study

Policy capacity is described as a determinant for effective policy implementation. Its contents vary according to modes of governance. Based on available academic studies, grey literature, and semi-structured interviews, this study empirically explores how urban village redevelopment has been carried out in two cities, Hangzhou and Guangzhou, through the lens of policy capacity. By contrasting policy outcomes and the manifestation of policy capacity at different levels in these two cities, we develop three arguments that contribute to our understanding of urban renewal and policy capacity. Firstly, the performance of any policy action is affected by the capacity of the central actor to develop and implement policies. Secondly, understanding the interactive logical between analytical, operational, and political capacities under different governance modes is the key to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of policy capacity in a specific sector. Shaped by local contexts and past experience, local governments are predisposed to path dependence in developing and deploying policy capacity in urban village redevelopment. Thirdly, the capabilities and resources needed to support policies are largely determined by policy problematization at the analytical level: the technique-based approach of policy capacity theory needs to complete the missing link between policy framing and ethical issues.

Changing value system, shifting geography of opportunity: Trajectory of migrant workers in the garment industry in Beijing

Research on the geography of metropolitan opportunities has focused on a set of opportunities in different urban areas over time to justify policy interventions. The Beijing government implemented large-scale policy interventions to achieve structural industrial changes in order to stop the downward spiral of poverty and segregation in “urban villages.” Beijing has accelerated the redevelopment of urban villages and helped tens of thousands of low-wage migrant workers in garment villages move to surrounding secondary cities or small towns in Hebei Province with better opportunities. However, low-wage migrant workers did not respond linearly to the intervention. This study analyzes the reasons underlying the response of low-wage migrant workers to these policy interventions. First, the antipoverty policy is a geographic exercise, moving low-end industries from a global center to peripheral locations. This study considers why this mobility strategy for improving opportunity has become the arena for opportunistic behavior and conceptualizes the logic of opportunism and the self-worth of low-wage migrant workers in a metropolitan area. Second, the Beijing government is attempting to disperse the low-end informal industries into formal industrial bases in Hebei. Dispersal campaigns inevitably involve circuitous mobility and the outcome of dispersal is inherently unstable. One of the crucial questions in dispersal strategies is scale. Would an upscaled Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) City Region or a downscaled “neighborhood effect” better implement the antipoverty strategy? This dispersal strategy can break up the concentration of migrants, but their perceived opportunities remain in Beijing. One of the obstacles to the full implementation of the dispersal strategy is grassroots opposition. This study uses a three-year survey conducted prior to the COVID−19 lockdown to analyze how displaced migrant workers perceive these opportunities in their processual and networked decision-making. Garment villages are important “anchor places” where migrants can mobilize their social capital and facilitate upward mobility outside a dominant institution in Beijing. This study reveals how garment workers replicated informal habitats in more remote locations in Beijing as the old habitats disappeared.

Urban village redevelopment in China: Conflict formation and management from a neo-institutional economics perspective

Urbanisation is the key to China's modernisation. Extensive urban village redevelopment projects (UVRPs) have recently been implemented in China, with the expectation of generating positive socioeconomic and environmental effects. However, social instability has resulted from conflicts over land and informal settlements. In this study, we investigate the factors influencing conflict levels during the UVRP process. Based on data collected from 439 projects in seven Chinese cities, ordered logit regression reveals that UVRPs with a top-down rather than a bottom-up institutional arrangement are more likely to have violent conflicts. Projects implemented with a bottom-up and villager-funded approach involve lower levels of conflict than those with a bottom-up and private developer-funded approach. Other determinants, including factors related to policies, time, and space along with project specificity, also influence the conflict level during the redevelopment process. These empirical results can inform government approaches to policymaking, thus enabling more positive outcomes for both governments and affected villagers.

Urban Village Redevelopment for an Envisioned Global City: The Multi-scalar Narratives and Actions in Jiuxing, Shanghai

ABSTRACT Urban redevelopment in China has been the subject of heightened attention in urban governance research. Using the Jiuxing redevelopment in Shanghai as the case study, this study engages with the discursive construction of multiple actors under China’s pro-growth regime. The findings of this study include that (1) the municipal government-envisioned global city is the overarching discourse leading to the synergistic narratives of the coalition; (2) the actors created parallel narratives of the meaning of redevelopment based on their scalar positions; (3) through flexible narrative tactics, the capacity of a state-led multi-scalar coalition is enhanced for coordinating actions.

Cooperating and competing for land-based interests in the growth coalition of market-oriented urban redevelopment: The case of Longsheng village, Shenzhen

ABSTRACT This study seeks to enrich our understanding of the concept of growth coalition through analyzing the extended and changeable composition of the urban redevelopment growth coalition and its dynamic operation within the context of market-oriented urban village redevelopment in China. An analytical framework which combines growth coalition theory with the varieties of urban entrepreneurialism is developed. An in-depth investigation of a representative case of urban village renewal projects in Shenzhen has been further conducted to reveal the complex and dynamic processes of cooperating and competing for land-based interests within the coalition. Results show that the coalition of the Village Shareholding Companies (VSCs) and developers has become the key actor in initiating and implementing urban village redevelopment. Competition and cooperation between the cooperative developers and the local governments on provision of public infrastructures and between developers and the VSCs on the distribution proportion of land-based interests are key determinants in implementing the redevelopment.

Planner-led collaborative governance and the urban form of urban villages in redevelopment: The case of Yangji Village in Guangzhou, China

While urban redevelopment has been a global phenomenon for many decades, the redevelopment of urban villages (villages-in-the-city or chengzhongcun) in China has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent years. However, few studies focus on urban planning forces and their impacts on the redevelopment of urban villages, especially the transformation of open spaces. This paper therefore examines how urban planning transforms the space of urban villages through a case study of Yangji Village in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. The large increase in public spaces related to the transformation of Yangji results from collaborative governance driven by trends in urbanization and the work of urban planners. The latter are empowered by their strategic use of state support, professional knowledge and public interest incentives. However, in the Yangji redevelopment, as a state-hegemonic project, such planner-led collaborative governance remains limited in scope amid the exclusion of migrant tenants from decision-making. Although rarely regarded in the literature as playing a key role in redeveloping urban villages, this paper highlights urban planners as a salient force in the morphology of urban villages. Without challenging the hegemonic substance of urban village redevelopment, planners can coordinate with and occasionally manipulate other stakeholders to legitimate and facilitate negotiation during physical planning. Hence, redeveloped urban forms, rather than stakeholders' economic profits in short-term redevelopment, may influence urban lives in the long term due to planners' efforts.

How Does the Renewal of Urban Villages Affect the Resettled Villagers’ Subjective Well-Being? A Case Study in Wuhan, China

To achieve sustainable development, the improvement of villagers’ subjective well-being has become the main policy goal of urban village renewal. However, the mechanism of how urban village renewal affects subjective well-being remains untested in previous research. Utilizing the survey data on 414 resettled households in the urban village renewal through a random sample method in Wuhan, China, we adopted the intermediary model to test the mechanism of how urban village renewal affects the resettled villagers’ subjective well-being. We explored the contribution rate of each intermediary variable to subjective well-being through Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and, consequently, proposed corresponding policy suggestions. The results show that the renewal of urban villages can improve the economic conditions, housing conditions, social security status, and living environments of residents and significantly enhance the subjective well-being of the resettled villagers and households. The multi-dimensional changes resulting from the renewal of urban villages increase subjective well-being through complete mediation. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition results demonstrate that improvement of the living environment has the strongest influence on subjective well-being, with a contribution rate of 69.81%. In the future, the renewal of urban villages should focus on environmental improvement, protect neighborhood networks, and promote community engagement, so as to realize the sustainable redevelopment of urban villages.

A New Technique for Impervious Surface Mapping and Its Spatio-Temporal Changes from Landsat and Sentinel-2 Images

Accurately mapping and monitoring the urban impervious surface area (ISA) is crucial for understanding the impact of urbanization on heat islands and sustainable development. However, less is known about ISA spectra heterogeneity and their similarity to bare land, wetland, and high-rise-building shadows. This study proposes a feature-based approach using decision tree classification (FDTC) to map ISAs and their spatio-temporal changes in a coastal city in southeast China using Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS, and Sentinel-2 images from 2009 to 2021. Atmospheric correction using simplified dark object subtraction (DOS) was applied to Landsat imagery, which enabled faster computation. FDTC’s performance was evaluated with three sensors with different spectral and spatial resolutions, with parameter thresholds held constant across remote-sensing images. FDTC produces a high average overall accuracy (OA) of 94.53%, a kappa coefficient (KC) of 0.855, and a map-level image classification efficacy (MICE) of 0.851 for ISA mapping over the studied period. In comparison with other indices such as BCI (biophysical composition index), PISI (automated built-up extraction index), and ABEI (perpendicular impervious surface index), the FDTC demonstrated higher accuracy and separability for extracting ISA and bare land as well as wetland and high-rise buildings. The results of FDTC were also consistent with those of two open-source ISA products and other remote sensing indices. The study found that the ISA in Xiamen City increased from 16.33% to 26.17% over the past 13 years due to vegetation occupation, encroachment onto bare land, and reclamation of coastal areas. While the expansion significantly reduced urban vegetation in rapidly urbanizing areas of Xiamen, ambitious park greening programs and massive redevelopment of urban villages resulted in a modest but continuous increase in urban green space.

SOCIALLY ENGAGED MUNICIPAL STATECRAFT IN URBAN CHINA? The Shenzhen Biennale as Situated Planning Experiment

AbstractIn this article I build on scholarship that calls for attention to the interventionist role of the municipality in steering development beyond growth to introduce the situated planning experiment as a mechanism through which municipalities practice socially engaged statecraft. The situated planning experiment foregrounds place‐based innovative planning practices that incorporate the participation of citizen intellectuals who act as advocates for marginalized groups in China. I frame the Shenzhen Urbanism\Architecture Biennale (UABB) as a situated planning experiment, tracing its influence on the municipality's shift in approach to planning for urban village redevelopment. I show how the UABB is leveraged as an instrument for the municipality to connect social and economic objectives in development and how it presents differentiated opportunities for migrant residents to make viable urban lives. The article offers one possibility for theorizing the changing relationship between municipal entrepreneurialism and urban planning and critically evaluates the potential for socially engaged municipal statecraft, considering the Xi regime's focus on people‐oriented urbanization. It represents one way in which studies of municipal statecraft can consider the variegated logics and forms of emerging post‐growth state programmes and politics.

Impact of land property rights on the informal development of urban villages in China: The case of Guangzhou

Informal development, as a unique phenomenon that has become widespread in China’s urbanization process in recent years, has continued to attract the attention of both the government and academia. Existing studies focus on urban village redevelopment strategies, and little research has been conducted on informal development in urban villages under the land property approach. In particular, research needs to further explore what impact China’s collective land property rights have had on informality in urban villages. This study mainly adopts a qualitative research method, including field observation and in-depth interviews. The research was conducted in urban villages in Guangzhou. The study finds that land property rights have an important impact on urbanization and property rights arrangements have an important impact on resource allocation efficiency. Due to the ambiguity of collective land property rights in China, informal development in urban villages is the result of the collective action of villagers, government, and enterprises under the stimulation of economic development. The interaction of the stakeholders has promoted the rapid development of informal housing in urban villages.

The Twilight of Shenzhens Great Urban Village: Renovation of Baishizhou to Sustain Local Vitality and Improve Living Conditions

This paper examines the ongoing demolition of Shenzhens largest urban village, Baizhizhou, where poor living conditions and local vitality coexist. We focus on peoples attitudes towards the demolition project and investigate how to renovate Baishizhou to enhance living conditions and sustain local vitality simultaneously. By conducting field research through surveys and interviews with current residents of Baishizhou, we find that people are concerned about their displacement and the disappearance of community culture. Also, people reckon natural lighting and overcrowdedness are the main needed-for-improvement aspects of their current living conditions. In discussion, we propose our replan of Baishizhou in zoning and architectural design to solve the issues we found. We believe that the renovation of Baishizhou should be both human-oriented and practicality centered, which would have multiple implications for the redevelopment of urban villages in modern China.

Influencing Factors in Visual Preference Assessment of Redeveloped Urban Villages in China: A Case Study of Guangdong Province

The urban village represents a particular problem in urban design and renewal in China. Many cities in China have started the redevelopment of urban villages. Based on the investigation of four urban village redevelopment projects in Guangdong Province, China from 2010 to 2020, building façades, plant landscape, roads, and municipal public facility variety were taken as physical factors in this study. Urban village residents with different demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, income, family size, and urban village-native status, were selected as respondents, and the influence of the considered village physical factors on the visual preference assessments performed by the respondents was analyzed by means of photo stimulation. The results show that all four village factors exerted a certain influence on the respondents’ visual preference assessment. Redeveloped urban villages presenting repaired and decorated building façades, various species of plants, resurfaced roads, and medium municipal public facility variety were favored by the respondents. Urban village residents with different demographic characteristics also provided different visual preference assessments of different physical factors of the redeveloped urban villages.

Land use change, policy dynamics and urban governance: A case study of urban village redevelopment in Shenzhen

<abstract> <p>Urbanization in China is a complex process. The expansion of urbanization has pushed the government to tackle the long existed rural/urban divide by redeveloping urban villages. However, not many studies have focused on the relationship between urban redevelopment and urban governance in relation to specific policy elements, that is, how land use change and policy dynamics reinforce urban governance. By conducting a case study of urban redevelopment in Shenzhen, this article first evaluates the redevelopment background, theoretical perspectives on land use and the policy context of urban villages. Based on the analysis of the case, it was concluded that land use change has played a significant role in urban governance, in which the policy dynamics of urban villages in China are crucial to understanding the redevelopment process. Findings show that an integrated approach was adopted to redevelop the village, which combined both government and community forces. Furthermore, the forces of land use change and the policy dynamics manifested in a co-management process engaged by stakeholders, and eventually reinforced urban governance.</p> </abstract>

Buddhism, an Urban Village and Cultural Soft Power: An Ethnography of Buddhist Practitioners in Wutong

The article presents an ethnography of Buddhist practice groups in Wutong village, an urban village in the Shenzhen metropolis area, relating to the village's predicament through the 1990s and until 2019. It discusses the relationship between two intertwined forms of soft power employed by the Chinese regime: 1) The push for cultural consumption within the framework of the re-development of urban villages. 2) The PRC’s re-definition of Buddhism as a culture instead of a religion. The author examines different lay Buddhist actors in the village, which operate within the current restrictive government policy towards religious groups. The ethnography of Wutong shows the non-dichotomic dynamic of suppression and support articulated by the state towards Buddhism's cultural and religious consumption. It focuses on the dynamic between state control and people's agency over their spiritual and religious realities, especially on the urban fringes. The article suggests that the urban art village can be understood as a sphere where lay Buddhists subvert state regulation by creating alternative Buddhist spaces for lay practice, in the form of cultural commodities. However, the article addresses the liminality of such urban spaces, which, aside from opportunities for religious entrepreneurship, also creates a state of precariousness for urban village inhabitants, including Buddhist practitioners.

An Analysis of Transaction Costs Involved in the Urban Village Redevelopment Process in China

A well-designed institutional arrangement for urban village redevelopment projects (UVRPs) must consider transaction costs, but academic papers discussing it from the perspective of transaction cost economics are lacking. This paper applies theory of transaction cost economics to analyse the types and sizes of transaction costs and who bears these costs during redevelopment when implementing UVRPs in China. This paper finds that transactions in UVRPs have high asset specificity, high uncertainty and low frequency, which easily results in high levels of transaction costs. Based on 439 UVRPs collected from seven cities, this paper finds that UVRPs implemented with top–down institutional arrangements remain prevalent in China. Based on semi-structured interviews with participating parties, this paper proves that the sizes and types of transaction costs and the distribution of these costs borne by different participating parties vary with the change of stage under dissimilar institutional arrangements. This implies that a high level of transaction costs at one stage does not necessarily mean the costs stay high at another stage. Transaction costs have essential implications for process efficiency, so policymakers need to consider transaction costs and use hybrid institutional arrangements to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of policies.

What Drives Urban Village Redevelopment in China? A Survey of Literature Based on Web of Science Core Collection Database

The recent economic advances made by China have now obliged the country to address the need for sustainable urban redevelopment. Unlike other recently developed areas in China, urban villages are in dire need of improvement. Consequently, the redevelopment of urban villages has garnered considerable public and academic interest. However, a comprehensive understanding is lacking on the drivers of urban village redevelopment in China. This study aims to fill this gap through a comprehensive survey of existing literature on redevelopment of urban villages. A total of 167 papers have been retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database. A bibliometric analysis and a critical content analysis are conducted on the bases of these papers. We found at least three main processes which have driven urban village redevelopment in China. First, the growth of urban population and their income level has created a strong emerging demand to improve urban living conditions, which has triggered the restructuring of urban villages with sub-standard built environment into high-quality urban spaces. Second, from the production side, the market-oriented land reforms and the developers’ pursuit of land-related investment returns from land rent gap is also a strong driving force for demolition and redevelopment of urban villages. Lastly, the states and local governments have played a critical role in promoting urban village redevelopment and integrating informal urban spaces into formal urban areas. This research concludes with an evaluation of current studies on urban village redevelopment and provides suggestions for further research in the future.

Rethinking growth coalition in urban village redevelopment: An empirical study of three villages in Zhuhai, China

Although growth coalition theory is widely used to explain urban renewal in Western literature, it needs to be adjusted and adapted to suit China's complex and diverse urban village development processes, considering the different local political structures. By analyzing three village cases in Zhuhai, we found that growth coalition theory overemphasized the increasing alliance between political and business elites at the expense of other actors such as villagers and rural collectives. The Shanchang case indicated the close coalition between the developer and the villagers to appeal jointly for additional rights from the local government. The local government made concessions about acknowledging illegal property rights and increasing allowable floor space to facilitate the smooth implementation of demolition. By contrast, the Lixi and Fuxi case showed that the local government formed a coalition with the rural collective in the demolition and compensation stage and formed an alliance with the developer in the construction stage. The case indicated that the government pursued the long-term goal of improving urban livability and enhancing industrial development apart from advocating property-led growth. This paper disclosed the diversity and complexity of the growth coalition, which could enrich the existing framework.