Urban Villagers Research Articles

Destigmatizing urban villages by examining their attractiveness: Quantification evidence from Shenzhen

While existing social and political research has qualitatively discussed the stigmatization of urban villages (UVs), there's a lack of quantitative support. This study innovatively attempts to provide quantitative evidence, employing a spatial perspective for the destigmatization of UVs. We integrated population trajectory, GDP data, employment and residential points of interest, and developed a spatial gravity model to derive the spatial attractiveness index. Concurrently, we selected environmental, spatial structure, and housing economic indicators to construct a regression analysis. Our findings revealed that urban villagers exhibit a preference for shorter daily commutes, underscoring the positive role of UVs in promoting job-housing balance and providing diverse services. The high-frequency mobility of villagers accelerates the categorization of UVs and enhances intra-area circulation. We further discussed the interaction between UV renewal and its destigmatization. To counter spatial stigmatization, enhancing the spatial quality and infrastructure of UVs, as well as promoting diversified land use can reduce the public's stereotypical impressions. Moreover, prioritizing affordable housing and equitable distribution of facilities, along with fostering synergies between urban capital and UVs, can facilitate the destigmatization process. Stigmatization in informal settlements is a widespread issue. Our quantitative approaches, as well as targeted renovation and policy recommendations, can serve as a blueprint for addressing similar challenges in informal settlements globally.

Evaluation of the vulnerability and resilience towards urban flash floods in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The effects of extreme events such as flooding vary across different urban settings, causing vulnerability to differ spatially. The frequency and intensity flood pose debilitating challenges to economies, infrastructure, communities, households, and individuals across various regions, drawing considerable research attention into the vulnerability and resilience towards the deleterious impacts. This research investigates vulnerability and resiliency of urban villagers in response to the increasing threats from floods. Using structured questionnaire distributed among household from urban villagers in Malaysia, this research examines their dimensions of resiliency in facing flood. A hundred and ten respondents identified as the head of the affected households took part in the study where their resource allocation due to floods over a year was determined and their resilience towards floods was also analyzed. The findings reveal the households demonstrating an intricate relationship where despite being urban poor, they do not consider the recurring event as the most major daily threat. Instead, they prioritize safety, health, and sufficient food supply as most of them have made a resource allocation for these items. Social adaptation, particularly comfortable neighbourhood, the duration of stay in the area, and network among the community became the key factors of staying within the same area despite the recurring flash floods. This research recommends that it is equally important to consider the resiliency in disaster planning and policies. By critically consider this complex relationship between household vulnerability and resiliency, would help in formulating effective flood management and town planning for sustainable development.

The Dark Side of the Miracle: Spectacular and Precarious Accumulation in an Urban Village under Siege (A Photo Essay)

Abstract In spite of their informal and substandard nature, Chinese urban villages are actually part of the infrastructure that institutionalizes and normalizes China's uneven development by providing cheap dormitory-style accommodations to the country's vast army of unskilled rural migrants who flock to cities as precarious laborers. This extended photo essay uses an urban village renewal project in the southern city Guangzhou to analyze the politics of eviction, demolition, resistance, and gentrification in light of the region's shift from low-value to high-tech industries. When urban villagers appropriated ideas of tradition, lineage, and socialist collectivism to fight against the government and the developer, their purpose was to acquire greater compensation and even symbolic capital in order to secure an urban middle-class future for themselves. In the process, however, they have further foreclosed the futures of many rural migrants whose survival in the city rely on cheap accommodation in these slum-like enclaves, even though survival in this context often implies dull and dead-end jobs with little prospect of social mobility. Drawing on the author's visual project called Where There Is No Room for Fiction, the selected photographs here provide a visual ethnographic account of the contested landscape of an urban village under siege. As well, these images explore the possibility of a critical aesthetics in order to engage the official vision of urban modernity that is saturated with spectacle and speculation.

Denise Scott Brown’s active socioplastics and urban sociology: from Learning from West End to Learning from Levittown

ABSTRACT The article examines the impact of the study for Levittown of urban sociologist Herbert Gans on Denise Scott Brown’s thought. It scrutinizes Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour’s ‘Remedial Housing for Architects or Learning from Levittown’ conducted in collaboration with their students at Yale University in 1970. Taking as its starting point Scott Brown’s endeavour to redefine functionalism in ‘Architecture as Patterns and Systems: Learning from Planning’, and ‘The Redefinition of Functionalism’, which were included in Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time (2004), the article sheds light on the fact that the intention to shape a new way of conceiving functionalism was already present in Learning from Las Vegas, where Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour suggested an understanding of Las Vegas as pattern of activities. Particular emphasis is placed on Scott Brown’s understanding of ‘active socioplastics’, and on the impact of advocacy planning and urban sociology on her approach. At the core of the reflections developed in this article is the concept of ‘urban village’ that Gans uses in US in The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (1972) to shed light on the socio-anthropological aspects of inhabiting urban fabric.

Influential Factors and Geographical Differences in the Redevelopment Willingness of Urban Villagers: A Case Study of Guangzhou, China

As a crucial part of China’s development strategy, the redevelopment of urban villages and the redevelopment willingness of villagers have attracted considerable scholarly interest. However, the literature to date has neglected the effect of the geographical location of urban villages on the redevelopment willingness of villagers. The purpose of this study is to examine the influential factors of the redevelopment willingness of urban villagers, especially with regard to geographical differences and their effects. Based on prospect theory and 1083 questionnaires administered in 45 selected urban villages in Guangzhou, we use the ordinal logistic regression model to explore the influential factors behind villagers’ redevelopment willingness in inner villages (<15 km from the city center), urban fringe villages (15–40 km from the city center), and suburban villages (>40 km from the city center). The results show that in inner villages the confirmation of residential land rights can significantly increase redevelopment willingness, but in urban fringe villages the number of stories in dwelling houses significantly decreases the willingness. Further, a high level of villagers’ trust in the government, market enterprises, and the village collective each has a significant positive impact on the redevelopment willingness of villagers in urban fringe villages. However, only trust in the government and market enterprises have significant positive impacts on redevelopment willingness in the inner villages and only trust in the village collective is significant in this regard in suburban villages. The effects of geographical differences imply that China’s redevelopment policy should be applied in a differentiated way based on the geographical locations of urban villages.

Level of engagement of recreational physical activity of urban villagers in Luohu, Shenzhen, China.

Physical activity is important for health. However, there is a lack of literature related to the physical activity levels of adults living in urban villagers, which is a vulnerable population in China. The aim of this study is to compare the physical activity and sedentary behavior engagements between urban villagers and non-urban villagers using the 2019 Luohu Shenzhen, China Community Diagnosis Questionnaire. A total of 1205 adults living in urban villages and non-urban villages were included in the analysis. Unadjusted and multiple multivariate logistic regression were conducted for the dependent variable of engagement in recreational physical activity, frequency of recreational physical activity per week, and hours spent in sedentary behaviors per day. Descriptive analysis was conducted to identify the reasons for not engaging in physical activity among urban villagers and non-urban villagers. Across the included sample, 29.05% were urban villagers and 70.95% were non-urban villagers. The results suggested that urban villagers are more likely to engage in physical activity than non-urban villager (OR = 1.90, 95% CI [1.40, 2.59], p < 0.001). However, it was also found that urban village status had no significant association for frequency in engaging in physical activity and average hours spent in sedentary behaviors. Both urban villagers and non-urban villages indicated that lack of time, lack of safe and appropriate environment, and working in labor intensive occupations as some of the reasons for not engaging in physical activity. There is a need for tailed interventions and policies for promoting physical activity among urban villagers and non-urban villagers. Additional studies are needed to further our understanding of the physical activity behaviors among urban villagers in China.

Willingness to use and satisfaction of primary care services among locals and migrants in Shenzhen, China.

The Chinese government has been reforming the health care system by developing a primary care system. The objectives of this study were to compare the willingness to use and satisfaction with community health care centres (CHCs), a component within the Chinese primary care system, between locals and migrants living in Luohu, Shenzhen, China. A 2019 cross-sectional survey data that interviewed 1,205 adult residents living in Luohu district were used for secondary data analysis. Two identifications of migrants were used for analysis, Shenzhen hukou status and urban village status. Linear probability models were used to determine relationship between migrants' status and the outcome variable of willingness to use CHCs and order logistic regression were used to determine the association between migrants' status and the outcome variable of satisfaction with CHCs. Among participants, 37.6% of the participants had Shenzhen hukou. Using the classification of urban village status, 29.1% of participants were urban villagers. Urban villagers were less likely to know the location of nearest CHCs and less likely to select CHCs as their frequently used health care institutions. No statistically significant difference was found on willingness to use CHCs or satisfaction with CHCs between Shenzhen hukou and non-Shenzhen hukou. But urban villagers were more satisfied with attitude and medical skills of health care workers. Our findings indicated that policymakers and social professionals need to adjust the organization and functioning of primary care institutions in the community to increase awareness and utilization of primary care services.

Urban villagers as real estate developers: embracing property mind through ‘planting’ housing in North-east China

Urban village collectives, as one of the stakeholders of land requisition and development in urbanized China, have gradually been driven into real estate development. This transformation has raised an important question regarding how villagers develop their ‘property mind’. From 2015 to 2017, guided by an abductive institutional economics approach, which holds both original and new institutional economics in dialogue, we addressed this question by conducting fieldwork in Xiaojia village, Northeast China. In Northeast China, unlike in the southern cities, there was no foreign investment and the population was in decline. Nevertheless, the villagers developed housing, first for their own use and then for the market. The resulting evidence indicates the following: 1) property rights are social relations and constructed socially and institutionally; 2) markets are not independent, they are conditioned by the institutional context.

“Rural but not rural”: gendered and classed moral identities in liminal spaces in Guangdong, China

ABSTRACT China is woven into the fabric of territorial demarcation between rural and urban space, which shapes people’s life chances. Grounded in the study of rural-urban and local/non-local inequalities, we explore the identity constructions of people-in-between – rural local villagers (commonly named “urban villagers”) in chengzhongcun (villages-in-the-cities). Based on in-depth interviews and participant observations in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, we found stereotypes of rural local people’s as ill-mannered and lazy; yet economically well-off. Women and men who considered themselves rural locals challenge the stereotype by drawing upon the gender- and class-appropriate understandings of their identities. Rural local women crafted a “model woman discourse” by emphasizing their traditional Chinese feminine traits, othering rural migrants for manipulating sex for upward mobility, and criticizing urban women for being too assertive in relation to men. Some rural local men, in contrast, created a subculture that defined their version of success; others embraced urban masculinity. In any case, the processes of identity construction often reinforce stereotypes based on rural/urban and local/non-local divide, class, and gender.

Housing property redistribution and elite capture in the redevelopment of urban villages: A case study in Wuhan, China

The redistribution of housing property in sync with the redevelopment of urban villages had become a cardinal issue during the transitional period of China. It was found that housing redistribution had been influenced by the compensation standards, property rights and social status, based on the analysis of the field survey of two typical cases with different property rights and compensation standards, in Wuhan. Gains and losses of the urban villagers from urban construction varied between the two compensation modes. There was a certain degree of spillover of the housing property compensation in both communities, and the contribution of position redistribution was always higher than share redistribution. The positive influence of social status on the housing compensation spillover rates showed that the elite capture was more obvious in collectively owned land owing to the characteristics of grassroots autonomy and the differential sequences of social relations, in rural areas. It was needful to concentrate on the formulation of compensation policies of the housing security and social security for vulnerable groups, besides strengthening the supervision and audit work in terms of policy implementation.

How Government’s Policy Implementation Methods Influence Urban Villagers’ Acceptance of Urban Revitalization Programs: Evidence from China

This study aims to provide new knowledge for the governments to enact more effective policies to proceed housing redevelopment programs. We conducted a survey on local urban villagers in Hangzhou city of China. Overall, our results provide valuable theoretical and practical implications for sustainable urban development. Firstly, we found that more reasonable compensation and more respecting justice and democracy during redevelopment implementation increases people’s acceptance of government’s housing redevelopment program. Secondly, we demonstrated that experiences from social learning, such as government–homeowner conflicts and quality of living of other homeowners who have experienced similar programs, and people’s own historical housing redevelopment experience, significantly influence their acceptance of the program. Thirdly, if the governments ensure more justice and democracy, it largely enhances effectiveness of compensation in promoting people’s acceptance of the housing redevelopment programs.

Whose village? Stakeholder interests in the urban renewal of Hubei old village in Shenzhen

This article examines the urban regeneration process of Hubei old village in Shenzen, and focuses on interest sharing among stakeholders. Urban regeneration processes are driven by the decreasing availability of construction land in Shenzhen’s city centre due to rapid urbanization and an unplanned, overcrowded urban core. The solution accepted by most stakeholders, i.e., local government, private developers, and urban villagers, is to generate land revenue through the demolition of urban villages like Hubei old village, thus clearing way for Shenzen’s urban development and transformation. However, tenants and small business operators do not benefit from the rising land and property value, and thus do not share the interests of other stakeholders. A further complication to Shenzen’s urban regeneration process is added by those who do not live in Hubei old village but have vocally fought to preserve its architectural heritage. By examining the urban regeneration process of Hubei old village in Shenzhen, this article provides a case study of the complex dynamics of the Hubei urban regeneration program and participatory planning process, taking as a starting point a question posed by an urban villager during an interview: “whose village?”, i.e., who has the right to make decisions on behalf of the urban village?

Illegal construction in China’s urban villages: Influence of herding and social networks

Along with rapid urbanization, illegal construction of houses has become increasingly prevalent in many urban villages in China. In some cities the major groups engaging in such behaviors are local government organizations and firms, but in other cities it has mostly been individuals who have engaged in this illegal activity. Focusing on the theory of planned behavior, we obtained data from 678 residents of urban villages in a city of Southwestern Hubei Province, and used the logit model to identify and assess the factors influencing urban villagers’ decisions to engage in illegal construction behavior. Findings indicated that residents were more likely to engage in illegal construction if their relatives had done so, showing some degree of herd behavior. Social networks were also found to matter, in that those who knew more law enforcement officers were more likely to engage in illegal construction behavior and it was less likely that a resident who was new to a village would do so. These findings are helpful in setting up regulation policies that will better prevent illegal construction behaviors.

Urban Villages and Local Identities: Germans from Russia, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese in Lincoln, Nebraska by Kurt E. Kinbacher

Reviewed by: Urban Villages and Local Identities: Germans from Russia, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese in Lincoln, Nebraska by Kurt E. Kinbacher Kevin Bower Urban Villages and Local Identities: Germans from Russia, Omaha Indians, and Vietnamese in Lincoln, Nebraska. By Kurt E. Kinbacher. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2016. ix + 256 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, index. $39.95 paper. Lincoln, Nebraska, contains an ethnic diversity and cosmopolitanism that, as is the case with other small cities in the region, belies popular notions of the Great Plains as ethnically homogenous and, in a word, boring. Successive arrivals of migrants and immigrants give cities like Lincoln a dynamic character that shapes the lives of both members of these ethnic groups and the city's existing "mainstream." Kurt Kinbacher compares the experiences of three groups of "urban villagers" who arrived in Lincoln, established themselves as distinct communities, and self-consciously have maintained their identities over time. Germans from Russia, ethnic Germans welcomed into Russia in the eighteenth century only to suffer famine and other hardships by the late nineteenth century, made up roughly 25 percent of Lincoln's population by 1920. Significant numbers of Omaha Indians, whose territory once included the land where Lincoln now stands, left their northeastern Nebraska reservation in the years during and after World War II, with about one-third of the enrolled members of the Omaha Nation currently residing in Lincoln. Vietnamese immigrants who came to Lincoln did so in several distinct waves following the 1975 conquest of the Republic of Vietnam and the decades of turmoil that followed under communist rule. Today about 5,000 Vietnamese live in Lincoln. Drawing meaningful comparisons between such distinct communities is challenging, but Kinbacher succeeds in balancing the larger historical forces shaping his subjects, concepts like "cosmopolitanism," "transnationalism," and "performed culture" are handled with a sophisticated but accessible touch and provide a compelling framework for comparison, and a deep local knowledge of both his urban villagers and the city they inhabit. Personal stories about individuals inhabiting these communities give the narrative a human face. Telling details, such as references to the politics of popular music in the Vietnamese community, demonstrate a rich engagement with the lived experiences of Lincoln's urban villagers. These aspects ultimately make Urban Villagers and Local Identities a book that should please both "insiders" from the communities in question and "outsiders" in search of a theoretical framework for understanding other immigrant communities in other places. Kinbacher provides a much-needed book that impressively integrates the experience of urban villagers into our understanding of cities on the Great Plains. Kevin Bower History Department Nebraska Wesleyan University Copyright © 2018 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Property Law for Development Policy and Institutional Theory: Problems of Structure, Choice, and Change

This paper brings the institutional and ontological assumptions of development-by-incorporation theorists such Hernando De Soto into dialogue with modern property scholarship. The central argument of the incorporationists is that state-based legal systems should simply recognize and incorporate the informal property rights of urban squatters and rural villagers, thereby creating the necessary institutional conditions for successful economic development in those communities. While not directly addressing the consequentialist side of the argument, this paper argues that our knowledge of modern property systems poses several significant challenges to this prescription. The most significant of these are that modern property systems have often resisted incorporating informal property rights, and indeed often suppressed them, that they typically involve a great deal more indeterminacy than institutional theorists assume, that the very boundaries of modern property systems seem to be shifting beyond the nation state system, that incorporation decisions will necessarily involve significant normative choices, and that some traditional systems may simply be inconsistent with the institutional ontology of modern economic institutions.

(De-)Activating the growth machine for redevelopment: The case of Liede urban village in Guangzhou

This research investigates the mechanism of urban village redevelopment in south China. Through a revised typology of place entrepreneurs based on the growth machine thesis and a case study of Liede village in central Guangzhou, it illustrates how land-based interests embedded in an imbalanced power relationship can (de-)activate urban village redevelopment. The study reveals that while urban villagers, as represented by the village collective, have entrenched interests in the redevelopment process, the city government – as monopolistic land manager and place entrepreneur – plays the deciding role in forging and halting a growth machine geared towards urban village redevelopment. Although developers are also part of the process, the (de-)activation of redevelopment growth machine/coalition in Guangzhou has largely been dominated by the city government. With a comparative view on the original growth machine model, it is hoped that this study would furnish both theoretical and practical thoughts for future research.

Paula Brown Glick: A Retrospective

Paula Brown Glick: A Retrospective

Community Mental Health in India: Current Scenario

Health services in India are with under resources & particularly mental health is suffering more. WHO estimates that nearly 75% of those affected by mental illnesses do not have access to quality mental health services due to various reasons. In India there are very few national importance institutes such as NIMHANS at Bangalore, and Central Institute of Psychiatry at Ranchi, these are mostly accessible by the semi urban and urban population villagers who require more mental health services are almost deprived. WHO's estimates, there are 0.301 psychiatrists per 100,000 population, 0.166 nurses, 0.047 psychologists, and 0.033 mental health social workers. In India government run only 43 under resourced mental hospitals which are serving a large population of 1.2 billion. Although availability of mental health services has been increased in India but there is still a wide gap between existing morbidity and services available.

Planning the Millennium City: The politics of place-making in Gurgaon, India

Since India’s economic liberalization, rising costs in urban centers have pushed growth to the peripheries of cities. The territory on which new towns emerge often bears a long history of village life and land tenure, even as the political-economy of real estate asserts alternative identities on such places. This paper explores the phenomenon of place-making, using the case of Gurgaon, Delhi’s burgeoning satellite. Gurgaon’s growth has taken place largely in the absence of municipal city planning. Its boosters have branded it the “millennium city.”Gurgaon is the sum of hundreds of private land deals, with a pixelated built environment of affluent gated enclaves, villages, and pockets of underdevelopment. Many former farmers have become landlords, enriched and active in the real estate game, while others have been less fortunate, yet little scholarship has focused on the interactions between residents of different communities, and the process of social and cultural capital formation that under girds place-making and attempts to resolve planning issues. What possibilities exist in the post-liberalization Indian city for residents to forge a coherent sense of place or plan within the piecemeal?Drawing on interviews with residents, urban villagers, domestic staff, planners and developers, the paper argues that place-making in Gurgaon constitutes a form of planning in its own right, as actors at various levels of agency attempt to solidify claims of residency and take up many of the responsibilities of planning.

Consumer Vulnerability and Marketplace Exclusion

With urbanization and the ongoing migration of people from rural regions to urban areas, marketplaces have become increasingly diverse and complex. Rural migrants face numerous challenges in a complex marketplace, and they are likely to become vulnerable consumers. By using ethnographic methods, this study examines Chinese rural migrants, the so-called “urban villagers.” We find that structural barriers, including government policies and rules imposed by institutions, restrict rural migrants’ acquisition of financial products in urban marketplaces. As a result, they often turn to their social networks and traditional resources. Their reliance on social ties, however, limits their acculturation and adaptation into the urban environment. We conclude with public policy suggestions that aim to improve rural migrants’ opportunities for consumption and well-being.