Debordering and rebordering in the residential borderlands of suburban Guangzhou

ABSTRACT

Gated communities and enclave urbanism in China have recently drawn considerable attention of researchers and policy makers. The integration of urban space is now even on the agenda of the Chinese Central Government. This article therefore sets out to advance our understanding of how exactly urban borders function and how they change over time. This is done by applying concepts of border theory to what may be called residential borderlands. The empirical study is conducted in two such borderlands between gated communities and suburban villages in southern Guangzhou. It is based on over 70 qualitative interviews and the observation of spatial behaviour at the respective borders. Both debordering and rebordering processes are found to occur with regards to three dimensions: cross-border mobility, cross-border social connectivity and symbolic border functions. The identified dynamic processes at the neighbourhood borders are embedded in the overall urban spatial reconfiguration of Guangzhou.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban borders
• debordering
• enclave urbanism
• gated communities
• suburban Guangzhou

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Urbanised villages are also called urban villages, villages-in-the-city or chengzhongcun. The term preferred by us avoids confusion with the pre-existing term urban village (Gans, 1962), which has a very different meaning, and makes clear that the “villages” in question are not agricultural villages anymore, but in a process of urbanisation.

2. For more details on this research comp. Liao (2016).

3. The population data is from China’s Sixth National Population Census; the area was calculated from land use data of GIS format.

4. The hukou is the document of official household registration. It determines the entitlement to social services and other rights based on the place of registration (which may not be the actual place of residence) and the hukou category (e.g. rural or urban). The hukou system as an institution deeply affects many aspects of life for Chinese citizens (Chan, 2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grants number [41601170 and 41171123]; and by the German Science Foundation (DFG) under Grants number [BR3546/2-1 and WE 2461/4-3].