Participatory urban redevelopment in Chinese cities amid accelerated urbanization: Symbolic urban governance in globalizing Shanghai

ABSTRACT

This research engages with ongoing theoretical enquiry into the nature and dynamics of public participation in urban redevelopment in a command economy undergoing marketization. The research investigates the actual practicing of community participation in housing requisition in Shanghai, its social and political underpinnings, and its impacts upon residents directly affected by housing requisition. This study argues that the notion of public interests is ambiguously defined and manipulated, whereas the actual rights and responsibilities among major stakeholders remain unchanged. Migrants are excluded from the decision-making process. Participatory urban redevelopment is found to be rhetorical and symbolic by nature. It is a tool for the municipal government to quicken the housing requisition process for economic development and avoid social unrests for career advancement. The findings of this research help identify a new path of theorization concerning state–society relations going beyond the state–market dynamism that has dominated the theory of neoliberal urbanism.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2017 Urban Affairs Association Conference held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The authors are grateful to the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. All usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. In this research, we use the term power relationship to refer specifically to the rights and responsibilities held by the different stakeholders involved in the process of housing requisition and inner-city redevelopment.

2. There are many different definitions of civil society. In this research, we follow the classic definition of civil society as a sphere in which a person is constituted as a separate individual whose interests are civil and economic, not political. In other words, the main interests of civil society are rights and entitlements in the economic sense, which are distinct from the main concerns of the local state, which has important social and political agendas. For detailed discussions, see Perry (1994), Solinger (1999), and Lin (2007).

3. Street office is one of the smallest political divisions of China. It is an executive arm of the district government.

4. This includes nearly 10 million of the migrant population who do not hold an official household registration but who have lived in Shanghai for 6 months or longer (SSB, 2017).

5. The areal extent for resettlement covers nine central districts and the Pudong New Area. The nine districts are Huangpu, Luwan, Xuhui, Changning, Jing’an, Putuo, Zhabei, Hongkou, and Yangpu. See Figure 3.

6. The Shanghai French Concession was a foreign concession that existed from 1849 until 1943, which progressively expanded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For much of the 20th century, the area covered by the former French Concession remained the premier residential and retail district of Shanghai.

7. Shanghai was once divided into what were called upper corners and lower corners. Traditionally, foreign concessions were regarded as upper corners, such as Huangpu, whereas northern areas in industrial Yangpu, home to poor immigrants from nearby provinces, were regarded as lower corners.

8. Nail household refers to households that either refused to sell or wanted more than the developer would pay in housing requisition.

9. Lilong housing is an old residential pattern in the southern parts of China. Li means neighborhood and long means lane.

10. The second phase of the Luxiang Yuan Road redevelopment project started after the government issued the 2011 regulations. For the Phase I project at Luxiang Yuan, the retail price averaged 85,000/m². The urban investment corporation sold 113 apartments in this project in 2013, a total area of 27,300 m², making a profit of nearly 2 billion yuan (163 News, 2014).

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this article has been sponsored by the grants obtained from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR (GRF 17614218 and CRF C7028-16G).

Notes on contributors

Zhumin Xu

Zhumin Xu received her doctoral degree from the University of New Orleans in Urban Studies. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include housing requisition involving public participation schemes, inner-city redevelopment, and local governance.

George C. S. Lin

George C. S. Lin is a Chair Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Red Capitalism in South China: Growth and Development of the Pearl River Delta (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997) and Developing China: Land, Politics, and Social Conditions (London: Routledge, 2009) and co-author of China’s Urban Space: Development Under Market Socialism (London: Routledge, 2007), as well as the author or co-author of many articles. His research interests include China’s urbanization, land management, and urban redevelopments.