Neighborhood Characteristics, Deprivation, and Attachment: Evidence From Guangzhou, China

Abstract

Housing reform since the 1990s has created a new sociospatial structure in Chinese cities. However, neighborhood deprivation remains one of the key challenges for urban housing policies. This study investigates the relationship among perceived neighborhood characteristics, deprivation, and attachment, based on a survey of 59 neighborhoods across Guangzhou, China. We adopt an objective approach to measure the index of multiple deprivation (IMD) on the neighborhood scale. The descriptive statistics indicate that while residents in deprived neighborhoods generally report lower level of perceived neighborhood physical environments and neighborhood attachment, their evaluations of neighborhood social environments are not necessarily lower. Results from the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) show that perceived housing conditions, perceived neighborhood environment, neighborhood ties, and sense of security are significantly correlated with neighborhood attachment. Furthermore, the moderation analysis reveals that the effect of perceived housing conditions on neighborhood attachment is stronger in more deprived neighborhoods. We propose that residents’ subjective feelings, timely and direct measurement of IMD, and context-based strategies should be used in urban housing policies to reduce the negative impacts of neighborhood deprivation.

Keywords:

• Poverty
• neighborhood deprivation
• neighborhood attachment
• hierarchical linear modeling
• Guangzhou

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to editors Dr. Tom Sanchez and Dr. Vincent J. Reina and anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions. We would also like to thank Dr. Igor Vojnovic and Kayla Davis at Michigan State University for their useful comments, and Shuqi Wu and Yan Lan at Guangdong University of Technology for assisting data collection. Responsibility for any errors and omissions remains with the authors.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Theoretically, place attachment and neighborhood attachment are different concepts. Compared with neighborhood attachment, place attachment is a broader concept, as place could refer to any spatial scale, including home, neighborhood, city, or country (Giuliani, 2003; Lewicka, 2011). When dealing with attachment to the neighborhood, however, these two terms are often interchangeable (for examples, see Bonaiuto et al. [2003] and Wu, Huang, Li, Liu, and Liu [2019]). Thus, we adopted neighborhood attachment in this study as we focus only on attachment to the neighborhood.

2 The five main districts are Liwan, Yuexiu, Haizhu, Tianhe, and Baiyun.

3 This sampling strategy covers a variety of neighborhood types, including commodity housing, public housing, urban villages, traditional neighborhood, and former work-unit neighborhoods.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [42071176, 42001175]; Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science [GD20SQ16]; Science and Technology Planning Programe of Guangdong, China [2020A1010020037]; and Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Planning Research [2019ECK001].

Notes on contributors

Jiang Chang

Jiang Chang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University. His research interests lie in the fields of urban (re)development and urban housing, including neighborhood changes, gentrification, place attachment, life satisfaction, and social equity.

Tingting Lu

Tingting Lu is an associate professor in School of International and Public Affairs at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research focuses on housing development and neighborhood governance in urban China. She is recently working on gated communities, social segregation and neighborhood attachment.

Dixiang Xie

Dixiang Xie is a professor in School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Guangdong University of Technology. His research interests lie in the fields of urban regeneration, urban-rural development, sociocultural geography, cultural heritage conservation, and tourism development.

Zihan Lin

Zihan Lin is a research associate at the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University. Her research interests include but not limited to human-environmental interactions, remote sensing and GIS applications, cloud geocomputation, and health geography.