Search

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates rural Chinese migrants’ agency through their multi-positionality and negotiated living strategies. The idea of ‘multi-positionality’ conceptualises a migrant’s mobility between physical locations and shifting social positions. Through individual migrants’ multi-positionality, this study discusses their place-specific social relations and thereby the diverse way to negotiate a living in villages-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China. These strategies include simple approaches such as facilitating physical movements between different locations and more sophisticated ones which develop multiple roles with outsiders and native villagers in different localities. While the former allows individual migrants to use their local knowledge to make a living in the context of institutional exclusion and discrimination, the latter further cultivates changes and an upgrade in social relations. Rural migrants' everyday stories are used to unfold an individual’s particular people–place relationship and how he/she has tapped into a place-specific resource to make a living. It does not aim to generalise rural migrants’ experience; rather it seeks to show diversity and complexity. Migrants’ stories are collected through extensive research in a village-in-the-city in Guangzhou, China. Through these stories, not only does this paper articulate the social relations which underlie individual migrants’ shifting positions, but also extends translocal studies on migrants beyond the narrative of physical locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of China’s ‘university cities’ (daxuecheng) as a governmental strategy to modernise higher education and to promote its socio-economic integration. To the disappointment of policy makers, the model of university cities has largely failed to yield satisfactory educational outcomes and economic productivity. Drawing from ethnographic research at the Higher Education Mega Center (HEMC) in the suburb of Guangzhou City, this paper analyses the characteristics and problems of China’s university cities. It discusses how various disjunctures between planners’ visions and students’ everyday experiences undermine the missions of university cities: Universities intended to reinforce the reputation and growth potential of cities overestimated the need for such facilities; students rejected the vision of isolated education enclaves as a style of living; and productive connections with research and development sectors were not realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the urban redevelopment process under the ‘three old redevelopment’ policy in Guangzhou, China from 2009 to 2014. It highlights strongly shared interests between stakeholders’ institutions that match the core mechanism of the urban regime approach. The fragmented authoritarianism model is used to explain the origins of such regimes, using concepts such as institutional obstacles and small opportunities. In addition, comparisons are made between three types of places (the ‘three olds’ of towns, factories and village) that experience specific institutional difficulties. Through the ‘three old redevelopment’ policy, selective regimes are emerging in diverse ways to form new informal coalitions and realise potential land values, depending on the place and context in which it is applied. These selectivities can be explained by the analysis of a bias institutional ensemble which privileges some projects and some actors more than others in the ‘three old redevelopment’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As with many cities in China experiencing rapid urbanisation, Guangzhou is undergoing a specific form of urban development characterised by the engulfing of rural settlements: a process resulting in the so-called village in the city. This paper uses three modes of economic integration (redistribution, market exchange and reciprocity) as a framework to examine the interrelationship of various development issues and conditions of these villages. It shows that the poor integration in the spheres of state redistribution and formal market exchange pushes migrants to focus on survival strategies that relate to the self-organisation of housing, employment and education. It also makes a critical review of several (re)development projects, each relating to one or more of the different modes of economic integration. This paper concludes that new project approaches that organise a productive interplay between market exchange, redistribution and reciprocity are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Against the backdrop of higher education expansion, studentification refers to a particular type of urban sociospatial restructuring resulting from university students’ concentration in certain residential areas. Over the last decade, studentification has evolved into different forms and has spread to different locales. This study aims to provide a contextualised understanding of this distinct phenomenon in China so as to decode the complex dynamics of urban sociospatial transformation in the Chinese city. In this paper, I present a line of empirical evidence based on fieldwork in Xiadu Village and Nanting Village, two studentified villages close to university campuses in Guangzhou. These two villages exemplify different consumption and spatial outcomes of studentifcation, owing to different institutional arrangements, types of studentifiers and roles of villagers. Yet, in both villages, studentification has profoundly transformed the economic, physical, social and cultural landscapes. Notably, rather than the spatialisation of compromised and marginalised residential choices by higher education students, studentification in China is better interpreted as the spatial result of students’ conscious residential, entrepreneurial and consumption choices to escape from the rigid control of university dorms, to accumulate cultural and economic capital, as well as to actualise their cultural identity. In the Chinese context, studentification provides a useful prism to understand a unique trajectory of urbanisation: re-urbanising the ‘villages in the city’ through bringing in urban living/urban consumptions. In the long run, studentification could provide a potential solution to sustain and upgrade the villages in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Guangzhou’s experience of hosting the 2010 Asian Games to illustrate Guangzhou’s engagement with scalar politics. This includes concurrent processes of intra-regional restructuring to position Guangzhou as a central city in south China and a ‘negotiated scale-jump’ to connect with the world under conditions negotiated in part with the overarching strong central state, testing the limit of Guangzhou’s geopolitical expansion. Guangzhou’s attempts were aided further by using the Asian Games as a vehicle for addressing condensed urban spatial restructuring to enhance its own production/accumulation capacities, and for facilitating urban redevelopment projects to achieve a ‘global’ appearance and exploit the city’s real estate development potential. Guangzhou’s experience of hosting the Games provides important lessons for expanding our understanding of how regional cities may pursue their development goals under the strong central state and how event-led development contributes to this. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Chinese cities have experienced rapid growth and restructuring in recent times. This paper examines the evolving residential and employment locations and the changes in the patterns of commuting in Guangzhou, China. Tabulations derived from household surveys conducted in 2001 and 2005 show rapid suburbanisation of both residence and employment. Intrazone traffic today dominates the commuting scene in both the central core and the suburbs. The mean commute distance and mean commute time have increased, but the increases are quite modest. Estimation of residential and employment density gradients reveals differential decentralisation of different population groups. Multivariate analysis indicates that commute distance generally increases with income and occupational status. Males in Guangzhou used to have appreciably shorter commutes than females; but the difference has decreased in recent years, suggesting convergence in commuting behaviour between the Chinese and Western cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s rapid urbanisation has created a special form of urban built environment known as ‘village in the city’ (ViC). Various governance approaches have been applied to redevelop ViCs, which are prevalent in big cities. However, owing to the specific conditions of ViCs and the diverse contexts of urban development within and across cities, those approaches remain largely case-specific and are hampered by a lack of guiding principles. This article presents a framework on modes of governance to understand the choice of and the differences between modes of governance as well as their positive and negative consequences for the regeneration of ViCs. Case studies of various types of ViC regeneration practices in Guangzhou and Shenzhen are used to illustrate the framework’s application. The article concludes that new modes of governance that are interactive, inclusive and collaborative are called for to achieve the sustainable regeneration of ViCs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]