Constructing Community in Contemporary China:
Governance in Urban Villages
Project Summary
This research examines the evolving nature of community and implications for urban governance in contemporary China. This implication is of particular importance in urban villages (chengzhongcun) – a recent phenomenon of “community” where over time village settlements have become engulfed by high density urban expansion. These once traditional village communities have to negotiate between a rural socialist past and an urban market-driven present. While land use controls and decision-making remain in the hands of village committees, these villages have become a source of low-income housing for migrant workers who often outnumber local residents. Cities throughout China are initiating redevelopment plans to bring urban villages into the formal planning and regulatory regimes of municipal government. Their policies rely on a recent state initiative termed “community construction” (shequ jianshe) that seeks to institutionalize community in order to maintain social stability and to reconstruct governable units. However, problematically, the presence of migrants, viewed as temporary, is not adequately addressed under existing governance arrangements. An important question yet to be examined is the implications that the massive presence of migrant populations in urban villages has for their spatial and social integration into Chinese cities and how practices associated with policies of “community construction” may be able to accomplish this.
I define community as having two central threads. First, community is interpreted socio-spatially as my concern for community has to do with both the spatial pattern of settlement and the fostering of social relationships, asking how the patterns of settlement and land use serve to accommodate ongoing social processes (Webber, 1970). Second, I treat community as an articulation of everyday “life spaces” that is
as territories on which the history, values, and politics of a people are enacted (Friedmann, 1988).
In asking what the evolving nature of community in contemporary China is and how it challenges government capacity, my research has three main components:
1. History: History demonstrates that notions of community reflect the political and social environment of the times, and that they evolve over time, just as cultural norms do (Siu, 1995). Contemporary communities must be placed in a historical context to appreciate both enduring and temporal social practices. How do social institutions and practices of community building reflect China’s transitions from imperial to republican to socialist to post-socialist polities?
2. Community reconsidered: Given that most urban villages have become migrant enclaves, officials regard them as an unwanted present to be razed rather than as communities in evolution with potentials for sustainable futures (Li, 2004; Xie, 2005). From the perspective of the erstwhile local villagers who have lost their farmland, their traditional communities based on kinship ties have evolved into mixed urban communities. For them, migrant renters are not simply members of the new urban poor, but have a significant economic presence. A central question this research seeks to answer is how and in what ways the presence of migrants within urban villages influences their potential for transformation and integration into cities?
3. Government strategies and capacities: A policy concern to be addressed by this research is the question of municipal capacity to undertake or facilitate these transformations. A close examination of the planned transformation of urban villages into urban neighbourhoods can give indications of how the unplanned presence of migrants and their interactions with local villagers may influence the capacity of
municipal land planning institutions.
Background Literature and Areas of Scholarship Contribution
On the edge of Chinese cities, the rapid agricultural land loss is blurring the rural-urban divide, erasing a dominant characteristic of Mao’s development policies. With greater information available and fieldwork opportunities, the growing post-1978 urbanization literature has brought new perspectives and debates about China’s urban transition. The economic reform policies and the unprecedented urban transition continue to pose the question of what is the Chinese urbanization model and what are the planning implications. The proposed research draws upon and contributes to the literature in two main areas, the first on urban villages as a specific phenomenon of China’s urban transition and the second, in more theoretical terms, on community planning and place-making.
First, the English urbanization literature that specifically addresses issues of urban villages in Chinese cities is only recently expanding (Leaf, 2002; Leaf, 2006; Anderson, 2003; Zhang et al., 2003). The majority of the English literature on China’s urbanization focuses on the macro forces. Main areas of concern have been the state’s migration and registration policy (Chan, 1994; Solinger, 1999), rural industrialization (Guldin, 1997; Unger, 2002), land market development (Lin and Ho, 2005; Yeh and Wu, 1996), and regional economic policies (Lin, 1999; Perkins 1990). Less researched, however, is who the actors are shaping China’s urbanization and how their decisions both impact and are impacted by political and economic forces. Recent anthropological research has examined each of these actors – migrants (Zhang, 2001), villagers (Guldin, 1997), and new affluent urbanites (Hu and Kaplan, 2001; Tomba, 2004). There remains a gap that examines these actors acting together. By framing the research around how community, my research is intended to see urban villages not only as the outcome of political and economic forces but also as the lived spaces of individuals as their communities become more diverse. Under planned economy, centered on producing the “danwei person” (danwei ren), the notion of community was singular and place-bounded. The new market economy has urged people to instead become a “society person” (shehui ren) and brought with it class divisions and new formations of social relations. How then, should we talk about community in contemporary China?
Second, concepts of community planning are particularly relevant and timely for scholarship on the development of Chinese planning practice as it faces the challenges of reforming the discipline and keeping pace with China’s urban transition. Chinese academics have borrowed from western theory and practice of community planning and community development. Zhao and Zhao (2003), in a Chinese urban planning textbook on community development planning theory and practice, begin with Tonnies’ concepts of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, and continue with the various approaches in western sociology and urban planning. While they begin in this way and discuss the western and Chinese approaches throughout the book, there is no explicit connection made between them. If Chinese and western scholars are to share experiences in community development and planning, there remains a need to breakdown the notion of community to better interpret how the Chinese notions of community is comparable to western community planning.
In particular, what this research hopes to bring to the community planning discourse is the theoretical literature on community as place-making which focuses on the process that goes into the social construction of space (Massey, 1994; Holston, 1998; Low, 1996; Gupta and Ferguson 1997). It refers to the social practices of constructing meaning in urban spaces by social actors. In considering the contestation between vested interests, it focuses on how the realities of everyday life spaces, such as daily uses and social exchanges in community centers, transform and challenge the macro economic and political factors that lead to the formal design and programming of urban spaces, expressed as state-directed visions of how urban spaces ought to be organized (Low, 1996). Social construction of place is probably the least western-centric and therefore the most appropriate approach with which to examine the concepts of community in the Chinese context. It takes into consideration the broader context of the political economy as well as accounts for the actors (be they city planners, villagers, and migrants) coping with the changes of the time. Describing urban villages as a place of land use contradictions and a place awaiting urbanization, as the Chinese literature tend to do, is to view the urban villages as passive spaces. Applying the scholarship on place-making to urban villages, this research seeks to present another perspective for conceptualizing urban villages – one that focuses on how to plan for the present, which is to view urban village communities as social construction of places that continue to evolve given their present problems, present solutions, and present qualities of community that could be sustained to be part of the urban future.
Methodology and Project Feasibility
Preliminary work of general data collection, including information on current municipal programs regarding urban villages, interviews with city officials, and field visits to a number of urban villages in Nanjing, were carried out last year as an independent study, as part of my curriculum in the certificate program at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (2005-2006).
The field methodology of the proposed research is designed to rethink and treat urban villages as a viable community and thus is approached with methods central to community planning. As a mean to strengthen the lived spaces of everyday life, community planning encompasses both social and spatial planning, requiring attention to economic development, physical design, participation, and social research. The first stage of this research will examine China’s land policies and acquisition process and their relationship to the creation and redevelopment of urban villages. Through interviews and archival research of newspapers and planning documents at the Nanjing Municipal Archives and Library, I will conduct a historical analysis of notions of community in Nanjing. The second stage will begin with a spatial analysis to map the location of villages relative to proposed and actual patterns of urban expansion, asking whether migrant presence complicates the integration of urban villages by raising the imputed land cost, and if we could see this spatially through the relationship between urban expansion and the economic development of urban villages. Then, working with the available existing data, a subset of three urban villages will be selected varying in their composition of migrants. During site selection and afterwards, I will regularly visit these villages to observe activities and social situations. Semi-structured interviews will be carried out with different stakeholders. Interviews with city officials will seek to understand the process of urban village redevelopment. Interviews with urban villagers will probe the process from their perspective. And interviews with migrants will aim at determining their position within the urban village economy and their expectations regarding the effects of redevelopment.
Academic Resource Needs
1. Library Resources: To accompany findings from field observations and interviews, this research requires access to maps, statistical data, and other primary materials at the Nanjing Municipal Archives and Nanjing Municipal Library. While my home institution, University of British Columbia, is prepared to write letters of introduction in order for me to gain access to the Archives and Library, I hope the Hopkins-Nanjing Center could also provide additional letters of introduction as the institution sponsoring my stay in China. Also, while in residence at the Center, this research would benefit from access to the print and electronic Chinese urban literature at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center Library.
2. Research Logistics: My research is expected to require a six to eight month stay in China. I hope to begin my residency at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center at the beginning of this Spring Semster, Februrary 2007. Prior to arriving, I would need documentation for a “Z” visa application.
3. Equipments: While at the Center, I would need access to the internet, a printer (to avoid having to buy one for a few months of use), and occasional access to a fax machine for correspondences.
4. Academic exchanges: While in residence at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, I hope to be able to create opportunities to exchange ideas with scholars and students at the Center and at Nanjing University.
Nanjing as Fieldsite
A recently established program by the municipal government of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, for the acquisition and transformation of urban villages within the city’s territory presents an excellent opportunity for the detailed empirical study of these issues in one municipality.
The Nanjing redevelopment plan calls for the redevelopment of 71 urban villages within the Laocheng Gonglu (Ring Road) and south of the Yangtze River was initiated by the Nanjing Municipal Government in December 2005. The villages identified for the program vary in their proportions of migrants and in their levels of integration into the urban landscape. The program is divided into three phases, to be completed over a four-year period. Phase One (2005 - 2006) is aimed at completing the redevelopment of the urban villages in the urban core. Phase Two (2007 - 2008) will see the demolition of the illegal constructions in suburban districts and the completion of basic infrastructure such as roads, communication, and water. Phase Three (in 2009) will focus on the management and government of urban villages and the transfer of urban villages into urban communities using the shequ model. During the period for this research, Phase One should be close to completion and Phase Two would have already begun, allowing me to determine if there were obstacles to redevelopment. Furthermore, as this research with its focus community would conclude before Phase Three, it would be in the position to inform the process of transitioning urban villages into urban administrative communities (shequ guanli) that is at the focus of this last phase.
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