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China's informal settlements - villages inside urbanized areas - are often characterized by local governments as dirty, chaotic, and dangerous places. This negative discourse inevitably leads to recommendations for demolition. A number of criteria have been invoked in state decisions regarding the demolition of informal settlements; however, rarely are these places evaluated from the residents perspective. This paper, following a long tradition of residential satisfaction research in Western nations, uses a household survey to examine this topic in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. We find that local contexts not only matter, but may be the principal determinants of residential satisfaction. The residential satisfaction of village dwellers is not necessarily low, and most socioeconomic attributes are not statistically significant determinants of resident satisfaction. Migrants and low-income groups are not less satisfied than nonmigrants or middle-range income earners; the most important determinant is social attachment within the community. The perception of being excluded, or lacking neighborhood social attachment, significantly reduces residential satisfaction. No facilities can compensate for this negative exclusion factor. We conclude that demolishing informal settlements does not help to build a "harmonious society," which is the purported goal of such programs. Removing the social and institutional barriers for migrant integration into the city is likely the most effective way to enhance residential satisfaction and neighborhood quality. © 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This paper investigates the factors driving nanotechnology development in Chinese regions. Advanced regions of China have spearheaded the country's rapid growth in nanotechnology, aided by substantial support from the government. While this head start could potentially perpetuate regional inequalities through agglomeration economies, the results suggest that knowledge spillovers exert a substantially greater impact in peripheral regions compared with the advanced ones, and may thus be compensating for the limited institutional support they receive and their weak technological capabilities. This research contributes to the regional innovation literature by highlighting that a formal scientific network can counteract the forces of agglomeration economies and spur innovation in peripheral regions