AbstractExisting literature on China's urbanization focuses primarily on the expansion of cities and towns, with little attention being paid to urban renewals. The wasteful use of urban land has conventionally been attributed to the ambiguous definition and ineffective protection of property rights. This study examines recent practices in urban redevelopment in Guangzhou – a site chosen by the central authorities to pilot urban renewals (sanjiu gaizao). The research identifies a local practice in which institutional changes are made not in the delineation of land property rights but instead in the redistribution of the benefits to be made from land redevelopment. Current users of the land are offered a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state as an incentive to encourage them to engage in urban renewal. Land-use intensity and efficiency have increased, along with social exclusion and marginalization. Research findings cast doubt over the perceived notion that the uniform and unambiguous definition of property rights is the prerequisite for improved land-use efficiency and call for a critical evaluation of the current urban renewal policies that completely ignore the interests of the migrant population who outnumber local residents by a large margin.
AbstractChinese economic reforms have profoundly changed the scale at which things get done. Much of the existing literature on scale has concentrated on the politics of rescaling from above. Less has been written about rescaling initiatives from below, the focus of this study. It distinguishes three important localisms.Local capitalismstreats capitalism as subordinate to local social and political processes that provide crucial conditions of existence.Local citizenshipsees processes of entitlement and exclusion as accomplished locally rather than through national frameworks.Translocalitydescribes the ways in which claims are made on the loyalties of those possessing capital but residing elsewhere and the promotion of the place through image‐building and physical/social infrastructural enhancements. These three distinct localisms overlap and interact in a variety of ways to shape a new social and spatial order in post‐reform China. A detailed study of the practices of localism in the Dongguan city‐region reveals the ways in which the emergence of capitalism has been dependent on pre‐existing social connections and based on villages and townships. The entitlements of citizenship are polarized between the localhukoupopulation and the migrant workers irrespective of the national definition of social safety net and regardless of the physical presence of the individuals.RésuméEn Chine, les réformes économiques ont profondément modifié l'échelon auquel les choses se font. Les publications traitant de cet aspect se consacrent en général aux politiques de redimensionnement venues des instances supérieures, et abordent plus rarement les initiatives venues d'en bas, objets de cette étude. Cette dernière distingue trois localismes importants:les capitalismes locaux, le capitalisme apparaissant subordonné aux processus sociaux et politiques locaux qui déterminent les conditions d'existence;la citoyenneté localepour qui les processus d'habilitation et d'exclusion s'effectuent au plan local et non en fonction de cadres nationaux;la translocalitéqui décrit comment est sollicitée la loyauté de ceux qui possèdent le capital mais résident ailleurs, et comment des projets de création d'image et d'infrastructure matérielle ou sociale dynamisent la promotion du lieu. Ces trois localismes se chevauchent et interagissent diversement, façonnant un nouvel ordre social et spatial dans la Chine de l'après‐réforme. Une étude détaillée du localisme pratiqué dans la ville de Dongguan fait apparaître les modalités d'un capitalisme émergent, dépendant des liens sociaux existants et basé sur des villages ou municipalités. L'accès à la citoyenneté définit un clivage entre la population locale ayant sonhukouet les travailleurs migrants, indépendamment de la notion nationale de filet de protection sociale ou de la présence physique des individus.
AbstractHow should we understand the recent rapid spread of eco‐urbanism around the world and its move into the mainstream? This understanding has become increasingly dominated by narratives of the urban sustainability fix, which stresses the logic of capital accumulation. Within the broader structural processes of ecological modernization, such as transitioning to low‐carbon growth, consideration of—let alone interest in—the diversity of local politics that shapes the practice and forms of contestation of eco‐urbanism has often been relegated to a position of secondary importance. Meanwhile, investigations of the relationship between the growth of climate governance and grassroots environmental activism often ignore space production as an underlying process of political‐economic transformation. Drawing on a detailed case study of the prevalence of zero‐waste neighborhood experiments in many Chinese cities, which have recently become obsessed with low‐carbon growth, this article underscores the potential of grassroots activism to change the nature, dynamics and landscape of eco‐urbanism significantly. On the basis of the intriguing evidence presented here, it calls for a new understanding of eco‐urbanism: one which is more attentive to the diversity, heterogeneity and contextual sensitivity of urban change at the grassroots level.
