Agency and social construction of space under top-down planning: Resettled rural residents in China

Abstract

Resettled rural communities are a product of China’s rapid urbanisation and associated top-down planning. For local governments, relocating farmers from natural villages into new, concentrated residential neighbourhoods serves the dual purpose of implementing national directives on farmland conservation and integrated urban–rural planning. For resettled residents, however, the transition process is fraught with livelihood, social and cultural contest. This paper explores how such residents in a Chinese city, Zhenjiang, exercise agency to reconstruct community and public space in their new neighbourhood. Keeping alive patterns and practice of thoughts acquired during their rural lives, habitus, resettled residents have deployed their new spatial situation in creative ways. Pre-existing social fabric and mutual benefit-sharing provide the foundation for spatial adaptation and transformation, allowing residents to achieve a sense of normalcy or even to recreate village life. Theoretically, our analysis highlights the importance of situating spatial agency within the context of shifting regime of property rights and its effect on the maintenance of habitus.

‘Peasants are peasants’: Prejudice against displaced villagers in newly-built urban neighbourhoods in China

“…They take a dim view of villagers' social behaviours in the neighbourhood such as making a noise, using uncouth language, leaving their front doors open, littering, growing vegetables on the lawn in communal gardens, occupying communal space such as corridors, etc. Such behaviours of reconstructing communal space in resettled neighbourhoods can be seen as peasants' adaptation to the new environment, which enable them to achieve a sense of normalcy (Zhang et al, 2018). However, as 'civilised' urbanites who have been educated via various government campaigns and public education, they assume their 'civilised' way of living as normative and themselves as being socially and morally superior: I myself am the son of peasants.…”

In‐Situ Marginalisation: Social Impact of Chinese Mega‐Projects

“…Following large numbers of complaints from residents, the state has improved and standardised its compensation scheme, especially in large cities such as Shanghai (Shih ). However, problems continue to exist as relocated residents are still uprooted from their former neighbourhoods because compensation properties are located in remote areas with poorly serviced infrastructure (Zhang et al ). Due to high property prices in the inner cities and insufficient monetary compensation, displaced residents are unable to buy another property in the same area.…”

“…The increasingly more generous compensation towards residents (Shih ) is therefore selective and more an attempt to foreground resistance instead of pure benevolence of the state (Kan ). However, once the “obstacle” of residents has been relocated from the site, the state also halts its care for the relocated residents as can be seen from the lack of employment and community facilities for relocated residents (Jiang et al ; Zhang et al ). Another resident group that is of great relevance to the strategic objectives of the state are prospective new residents with high levels of education and technical skills.…”

“… Relocation properties are housing specifically built for compensating relocation residents (Zhang et al ). …”

Ethnographic perspectives on the mediation of informality between people and plans in urbanising China

“…Attending to how informality operates within government, as well as among the people who are targeted or affected by plans, is particularly important in China. As Zhang et al (2018) emphasise, the tolerance of unauthorised uses of public spaces is facilitated by a 'kind of regulatory vacuum' in local planning which relies more on administrative oversight and discretion than on municipal codes, making room for 'negotiation and compromise'.…”