Urban Ecological Enclosures: Conservation Planning, Peri‐urban Displacement, and Local State Formations in China

Abstract

Across contemporary China, city governments are unevenly territorializing peri‐urban villagers’ land and housing by creating new urban ecological conservation sites. I analyze this emerging form of what I call ‘ecological territorialization’ through three interrelated spatial practices: comprehensive urban–rural planning, peri‐urban ‘ecological migration’, and the distribution of institutional responsibility for conservation site financing, construction and management. Detailing this triad of territorializing practices renews attention to the relationship between conservation classifications that justify state intervention, uneven displacements of people from rural land and housing, and site‐specific capitalizations that collectively consolidate urban government control over rural spaces. These practices emerge stochastically as state, private, and semi‐state institutions capitalize on conservation projects in the context of legally and constitutionally underdefined land use rights and ecological land designations. In the current post‐socialist moment of urban ‘greening’, these practices are key to producing frontiers of land‐based accumulation and extending local state control across the peri‐urban fringe. Urban ecological enclosures not only remake city‐level state power but also shape rural people's relationships to land, labor and housing.

Emerging research methods in environmental displacement and forced migration research

“…In the literature we reviewed, researchers suggested ways to approach future EMD research (for more on this, see Hunter, 2018). Over 20% of the papers reviewed acknowledged that mixed‐method approaches would enhance displacement‐based research (Essoka, 2010; Kearns & Mason, 2013; Khavarian‐Garmsir et al., 2019; Li et al., 2019; Neelakantan et al., 2019; Rodenbiker, 2020; Snodgrass et al., 2016; Wetzel et al., 2012). A mixed‐method approach, marrying quantitative and qualitative research methods, allows researchers to understand patterns in terms of the where, how, who, and why.…”

“…A mixed‐method approach, marrying quantitative and qualitative research methods, allows researchers to understand patterns in terms of the where, how, who, and why. When using qualitative methods, such as interviews and focus groups, it is essential to understand various factors attributed to relativity, including culture, views on exclusion and unwelcomeness, and secondary losses beyond displacement (Alam et al., 2020; Danley & Weaver, 2018; Derakhti & Baeten, 2020; Essoka, 2010; Hauer, 2017; Lopez‐Morales, 2013; Massé, 2016; Neelakantan et al., 2019; Rodenbiker, 2020; Shokry et al., 2020; Snodgrass et al., 2016).…”

“…Some researchers rely on a mixture of spatial analysis and qualitative methods (Huynh & Maroko, 2014; Miller, 2015; Neelakantan, 2019; Rodenbiker, 2020). Using spatial analysis in a GIS, interviews, and surveys, Miller (2015) spatially represented socio‐demographic indicators for displacement pressure related to environmental cleanup, including educational attainment, income, rent, and other demographic factors.…”

“…Neelakantan (2019) spatially analyzed two sets of survey data with physical data on conservation border areas, as well as food insecurity. Rodenbiker (2020) compared various conservation land use and policy practices to spatially represent data from interviews. All of these researchers suggest that more than one dataset is helpful in analyzing aspects of EMD.…”

Can green city branding support China's Sponge City Programme?

“…While state-driven 'Ecological Migration' (EM) has been a feature of China's efforts to restore degraded rural ecosystems since the 1990s, the extent to which it has occurred with respect to the SCP is undocumented. However, Rodenbiker (2020) describes how EM has extended to China's cities and peripheries, where millions of small-scale EM projects, such as wetland parks, displace people.…”