Social justice in China’s cities: Urban-rural restructuring and justice-oriented planning

Abstract

Research on China’s urban planning sector has largely focused on its role in delivering economic growth and state objectives. Yet China’s urban planning practices are producing new forms of social injustice, which few studies explicitly examine. The paper details three types of social injustice stemming from urban planning and urbanization processes: 1) economic disparities related to land and housing dispossession and speculation, 2) dissolution of social networks and relative precarity for rural-to-urban resettlement migrants, and 3) in-situ marginalization for residents excluded from urban planning. It further proposes that these types of social injustice can be addressed through distributional, participatory, and recognition-oriented mechanisms. Centering justice can reconfigure the aims, processes, and outcomes of planning practice, thereby reducing inequalities embedded within China’s urbanization. Without deprioritizing economic growth and state-led entrepreneurialism, however, justice-oriented planning can offer but partial remedies. The conclusion discusses pathways for researchers and planners to contribute to a just planning transition and advance social justice in China’s cities.

Socio-metabolic practices and heterogeneous sanitation infrastructures in urbanizing China

“…Therefore, metabolic and sanitation practices should be considered as a possible starting point for justice-oriented planning and intervention (cf. Rodenbiker, 2022) to ensure distributed deliberation on natural and social components of the human ecosystem and their interconnections.…”

Advancing One Health in Urban Seafood Markets: A Genetic and Social Analysis of Dried Sea Cucumber in Three New York City Chinatowns

“…In the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act and widespread migration from the U.S. West, NYC Chinatown communities transformed into strong economic areas organized around international trade and culinary businesses that catered to both Euro-American and Asian-American tastes. Asian American residents in NYC continue to experience anti-Asian sentiment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic [34][35][36][37]. In this context, NYC has a sub-stantial Chinese diasporic community and disproportionately high availability of dried seafood relative to other major U.S. cities.…”