[Seminar Cities are back in town] “Muddling on Pathways of Urban Redevelopment: Same Rhyme, Different Tones, and Diverse Trajectories of Chinese Urbanism”

SEMINAR CITIES ARE BACK IN TOWN

Sciences Po, 13 rue de l'Université, 75007 Paris

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Inspired by both ongoing debates of universalism/globalism vis-à-vis polycentrism/ postcolonialism and an observed shift of emphasis in Chinese urbanization from urban sprawl to urban renewal, this research investigates the diverse trajectories of urban redevelopment in five leading Chinese cities, namely Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The remaking of China’s urban landscapes is found to be shaped not simply by forces of agglomeration economies or bid-rent dynamism but more by the contestation and negotiation between a fragmented authoritarian state and an increasingly sophisticated, albeit effectively manipulated, society. Contrary to normal expectation, urban redevelopment is found to be more prominent in the land supply of the cities in the less developed interior than others located in the demographically dense and economically advanced coastal regions. Administratively, urban redevelopment tends to prevail in those modes of land disposition that are either monopolized by the state or subject to close-door negotiation. Existing land users are motivated by a decentralized power of decision-making and a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state. Redevelopment is less contentious in a “village-in-the-city” where decisions are made by the collective organization internally than the other involving developers externally. Land use intensity and efficiency have been improved alongside intensified social exclusion and marginalization. The research foregrounds state-society interplay as a key to help solve the riddle of an urban China so ambivalent when seen in the lens of neoliberalism. It calls for a critical evaluation of the current urban renewal policies that completely ignore the interests of the migrant population—the main contributors and yet biggest losers of China’s urban redevelopment. Theoretically, the research advocates a new agenda for urban studies aiming at theoretically engaged and empirically grounded comparative urbanism—one that is attentive to pan-urban/cross-city patterns, recurrent processes, causal relationships, scalar contingency, and positionality as well as contextual sensitivity.

Acknowledgements: The work described in this paper has been sponsored by the grants obtained from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR (GRF 17610321 and HSSPF 37000322) and the Outstanding Researcher Award 2021-22 of the University of Hong Kong.

Speaker 

George C.S. Lin is Director of the International Centre for China Development Studies, Chair Professor of Geography and Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include China’s urbanization, land management, political economy of urban redevelopment and the emerging geography of low-carbon urbanism.

He is the author of Red Capitalism in South China: Growth and Development of the Pearl River Delta (UBC Press, Vancouver, Canada, 1997), Developing China: Land, Politics, and Social Conditions (Routledge, London, 2009), co-author of China’s Urban Space: Development under Market Socialism (Routledge, London, 2007), and many articles. Professor Lin has served as Chair of the China Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers (2007-08), Vice-Chair of the Economic Geography Commission (2006-2012) and Councilor (2014-2018) of the Geographical Society of China, Head of the Department of Geography (2006-08), and Associate Dean (Research) of HKU Faculty of Social Sciences (2012-2017). He has been on the editorial boards of international scholarly journals including Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, The Canadian Geographer, Urban Geography, The Chinese Geographical Science, Eurasian Geography and Economics, and Area Development and Policy. He is the recipient of Young Canadian Researcher Award (IDRC, Ottawa, Canada, 1992); University Teaching Fellow (HKU, 1998), University Outstanding Researcher Award (HKU, 2021), Qiushi Chair Professorship (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, 2014), Zijiang Chair Professorship (East China Normal University, Shanghai, China, 2010), Prestigious Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences (HKRGC, 2022) and many competitive research grants from international funding agencies. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) of the UK.