1st Edition

Rural Migrants in Urban China Enclaves and Transient Urbanism

Edited By Fulong Wu, Fangzhu Zhang, Chris Webster Copyright 2014
    328 Pages 39 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    328 Pages 39 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    After millions of migrants moved from China’s countryside into its sprawling cities a unique kind of ‘informal’ urban enclave was born – ‘villages in the city’. Like the shanties and favelas before them elsewhere, there has been huge pressure to redevelop these blemishes to the urban face of China’s economic vision. Unlike most developing countries, however, these are not squatter settlements but owner-occupied settlements developed semi-formally by ex-farmers turned small-developers and landlords who rent shockingly high-density rooms to rural migrants, who can outnumber their landlord villagers. A strong state, matched with well-organised landlords collectively represented through joint-stock companies, has meant that it has been relatively easy to grow the city through demolition of these soft migrant enclaves. The lives of the displaced migrants then enter a transient phase from an informal to a formal urbanity. This book looks at migrants and their enclave ‘villages in the city’ and reveals the characteristics and changes in migrants’ livelihoods and living places.

    Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book analyses how living in the city transforms and changes rural migrant households, and explores the social lives and micro economies of migrant neighbourhoods. It goes on to discuss changing housing and social conditions and spatial changes in the urban villages of major Chinese cities, as well as looking into transient urbanism and examining the consequences of redevelopment and upgrading of the ‘villages in the city’; in particular, the planning, regeneration, politics of development, and socio-economic implications of these immense social, economic and physical upheavals.

    1. Migrants' Transient Urbanism in Urban China: An introduction Fulong Wu and Fangzhu Zhang  Part 1: Migrants' Livelihoods in the City  2. The New Generation Migrant Workers in China C. Cindy Fan and Chen Chen  3. Chinese Cities and Mobile Livelihoods: Migration, risk and social networks Heather Xiaoquan Zhang  4. Outsiders in the City: Migrant housing and settlement patterns Weiping Wu  Part 2: Migrants’ Social Lives in the City  5. Migrants' Job-search in Urban China: Social networks and the laour market Yu Chen and Gwilym Pryce  6. Situated Translocality in Flux Landscapes: Migrants and urban villages in the city of Guangzhou Cecilie Andersson  7. Migrant Integration in China: Evidence from Guangzhou Bart Wissink, Arjan Hazelzet and Werner Breitung  8. Migrants' Integration in Urban Villages: A case study of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzou Zhigang Li and Fulong Wu  Part 3: Migrants' Habitat – Urbanized Villages  9. A tale of Foxconn City: Urban villages, migrant workers and alienated urbanism Daniel You-ren Yang  10. Shanghai’s Urban Villages: Migrants, temporary residence and urban redevelopment Mingfeng Wang, Xiaoling Lin, Yuemin Ning  11. Urban Villages as Local Economic Clusters: The case of Zhongda cloth market in Guangzhou Uwe Altrock and Sonia Schoon  12. Spatial Evolution of Urban Villages in Shenzhen Pu Hao, Stan Geertman, Pieter Hooimeijer and Richard Sliuzas  Part 4: Migrants' Transient Urbanism – Village Redevelopment  13. 'Three Olds Redevelopment' in Guangzhou Sonia Schoon and Uwe Altrock  14. Symbolic Relations Between Urban Villages and the City: Implication for redevelopment strategies Yanliu Lin, Bruno de Meulder and Shifu Wang  15. Planning for chengzhongcun in Guangzhou and Shenzhen: Redevelopment in the Chinese context Him Chung  16. Conclusion Chris Webster

    Biography

    Fulong Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London, UK.

    Fangzhu Zhang is Lecturer in China Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, UK.

    Chris Webster is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Hong Kong and Senior Departmental Fellow, Cambridge University Department of Land Economy, UK.