IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v44y2007i9p1827-1855.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reproducing Spaces of Chinese Urbanisation: New City-based and Land-centred Urban Transformation

Author

Listed:
  • George C. S. Lin

    (School of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, GCSLIN@hkucc.hku.hk)

Abstract

China's spaces of urbanisation in the 1980s and early 1990s were occupied primarily by the interests of rural industrialisation and town development. Since the mid 1990s, China's urban spaces have been reproduced through a city-based and land-centred process of urbanisation in which large cities managed to reassert their leading positions in an increasingly competitive, globalising and urbanising economy. This study analyses changes in China's nonagricultural land in relation to the growth and structural changes of Chinese cities. A systematic analysis of three sets of data reveals a high intensity and great unevenness of non-agricultural land use in the country. China had 29.5 million hectares of non-agricultural land in 1996, which accounted for only 3 per cent of the national land mass. Over 80 per cent of the recent increase in non-agricultural land use was caused by the expansion of urban and rural settlements, industrialisation and numerous 'development zones'. A comparative analysis of land use data and Landsat images identifies two concurrent processes of urbanisation and non-agricultural land use change. Rapid urban sprawl of large cities, driven by the expansion of ring-roads and setting up of 'development zones', has contributed to the conversion of farmland into nonagricultural uses. At the same time, rural industrialisation and a housing boom have given rise to a dispersed pattern of non-agricultural land development all over the country. Given the pervasive influence of the forces of continuing urbanisation and globalisation, the state's attempt to protect China's dwindling farmland will not reverse the trend of increasing non-agricultural land use, but are likely to slow the pace of land conversion. Anecdotal evidence such as 'hollow villages' and idle land in numerous encircled 'development zones' suggests that there exist ways for China to use its non-agricultural land more efficiently and economically than hitherto.

Suggested Citation

  • George C. S. Lin, 2007. "Reproducing Spaces of Chinese Urbanisation: New City-based and Land-centred Urban Transformation," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(9), pages 1827-1855, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:44:y:2007:i:9:p:1827-1855
    DOI: 10.1080/00420980701426673
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/00420980701426673
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00420980701426673?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan Smart & George C.S. Lin, 2007. "Local Capitalisms, Local Citizenship and Translocality: Rescaling from Below in the Pearl River Delta Region, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 280-302, June.
    2. Clifton W Pannell, 2002. "China's Continuing Urban Transition," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(9), pages 1571-1589, September.
    3. C. Cindy Fan, 2003. "Rural‐urban migration and gender division of labor in transitional China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 24-47, March.
    4. Jiang Xu & Anthony G.O. Yeh, 2005. "City Repositioning and Competitiveness Building in Regional Development: New Development Strategies in Guangzhou, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 283-308, June.
    5. Shahid Yusuf & Weiping Wu, 2002. "Pathways to a World City: Shanghai Rising in an Era of Globalisation," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(7), pages 1213-1240, June.
    6. Jieming Zhu, 2002. "Urban Development under Ambiguous Property Rights: A Case of China’s Transition Economy," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 41-57, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    2. Jiang Xu & Anthony Yeh & Fulong Wu, 2009. "Land Commodification: New Land Development and Politics in China since the Late 1990s," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 890-913, December.
    3. Edoardo Bruno, 2022. "Socio-Spatial ‘Tabula Rasa’ and Punctual Preservation: The Case Study of Measurable Compensation in Lijiao Village," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-27, July.
    4. Jiang Xu & Anthony Yeh, 2009. "Decoding Urban Land Governance: State Reconstruction in Contemporary Chinese Cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(3), pages 559-581, March.
    5. Zhen Li & Zai Liang, 2016. "Gender and job mobility among rural to urban temporary migrants in the Pearl River Delta in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(16), pages 3455-3471, December.
    6. Kevin Fox Gotham, 2014. "Racialization and Rescaling: Post-Katrina Rebuilding and the Louisiana Road Home Program," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 773-790, May.
    7. Raimbault, Juste & Le Néchet, Florent, 2021. "Introducing endogenous transport provision in a LUTI model to explore polycentric governance systems," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    8. Le, Minh Khue & Zhu, Jieming & Nguyen, Hoang Linh, 2022. "Land redevelopment under ambiguous property rights in transitional Vietnam: A case of spatial transformation in Hanoi city center," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    9. Chen, Xuan & Vuong, Nguyen, 2018. "Climate and Off-farm Labor Supply of Agricultural Households: Evidence from Rural Vietnam," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274187, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    10. Sung Li & Long Zhao, 2015. "The competitiveness and development strategies of provinces in China: a data envelopment analysis approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 293-307, December.
    11. Anna Lena Bercht & Rainer Wehrhahn, 2010. "A Psychological–Geographical Approach to Vulnerability: The Example of a Chinese urban Development Project from the Perspective of the Transactional Stress Model," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(7), pages 1705-1722, July.
    12. Qingyun Du & Yanxia Wang & Fu Ren & Zhiyuan Zhao & Hongqiang Liu & Chao Wu & Langjiao Li & Yiran Shen, 2014. "Measuring and Analysis of Urban Competitiveness of Chinese Provincial Capitals in 2010 under the Constraints of Major Function-Oriented Zoning Utilizing Spatial Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(6), pages 1-26, May.
    13. Hong Yi & Fiona F Yang & Anthony G O Yeh, 2011. "Intraurban Location of Producer Services in Guangzhou, China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 43(1), pages 28-47, January.
    14. Fulong Wu, 2020. "Adding new narratives to the urban imagination: An introduction to ‘New directions of urban studies in China’," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(3), pages 459-472, February.
    15. Junxi Qian, 2015. "No right to the street: Motorcycle taxis, discourse production and the regulation of unruly mobility," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(15), pages 2922-2947, November.
    16. Eran Ben-Joseph, 2009. "Commentary: Designing Codes: Trends in Cities, Planning and Development," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(12), pages 2691-2702, November.
    17. Xu, Hao, 2017. "The time use pattern and labour supply of the left behind spouse and children in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(S), pages 77-101.
    18. Becky P. Y. Loo & Bo Wang, 2018. "Factors associated with home-based e-working and e-shopping in Nanjing, China," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 365-384, March.
    19. Ya Ping Wang & Yanglin Wang & Jiansheng Wu, 2009. "Urbanization and Informal Development in China: Urban Villages in Shenzhen," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 957-973, December.
    20. Haining Wang & Fei Guo & Zhiming Cheng, 2015. "A distributional analysis of wage discrimination against migrant workers in China’s urban labour market," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(13), pages 2383-2403, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:44:y:2007:i:9:p:1827-1855. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.