IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v53y2016i3p471-489.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic transition and speculative urbanisation in China: Gentrification versus dispossession

Author

Listed:
  • Hyun Bang Shin

Abstract

Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In mainland China which has gone through transition from a planned to a market economy, it is necessary to unleash decommodified real estate properties and make them amenable to investment. This entails inhabitants’ dispossession to dissociate them from claiming their rights to the properties and to their neighbourhoods. This paper argues that while China’s urban accumulation may have produced new-build gentrification, redevelopment projects have been targeting dilapidated urban spaces that are yet to be fully converted into commodities. This means that dispossession is a precursor to gentrification. Dispossession occurs through both coercion and co-optation, and reflects the path-dependency of China’s socialist legacy. The findings contribute to the debates on contextualising the workings of gentrification in the global South, and highlight the importance of identifying multiple urban processes at work to produce gentrification and speculative urban accumulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Hyun Bang Shin, 2016. "Economic transition and speculative urbanisation in China: Gentrification versus dispossession," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(3), pages 471-489, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:53:y:2016:i:3:p:471-489
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098015597111
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098015597111
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098015597111?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. Ernesto Lopez‐Morales, 2011. "Gentrification by Ground Rent Dispossession: The Shadows Cast by Large‐Scale Urban Renewal in Santiago de Chile," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 330-357, March.
    2. Ya Ping Wang & Alan Murie, 2000. "Social and Spatial Implications of Housing Reform in China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 397-417, June.
    3. Graham, Margaret B. W., 2006. "Comment: Exploring the Context of Use," Enterprise & Society, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 456-461, September.
    4. Barrett, Alan & Kearney, Ide & McCarthy, Yvonne, 2006. "Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2006," Forecasting Report, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number QEC20062.
    5. Herbert Brücker, 2006. "Comment on Holger Wolf," Springer Books, in: Rolf J. Langhammer & Federico Foders (ed.), Labor Mobility and the World Economy, pages 244-248, Springer.
    6. Anne Haila, 1999. "Why is Shanghai Building a Giant Speculative Property Bubble?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 583-588, September.
    7. David Harvey, 2007. "Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 610(1), pages 21-44, March.
    8. Hsing, You-tien, 2010. "The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199568048.
    9. 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.
    10. Jason Hackworth & Neil Smith, 2001. "The changing state of gentrification," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 92(4), pages 464-477, November.
    11. Harvey, David, 2005. "The New Imperialism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199278084.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fan Wu & Ling-Hin Li & Sue Yurim Han, 2018. "Social Sustainability and Redevelopment of Urban Villages in China: A Case Study of Guangzhou," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-18, June.

    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. Hyun Bang Shin & Loretta Lees & Ernesto López-Morales, 2016. "Introduction: Locating gentrification in the Global East," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(3), pages 455-470, February.
    2. Joanna Kusiak, 2019. "Legal Technologies of Primitive Accumulation: Judicial Robbery and Dispossession‐by‐Restitution in Warsaw," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 649-665, July.
    3. Lin Jiang & Yani Lai & Ke Chen & Xiao Tang, 2022. "What Drives Urban Village Redevelopment in China? A Survey of Literature Based on Web of Science Core Collection Database," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-16, April.
    4. Hyun Bang Shin & Soo-Hyun Kim, 2016. "The developmental state, speculative urbanisation and the politics of displacement in gentrifying Seoul," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(3), pages 540-559, February.
    5. Meina Cai & Jianyong Fan & Chunhui Ye & Qi Zhang, 2021. "Government debt, land financing and distributive justice in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(11), pages 2329-2347, August.
    6. Lin, Wanlin & Lin, George C.S., 2023. "Strategizing actors and agents in the functioning of informal property Rights: The tragicomedy of the extralegal housing market in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    7. Fulong Wu, 2018. "Planning centrality, market instruments: Governing Chinese urban transformation under state entrepreneurialism," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(7), pages 1383-1399, May.
    8. Seung-Ook Lee & Joel Wainwright & Jim Glassman, 2018. "Geopolitical economy and the production of territory: The case of US–China geopolitical-economic competition in Asia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(2), pages 416-436, March.
    9. Mengzhu Zhang & Si Qiao & Xiang Yan, 2021. "The secondary circuit of capital and the making of the suburban property boom in postcrisis Chinese cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1331-1355, September.
    10. Yunpeng Zhang, 2022. "TEMPORAL POLITICS AND INJUSTICE IN MEGA URBANIZATION: Lessons from Yangzhou, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 558-575, July.
    11. Qinran Yang & David Ley, 2019. "Residential relocation and the remaking of socialist workers through state-facilitated urban redevelopment in Chengdu, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(12), pages 2480-2498, September.
    12. Fulong Wu, 2009. "Land Development, Inequality and Urban Villages in China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 885-889, December.
    13. Erin Collins, 2016. "Postsocialist informality: The making of owners, squatters and state rule in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1989–1993)," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(12), pages 2367-2382, December.
    14. Youliang Guo & Chengguo Zhang & Ya Ping Wang & Xun Li, 2018. "(De-)Activating the growth machine for redevelopment: The case of Liede urban village in Guangzhou," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(7), pages 1420-1438, May.
    15. Ian G. Baird, 2017. "Resistance and Contingent Contestations to Large-Scale Land Concessions in Southern Laos and Northeastern Cambodia," Land, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-19, February.
    16. Dror Kochan, 2015. "Placing the Urban Village: A Spatial Perspective on the Development Process of Urban Villages in Contemporary China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 927-947, September.
    17. Paul K. Gellert, 2007. "From Managed to Free(r) Markets: Transnational and Regional Governance of Asian Timber," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 610(1), pages 246-259, March.
    18. Thomas Sigler & David Wachsmuth, 2016. "Transnational gentrification: Globalisation and neighbourhood change in Panama’s Casco Antiguo," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(4), pages 705-722, March.
    19. Haoxuan Sa, 2021. "Urban Village Shareholding: Cooperative Economic Organization in Northeast China," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 80(2), pages 665-697, March.
    20. Jesse Rodenbiker, 2020. "Urban Ecological Enclosures: Conservation Planning, Peri‐urban Displacement, and Local State Formations in China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 691-710, July.

    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:53:y:2016:i:3:p:471-489. 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.