IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/41898.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Right to the city and critical reflections on property rights activism in China’s urban renewal contexts

Author

Listed:
  • Shin, Hyun Bang

Abstract

The rapid transformation of urban socio-spatial landscape in China has resulted in an increasing degree of frustration and discontent among local residents who face threats of demolition and eviction. This has given rise to sporadic protests by local residents who are often known as ‘nail households’, that is, persistent protesters who are fixed to the land and hold onto their dwellings in protest against unwilling eviction and demolition of their dwellings. The presence of these protesters provides an effective example of local residents’ out cry in China. This paper is an attempt to critically re-visit the existing debates on local residents’ property rights activism in urban redevelopment processes, and to discuss the extent to which it can be an effective strategy. The paper refers to the right-to-the-city debate to examine whose right counts in China’s urban renewal contexts. It also makes use of empirical findings, both quantitative and qualitative, to examine how nail houses are received among local residents and migrants, and discusses the extent to which migrants can fit into local residents’ struggle against the top-down imposition of neighbourhood transformation. The paper ultimately calls for the need to form a place-based alliance that enables urbanites including migrants to come together to launch an effective claim on their right to the city

Suggested Citation

  • Shin, Hyun Bang, 2011. "Right to the city and critical reflections on property rights activism in China’s urban renewal contexts," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 41898, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:41898
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/41898/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Peter Marcuse, 2009. "From critical urban theory to the right to the city," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2-3), pages 185-197, June.
    3. David Harvey, 2003. "The right to the city," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(4), pages 939-941, December.
    4. Laurence Ma, 2010. "The Great Urban Transformation. Politics of Land and Property in China," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(8), pages 1099-1100.
    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. Bingqin Li & Hyun Bang Shin, 2012. "Migrants, Landlords and their Uneven Experiences of the Beijing Olympic Games," CASE Papers case163, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    2. repec:cep:sticas:/163 is not listed 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. Hyun Bang Shin, 2011. "Right to the city and critical reflections on property rights activism in China’s urban renewal contexts," CASE Papers case156, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    2. repec:cep:sticas:/156 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Sören Becker & James Angel & Matthias Naumann, 2020. "Energy democracy as the right to the city: Urban energy struggles in Berlin and London," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(6), pages 1093-1111, September.
    4. Witten, Karen & Kearns, Robin & Carroll, Penelope, 2015. "Urban inclusion as wellbeing: Exploring children's accounts of confronting diversity on inner city streets," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 349-357.
    5. Osborne, Natalie & Grant-Smith, Deanna, 2017. "Constructing the cycling citizen: A critical analysis of policy imagery in Brisbane, Australia," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 44-53.
    6. Esin Özdemir & Tuna Tasan-Kok, 2019. "Planners’ role in accommodating citizen disagreement: The case of Dutch urban planning," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(4), pages 741-759, March.
    7. Kon Kim, 2022. "Exclusion and Cooperation of the Urban Poor Outside the Institutional Framework of the Smart City: A Case of Seoul," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-18, October.
    8. Cardullo, Paolo, 2018. "Commoning the smart city: A case for a public Internet provision," SocArXiv u8dk2, Center for Open Science.
    9. Mine Eder & Özlem Öz, 2015. "Neoliberalization of Istanbul's Nightlife: Beer or Champagne?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 284-304, March.
    10. Gillad Rosen & Anne B. Shlay, 2014. "Whose Right to Jerusalem?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 935-950, May.
    11. Walter Alando & Joachim Scheiner, 2016. "Framing Social Inclusion as a Benchmark for Cycling-Inclusive Transport Policy in Kisumu, Kenya," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 46-60.
    12. Youjeong Oh, 2023. "AGAINST THE COLONIZATION OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT: The Top‐dong Right to the City Movement in Jeju, South Korea," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(3), pages 425-443, May.
    13. O'Neill, Ella & Cole, Helen V.S. & García-Lamarca, Melissa & Anguelovski, Isabelle & Gullón, Pedro & Triguero-Mas, Margarita, 2023. "The right to the unhealthy deprived city: An exploration into the impacts of state-led redevelopment projects on the determinants of mental health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 318(C).
    14. Eric K Chu, 2018. "Urban climate adaptation and the reshaping of state–society relations: The politics of community knowledge and mobilisation in Indore, India," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(8), pages 1766-1782, June.
    15. Nathan McClintock & Michael Simpson, 2018. "Stacking functions: identifying motivational frames guiding urban agriculture organizations and businesses in the United States and Canada," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 35(1), pages 19-39, March.
    16. Miriam Williams, 2017. "Searching for actually existing justice in the city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(10), pages 2217-2231, August.
    17. Christina R. Ergler & Claire Freeman & Tess Guiney, 2022. "Pre‐Schoolers’ Vision for Liveable Cities: Creating ‘Care‐Full’ Urban Environments," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 113(2), pages 131-150, April.
    18. Luca, Davide & Terrero-Davila, Javier & Stein, Jonas & Lee, Neil, 2023. "Progressive cities: urban–rural polarisation of social values and economic development around the world," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118275, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Xue, Jin, 2014. "Is eco-village/urban village the future of a degrowth society? An urban planner's perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 130-138.
    20. Alexandra Titz & Sosten S. Chiotha, 2019. "Pathways for Sustainable and Inclusive Cities in Southern and Eastern Africa through Urban Green Infrastructure?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-27, May.
    21. Shenjing He, 2012. "Two Waves of Gentrification and Emerging Rights Issues in Guangzhou, China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(12), pages 2817-2833, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    right to the city; property rights; urban renewal; nail houses; displacement; Chin;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    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:ehl:lserod:41898. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.