Tag Archives: housing market

The socio-spatial structure of the inner-city of Nanjing

Qiyan Wu, Jianquan Cheng, Guo Chen, Daniel J. Hammel, Xiaohui Wu (2014), Socio-spatial differentiation and residential segregation in the Chinese city based on the 2000 community-level census data: A case study of the inner city of Nanjing, Cities (39) 2014, Pages 109-119. 

This article reveals that the policies of the socialist era and the initial outcomes of the introduction of a free market, particularly with regard to the creation of new elite spaces within the inner city, have shaped a complex pattern of socio-spatial differentiation and residential segregation.

The paper is organized as follows. Section ‘Urban socio-spatial differentiation in the context of China’ provides a brief overview of the literature on urban residential segregation and socio-spatial differentiation in the context of China, followed by a justification of the data set and methods selected in Section ‘Methodology’. Section ‘Results’ focuses on interpreting and discussing the results from a series of statistical analyses that shed light on the characteristics of residential segregation and spatial structure in the case of inner-city Nanjing.  Finally, it is argued in Section ‘Discussion’ that the inner city area of Nanjing has experienced massive residential  segregation caused by the dualistic dynamic structure of housing differentiation resulting from a growth-led urban housing market and persistent institutional bias with regard to housing redistribution at the turn of  the 21 st century.

Full article in Cities. 

Oriane Pillet

Intern at the CNRS, UrbaChina project. M.A. in urban local development (IEDES, Paris); M.A. in international development studies (Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris - Utrecht University); B.A. in geography and law (Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris).

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China’s low income urban housing

Cook, Ian G., Gu, Chaolin and Halsall, Jamie (2013) China’s low income urban housing . Asian Social Science. 9 (3) pp. 7-17. ISSN 1911-2017. DOI: 10.5539/ass.v9n3p7

In this paper, firstly the authors briefly outline the historical legacies of inner-city housing that are the focus for redevelopment today, and then summarise the legacy of mass housing built by the work-unit or danwei in the Maoist era. The bulk of the paper, however, is then concerned with the switch to privatisation (via ‘market socialism with Chinese characteristics’) in the Reform Period under Deng Xiaoping and his successors, and the role of land policy that forms an important constraint on housing provision. Demand for low-income housing is in part due to the continuation of the Maoist hukou registration system which acts as a major barrier to full participation in the housing market and consequently China’s cities now have a huge migrant non-hukou ‘floating population’ (liudong renkou) that must be housed via alternative means, preferably as cheaply and effectively as possible. There is also the situation of the ‘ant tribe’ of young low-paid college graduates to consider. For people like these renting in overcrowded conditions is one option, but because of China’s unique development trajectory, (driven by the Chinese Communist Party since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, self-help housing is not a major form of housing provision, therefore there are few examples to consider. Hence, we discuss several examples of China’s low income urban housing.

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Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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RC43 conference 2013: ‘At home with the housing market’

  • Conference takes place: July 10 – 12, 2013
  • Deadline for abstracts and panel session proposals:  January 19th, 2013
  • Location: Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Theme

In contemporary societies, the meaning and function of the built environment has been transformed by the intensification and growing volatility of capital accumulation in housing and real estate.

With sustained housing commodification in context of declining economic stability, most households have become ever more sensitive to the status of their homes as exchange goods and consider their respective housing market positions as central to their chances of security or future prosperity.

This conference explores the dynamic interaction between homes and (housing) markets over time and across different socio-economic contexts. There are various ways of thinking about the idea of ‘being at home’ in this regard. First are the connections between homes as places, spaces and objects of family and social life, as well as housing commodities that circulate on, and are subject to, fickle and dispassionate markets. Second is the significance of the shift from pre- to post-crisis conditions and how the housing market has been experienced in different cities, regions and countries. In Europe and North America, for example, there is a distinction that not only marks out a fundamental economic reorientation but also cultural, socio-political and even family and generational transitions. In Latin America and East Asia by contrast, housing has not been so interwoven with recent global economic crises, albeit with housing commodification still deeply embedded with social change.

Call for papers

The RC43 encourages cross-disciplinary debate and welcomes housing research papers from all social science disciplines. We invite both panel session proposals and individual abstracts related to the following themes:

  • The social and cultural implications of housing markets
  • The political economy of housing and home
  • Housing policy responses and the crisis
  • Comparative contexts: diversity, variety and/or convergence
  • Housing, policy and society
  • Family, housing, and (inter)generational issues
  • Citizenship, ex/inclusion and participation
  • The structural crises of housing markets

Schedule

> January 19th 2013 – Deadline for abstracts and panel session proposals
> January 31st 2013 – Confirmation of acceptance / Registration opens
> May 18th 2013 – End of ‘early bird’ registrations
> June 26th 2013 – Submission of full paper
> July 8th 2013 – PhD Student Pre-Conference
> July 9th 2013 – Urban China Seminar
> July 10th to 12th 2013 – RC43 Conference

Submitting Abstracts & Panel Session Proposals

Abstracts and proposals for panel sessions should be submitted via email by January 19th, 2013.

More information :

 

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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