Abstract：It has been widely acknowledged that the market-oriented development of Chinese cities is accompanied by housing differentiation and segregation. Against the background of urban areas being intensively and newly developed, it shows a trend that the small-scale incremental regeneration taking place in dilapidated neighbourhoods has increasingly become a cost-effective strategy for reducing housing disparities, ensuring urban justice and effective spatial governance.Despite being extensively debated by researchers in the fields of urban planning and urban governance, the discussion of urban regeneration is largely limited to the scope of regeneration effect in cased neighbourhoods, which arguably overlooks whether similar regeneration plans can lead to uneven results to the residential groups in different types of neighbourhoods. The role of the state in pursuing spatial and housing justice has long been expected, yet we still know little about how the state works and what mechanisms it can develop during the process of urban regeneration.Taking for instance the specific policy context of the state-led “future community movement” in Zhejiang, China, and based on a resident survey with over 6,882 participants, this study compares the effects of state-funded urban regeneration projects between two different types of neighbourhoods: the state-built, socialist work-unit neighbourhood, and the privately developed commodified housing neighbourhood. Through field research and interviews, we conducted an in-depth comparative case study of two typical neighbourhoods in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Based on the field research, we explored how different state efforts, backed up by distinctive goals of governance, are invested in the regeneration of differently typed neighbourhoods.In recent years, neighbourhood regeneration has been much promoted by the state. It has greatly helped to improve the living quality of vulnerable urban groups, but public resources are also wasted if the state takes regeneration as only a strategy of performance rather than an opportunity of hedging the expanded capitalism and pursuing urban justice and inclusion. Our study provides empirical insights on one of the most recent and massively invested neighbourhood regeneration programmes led by the state. Also, we used both quantitative and qualitative methods, taking a comparative angle to explore both the effect and state governance changes in a spatial and context setting of neighbourhood regeneration. Finally, our argument links urban regeneration to the broader social discourse and political rhetoric of justice governance under state socialism, and portrays the motivations and specific mechanisms of state intervention in incremental regeneration initiatives, thereby suggesting the benefits of reducing social gaps and pursuing urban justice under the state intervention of urban socio-spatial restructuring.Our findings suggest that First, residents in dilapidated work-unit neighbourhoods keep a more positive attitude towards the state-led regeneration programmes which greatly improve their living environments and access to public services. Second, the state takes different strategies for promoting regeneration in two different types of neighbourhoods, which can be summarized as the government-multi-entity partnership model and the community-capital partnership model. Third, being driven by a development logic beyond economic benefits, the state invests more resources in the regeneration of work-place neighbourhoods where more vulnerable groups have lived. It shows a trend of the state and its way of spatial governance that has turned from neoliberalism to more inclusive and equality-oriented developmentalism.
林钢健, 张蔚文, 宋阳. 城市公平视角下的社区更新有效性及其实现机制[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2023, 53(2): 85-100.
Lin Gangjian, Zhang Weiwen, Song Yang. State Mechanism of Equity Promotion in Neighbourhood Regeneration: A Case Study of the “Future Community Movement” in Zhejiang, China. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2023, 53(2): 85-100.
2023, Vol. 53 
