Research into eastern European housing reform indicates that privatization has been accompanied by processes of social and physical exclusion and segregation. Has the Chinese housing reform been accompanied by similar problems? This paper addresses this question by examining the early evidence on the social and spatial consequences of housing reform. It begins with a discussion of the particular social and spatial patterns of Chinese cities developed during the early years of Communist control and then examines the social and spatial impacts of housing reform. It is argued that although housing reform has brought significant changes to the housing provision system and improved many urban residents' living conditions, it has not entirely broken the traditional system. Reform was to a large extent carried out within work-unit establishments and has had very different impacts for different social and economic groups. In addition, spatial impacts in urban areas have varied between old and new areas and between rich and poor areas. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000.
Series Editors: Colin Fudge and Robin HambletonPublic policy-making in western democracies is confronted by new pressures. Central values relating to the role of the state, the role of markets and the role of citizenship are now all contested and the consensus built up around the Keynesian welfare state is under challenge. New social movements are entering the political arena; electronic technologies are transforming the nature of employment; changes in demographic structure are creating heightened demands for public services; unforeseen social and health problems are emerging; and, most disturbing, social and economic inequalities are increasing in many countries.How governments -at international, national and local levels -respond to this developing agenda is the central focus of the Public Policy and Politics series. Aimed at a student, professional, practitioner and academic readership, it aims to provide up-to-date, comprehensive and authoritative analyses of public policy-making in practice.The series is international and interdisciplinary in scope, and bridges theory and practice by relating the substance of policy to the politics of the policymaking process.
Housing privatisation has been one of key features of reform during the 1980s and the 1990s in many countries. Chinese housing reform has attracted attention because of its distinctive features and there have been a number of commentaries on the general progress of urban housing reform policies. However, there has been no systematic study of the development of commercial housing in Chinese cities. The aim of this paper is to provide an up-to-date account of commercial housing development. It examines the scale of investment during the early 1990s, the development process, quality and design standards, the commercial housing market and the management of residential estates. The conclusions draw attention to several important problems of commercial housing development including the lack of appropriate legislation and control, the mismatch of housing supply and affordability, and the underdeveloped nature of the urban housing market.
The increased research and policy interest in social exclusion has included a focus on the concentration of disadvantage within cities. The role of neighbourhoods in the dynamics of social exclusion is consequently receiving greater attention. This paper reports the results of a major European research programme designed to explore the neighbourhood dimension of social exclusion. The results raise important issues related to the differential opportunities associated with neighbourhoods and the conceptualisation of neighbourhood effects as well as issues for policy. Understanding the role of neighbourhood in social exclusion involves attention to different levels of analysis and different fault lines and to the resources that are produced within neighbourhoods.
The concept of social capital has received increasing attention in recent years from both academics and the policy community. It has come to be widely used in debates about housing and neighbourhoods and figures strongly in discussions of social cohesion, community development and neighbourhood renewal. This paper provides an original discussion of some of the key issues related to these debates. It argues that, although it is widely used, the concept of social capital is poorly defined and much of the discussion is based upon assertion rather than upon evidence. The paper goes on to present the results from original social survey work carried out in Bournville in Birmingham, England, and referring to different parts of the Bournville estate. The results refer to the extent of bonding, bridging and linking social capital and how these relate to the social and economic differences between six neighbourhoods within Bournville. The survey evidence is not consistent with key assertions made in the existing literature in relation to age, poverty and class and the paper concludes by raising important reservations about the use of social capital as an analytical rather than a generic concept.
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