Urban regeneration in Western countries can count on a long--lasting tradition of experiences in which civil society has played a fundamental role in counterbalancing the system of power, resulting in profound urban governance readjustments. This has been the result of the increasing centrality of horizontal alliances between citizens and associations involved in urban affairs since the late 1960s in the West. Similar theoretical frameworks have been applied in China.However, these have frequently resulted in conceptual shortcuts that depict civil society as immature or lacking and the state as authoritarian. This paper will explore whether these categories are still entirely valid to urban regeneration in China. While the regime has traditionally prevented horizontal linkages of associations in urban governance (supporting their vertical integration to ensure a certain degree of soft control), there are signs of change. In particular, three cases of urban regeneration in historic areas will be used to discuss the changing role played by civil society in China. The ultimate goal is to examine whether horizontal linkages across groups of heterogeneous citizens are arising at the micro--level of urban governance. Keywords Urban regeneration; historic districts; horizontal linkages; community; civil society; China Introduction Western urban planning practices, which arose during the twentieth century, have been mainly (and deeply) shaped by opposite ideologies, either in favour of a central role of the state or of a free market in society and economy. The former has been accused of leading to centralised and 'command control' policymaking, featuring economic inefficiency and democratic tightening; the latter leading to unwanted individualistic behaviours and a constrained role of government, the preconditions of any market failure. A minority stream has advocated a communitarian and self--organised management strategy for city transformation. Overall, the tension between the state, market and community--centred planning has shifted interest to institutional analysis and communicative approaches in planning theory in an attempt to frame the challenges of planning within systems undergoing policy rescaling and increasing societal fragmentation (Healey, 1997). 2The urban regeneration practice, in particular, is quite paradigmatic of such tension especially when applied to historic areas. The articulation of voices around historic areas is growing much more complex than for other ordinary urban transformations, ranging from local citizens directly affected by the regeneration projects to external societal components intellectually committed to protect the universalistic heritage value embedded in historic areas.
Urban heritage conservation in China has been subject to severe criticism, although there is now a sense of paradigm shift. Charters, declarations and agendas had the merit of filtering down the international discourse on heritage, while more innovative approaches were arising. The UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape recommendation, offers a new angle from which to observe this process of change. The underlying argument of this article is that HUL can provide a platform to achieve greater sustainability in transforming historic sites in China, particularly in rural areas, overcoming, at the same time, the easy shortcut of the East-West discourse of difference in respect to heritage conservation. This is primarily due to the shifting focus from the materiality of heritage to its role in sustainable development with increasing attention on the role played by local communities. By presenting the proposal for the protection of the historic rural village of Shuang Wan in the Jiangsu Province, this paper aims to reflect on this shift showing its advantages but also some of the risks. These are inherent in a discourse of heritage in danger of legitimizing mere pro-growth development approaches, if not accompanied by participatory practices considerate of the specific social reality of China.
The emergence of science parks is a relatively new phenomenon in China. Apart from the widely debated topics of university--industry linkages, collaboration among firms and spontaneous/policy--driven science parks, the development of science parks in China also has several distinguishing characteristics, such as their ambiguous linkage with urban expansion and their hierarchical structuring pattern. This paper attempts to discuss the motivation and efficiency of spatial proximity in science park development and to explore the role of universities in science parks, the function of science parks as a government project and a case study of location choice by on--site firms. The qualitative analysis, based on in--depth interviews with tenant firm managers and district--level government officers in Jiangning, Nanjing, is used as a basis for discussion.
This paper attempts to analyse the particular features of Chinese clustering in two southern European cities and the urban regeneration responses employed in the decade 2005-2015: Prato in Italy and Santa Coloma de Gramenet in Spain, which are among the cities with the highest rate of Chinese in-migration within their respective countries. The main aim is to show which urban regeneration policies have been adopted in both contexts and to evaluate, in comparative terms, how they have addressed the two local Chinese communities. The paper will argue that their form of clustering, developed since the 1990s, has featured a certain degree of social segregation and tensions with local communities. On the other hand, they have become two dynamic urban nodes in supra-local business networks, possibly demanding new forms of engagement in the governance system. The results show that the urban regeneration policies in place have partially failed to acknowledge the changing nature of their form of clustering, with the risk to exacerbate existing conflicts and to prevent beneficial mutual collaborations.
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