The Changing Meaning of Neighbourhood Attachment in Chinese Commodity Housing Estates: Evidence from Guangzhou

Abstract

The housing reform in urban China since the 1990s and the ensuing spatial and social dynamics gave rise to new kinds of neighbourhoods with new logics of neighbouring and neighbourhood attachment. Meanwhile, neighbourhoods are actively promoted as platforms for policy implementation. Both are reasons to revisit the meaning of neighbourhood attachment in the Chinese context. This article focuses on the roles of neighbourly interaction and physical environment, juxtaposing postreform commodity housing estates against traditional neighbourhoods. The analysis draws on both qualitative and quantitative datasets from three case studies in Guangzhou and a city-wide survey. Results indicate that, compared with traditional neighbourhoods, residents of commodity housing estates have weak neighbourly interactions but strong neighbourhood attachment, which is based mainly on their satisfaction with the physical environment and less on their neighbourly contacts. Neighbourhoods in China have apparently shifted their function from social arenas to privatised living environments.

Neighbourhood cohesion under the influx of migrants in Shanghai

“…In contrast, neighbourhoods with a more organised governance system and a stronger shared social identity such as commodity estates and work-unit neighbourhoods tend to have higher levels of social solidarity. These findings would also confirm earlier studies that private commodity estates do not lack social cohesion amongst its residents Pow, 2007;Yip, 2012;Zhu et al, 2012;Wang et al, 2015Wang et al, , 2016b.…”

“…The purpose of such communities is often to defend against larger market actors such as private developers and property management agencies. Findings further show that commodity neighbourhoods have higher level of residential satisfaction and attachment (Breitung, 2012;Zhu et al, 2012). This is usually fostered by a shared social identity as middle-class homeowners belonging to a 'civilised' neighbourhood (Pow, 2007).…”

“…Neighbourly relations, on the other hand, tend be more frequent in older neighbourhoods such as traditional courtyard estates where residents still retain some habits from China's pre-transition era (Forrest and Yip, 2007;Wang et al, 2016a). The general consensus is that China's abolishment of the work-unit system and the privatisation of housing provision have created communities that rely on a common social identity, attachment to the physical qualities of private estates and collective actions against other market actors (Breitung, 2012;Xu et al, 2010;Yip, 2012;Zhu et al, 2012). Social cohesion therefore continues to exist in a commoditised China but simply in a different form.…”

Do rural migrants ‘float’ in urban China? Neighbouring and neighbourhood sentiment in Beijing

“…In contrast Li et al (2012) found that local networks are generally weaker in these commodity housing enclaves, although these have higher community attachment and neighbourhood satisfaction. Zhu et al (2012) have similar findings, and they attribute the higher neighbourhood satisfaction to the solidarity arising from homeownership.…”

Borderland urbanism: seeing between enclaves

“…The editors of a recent special issue of this journal have diagnosed the ongoing practices as Enclave Urbanism, sparking a lively academic discourse around Chinese urban form (Breitung, 2012;Douglass, Wissink, & van Kempen, 2012;He, 2013;Hogan, Bunnell, Pow, Permanasari, & Morshidi, 2012;Jie Shen & Wu, 2012;Z. Li & Wu, 2013; *Email: deljana.iossifova@manchester.ac.uk Wang, Li, & Chai, 2012;Wissink et al, 2012;Wu, Zhang, & Webster, 2013a;Zhu, Breitung, & Li, 2012). But is this an accurate understanding of the emerging urban condition in China, or are alternative readings possible?…”