Abstract
Since the 1980s, rapid urban growth has witnessed large tracts of rural and suburban lands being expropriated and transformed into modern commercial and residential estates. At the same time, informal housing has been developed disparately in suburban areas as a main reception niche for low-income migrant tenants who have no local residency status. Many local urban villagers use informal housing to get rental income and to compensate their losses from farm revenues. This chapter examines the features of the institutional backdrop of China’s city governance in managing its urban informalities using Beijing as a case study. Indicators used include planning standards, rules and regulations on space use, residency permits and other enforcement measures. The paper questions the evolving urbanism policies and non-compromising practices that give low tolerance to the slum-like housing accommodating the needs of low-skilled migrants who serve the urbanizing economies but receive little or no housing assistance from public authorities. The paper elaborates the socio-political origins and operational mechanisms of urban informalities in China and, serving as a reference, compares them with other management styles towards slum areas in Latin America and India.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter focuses on the non-registered permanent residents, who have left their originally registered permanent residence and stayed more than 6 months in the host cities. The statistical data of population censuses and 1 % National Population Survey are used to measure the inflow of non-registered permanent residents.
- 2.
Beijing Municipality is composed of 14 districts and 2 counties: (a) the Core District of Capital Function, i.e. inner cities, including Dongcheng and Xicheng Districts (previously Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chongwen and Xuanwu); (b) the Urban Function Extended Districts, i.e. outer cities, including Haidian, Chaoyang, Fengtai and Shijingshan Districts; (c) the New Districts of Urban Development, i.e. inner suburbs, including Tongzhou, Shunyi, Fangshan, Daxing and Changping Districts; and (d) the Ecological Preservation Development Districts, i.e. outer suburbs, including Huairou, Pinggu, Mentougou, Miyun and Yanqing.
- 3.
‘Shunyi Model’ and ‘Daxing Model’ adopted in Beijing are a new approach in 2010 to regulate the in-flow of unskilled and low-wage migrant workers. Since the late 2000s, Shunyi and Daxing Districts have built higher end industries that require higher skilled workforce to run and higher end housing. These approaches have slowed down low-wage migrant growth in Shunyi and Daxing districts. Consequently, some small businesses that provided jobs for unskilled migrants were shut down; migrant workers in the low-end services were given a 3-month temporary residency card.
- 4.
Tangjialing Village, once Beijing’s largest and most developed low-cost housing area located between the 4th and 5th Ring Road, was uprooted in 2010, causing a mass dislocation of its 30,000 migrant tenants (see Shu 2010). Lian (2010) made a survey of these migrant tenants sheltered in Beijing’s urban villages, and created a neologism ‘Ant Tribe’ to describe them, who had few rights to low-cost housing in Beijing.
- 5.
In the past three decades, the non-hukou population had little access to the government-funded low-income housing in the host cities. Since 2011, central government has initiated a ‘Great Leap Forward’ of low-income housing construction to make up for the shortfall in supply. A fund of 18 billion yuan was allocated to the regions to fund ‘public rented housing’ schemes and other forms of low-income housing. But it did not mention much about solving the housing problems for the precariously employed and low-wage migrant workers (BJD 2011; Xinhua 2011, 2012; Huang 2012).
Note: In 2011, 1 US dollar was equivalent to 6.46 Chinese yuan.
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Liu, R. (2015). Managing Urban Informalities in China: Beijing Municipality’s Style of Governance Towards Its Urban Villages. In: Wong, TC., Han, S., Zhang, H. (eds) Population Mobility, Urban Planning and Management in China. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15257-8_17
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