China's rapid urbanization, characterized by large-scale rural-urban migration and radial expansi... more China's rapid urbanization, characterized by large-scale rural-urban migration and radial expansion of urban built-up areas, produces a new type of urban neighbourhood, namely the ''urban village'' (chengzhongcun). This paper considers the urban village as a community of interest for urbanized villagers, a migrant settlement with low-rent housing, and an urban self-organized grassroots unit, respectively related to the ambiguous property rights, an informal rental market, and the vacuum of state regulation. The urban village is therefore viewed as an unregulated asset despite its unruliness and disorder. Meanwhile, the formation and dynamics of the urban village are understood from the perspectives of land use transformation and property rights redistribution, with an additional emphasis on the succession of traditional social norms and networks. In this sense, the urban village can be seen as a transitional neighbourhood, characterized by unstable land rights and a mixture of rural and urban society. Drawing from the empirical data of 11 urban villages from six large Chinese cities, this paper presents the general characteristics of urban villages. This study points out that the vacuum of state regulation in the urban village makes possible a means of subsistence for landless villagers and provides low-cost residential space for migrants. The transformation of the urban village under state regulation would produce complicated results.
Examining neighborhood effects on residents’ daily activities in central Shanghai, China: Integrating “big data” and “thick data”
Environment And Planning B: Urban Analytics And City Science, Mar 31, 2022
This research combines “big data” and “thick data” approaches to examine the correlation and caus... more This research combines “big data” and “thick data” approaches to examine the correlation and causation between residential neighborhood features and people’s daily commuting and traveling patterns by integrating two datasets: household survey data and mobile phone data. We focus on “lilong” neighborhoods—a primary form of traditional residential neighborhood in central Shanghai. The characteristics of lilong neighborhoods are assessed using “thick data” from surveys in 105 lilongs, while residents’ daily activities are mapped out using “big data” from two weeks of mobile phone usage. We match these two datasets at neighborhood level based on their geospatial references. Four multinomial logistic regression models are developed to examine neighborhood effects on lilong residents’ daily activities. Our research confirms the major mechanisms of neighborhood effects and unravels their relative importance in shaping the patterns of residents’ daily activities. Conceptually, this study sheds new light on the understanding of how people’s life quality and wellbeing are affected by neighborhood characteristics through highlighting the importance of social interactions and the access to/quality of public facilities. Methodologically, incorporating household survey data (thick data) and mobile phone data (big data) is proven to be a novel and effective approach for examining neighborhood effects at a relatively large scale.
【Abstract】The emergence of housing rental market in communities undergone studentification is an ... more 【Abstract】The emergence of housing rental market in communities undergone studentification is an unique phenomenon in China's urbanization process. The positive and negative externalities of this phenomenon are coexisting, and significantly transforming urban social, economic, and spatial structure. Using Nanting Village in Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center as study case, this research attempts to understand the emerging housing rental market in the studentified village from a new institutional economics perspective. The research shows that, under the background of studentification, housing rental in Nanting Village is complex phenomenon. Two types of leases, short term rental (including daily rental) and long-term rental coexist. We observed a unque pattern and high flexibility in the relationship between supply and demand. Formal institutional arrangements at all government levels have not been fully implemented, therefore the constraints of formal institutions are not palpable. In the meantime, a number of informal institutions are formed, and some of them are even against the formal institutions. In order to reduce transaction costs and maximize their profits, villagers employ various strategies, e.g. building houses illegally; avoiding rental agents; selling properties during the peak rental season. In addition, in the pursuit of minimizing transaction costs and maximizing rental income, an informal agreement on housing rental price was formed through a tacit process of price-testing between landlords. Throughout the housing rental process, different stakeholders, including students, villagers, and administrative departments, have demonstrated different patterns of rent-seeking behavior.
From campaign-style governance to multiple environmentalities: urban political ecologies of e-waste regulation in Guiyu, China
Urban Geography
Recent urban political ecology (UPE) literature on urban environmentality, drawing on Foucauldian... more Recent urban political ecology (UPE) literature on urban environmentality, drawing on Foucauldian power analytics, sheds important light on how powers in non-coercive, non-sovereign, and diffused forms emerge and produce docile environmental subjects. Meanwhile, much literature on urban environmental politics in the Global South works with an environmental governance approach, focusing on the role of sovereign power in governing urban socio-ecological changes. This paper collapses the distinction between sovereign and non-sovereign forms of governance by engaging with the multiple environmentalities thesis. This theoretical perspective is illustrated through a case study of a highly polluted global e-waste processing hub, namely Guiyu Town, Guangdong Province, China. In all, this study not only highlights the relevance of the multiple environmentalities paradigm to UPE but also paves a way towards developing situated theories and empirics amidst environmental politics in the urban South.
Urban neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) inference: A machine learning approach based on semantic and sentimental analysis of online housing advertisements
Contested Worldings of E-Waste Environmental Justice: Nonhuman Agency and E-Waste Scalvaging in Guiyu, China
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2021
Current environmental justice (EJ) research is moving beyond the distributional paradigm to embra... more Current environmental justice (EJ) research is moving beyond the distributional paradigm to embrace frameworks that emphasize the plurality of EJs. This study proposes that actor-network theory (ANT), which foregrounds nonhuman agency and heterogeneous associations, holds great potential for pushing forward this research agenda. It presents an ANT-informed analysis of the plural epistemologies of EJ by focusing on a global e-waste scalvaging hub—Guiyu in China. E-waste is considered a fluid and emergent material actant. The multiplicity of e-waste materialities coconstitutes the disparate worldings of EJ, with a wide range of actors involved in the knowledge-making practices. Disparate EJ realities concerning e-waste scalvaging have been worlded and enacted through the heterogeneous associations among numerous nonhuman actors, including discarded electronic devices, environmental conditions, pollutants, toxic substances, artifacts, discourses, tools and techniques, and a variety of human stakeholders, ranging from nongovernmental organizations, media, and academics to local scalvagers relying on e-waste for livelihood and wealth. In tracing these heterogeneous associations, this study juxtaposes two competing EJ worldings related to the ontological indeterminacy of e-waste. It first problematizes the worlding of North-to-South dumping that not only mispresents the complex geographies of e-waste, but also epitomizes a simplified distributional model of EJ.Then it ventures to theorize an often-neglected and underresearched dimension: EJ as situated capabilities and functionings concerned by the local community. This study thus adds to ongoing efforts to advance pluralist epistemologies of EJ.
Housing provision restructuring and state-led financialisation in post-global recession China
Congress Theme: Global Crisis: Planning and Challenges to Spatial JusticeTrack 3 - 13. Government... more Congress Theme: Global Crisis: Planning and Challenges to Spatial JusticeTrack 3 - 13. Government's Role in Community Planning and Regulation
China’s New Generation Migrant Workers’ Urban Experience and Well-Being
Mobility, Sociability and Well-being of Urban Living, 2015
Among the tens of millions of migrant workers in Chinese cities, a substantial proportion are new... more Among the tens of millions of migrant workers in Chinese cities, a substantial proportion are new generation migrants. Yet, their distinction from the old generation and their unique urban experience and well-being have not been fully explored in the existing literature. Referring to Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, this chapter unfolds the stories of China’s new generation migrant workers by examining their predicaments and well-being, their changing imagination and representation of the city and home, and their life prospects under a confluence of forces from the state, market, and society. Compared with the first-generation migrants, the new generation is better educated and more willing and adaptable to stay in the city. Unlike their predecessors, most of them do not have farming skills, but they are more creative and have an adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit. Nonetheless, their urban lives suffer from the same level of precarity as their predecessors, sometimes even worse because the rigid hukou system and rural–urban dichotomy endure while competition among themselves becomes much fiercer. In the highly unequal and contested urban field, self-stigmatization and ambiguous identity are common “habitus” for new generation migrants and are reflected in their imagination and representation of the city and home. To a large extent, the field and habitus faced by migrants are shaped by state institutions. Yet, market and societal forces have added new dimensions to migrants’ urban experience.
Bridging formal and informal dynamics of affordable housing development in urban China
5142 Formal and informal dynamics of affordable housing development (Sponsored by China Specialty... more 5142 Formal and informal dynamics of affordable housing development (Sponsored by China Specialty Group, Asian Geography Specialty Group, Urban Geography Specialty Group
China's rapid urbanization, characterized by large-scale rural-urban migration and radial expansi... more China's rapid urbanization, characterized by large-scale rural-urban migration and radial expansion of urban built-up areas, produces a new type of urban neighbourhood, namely the ''urban village'' (chengzhongcun). This paper considers the urban village as a community of interest for urbanized villagers, a migrant settlement with low-rent housing, and an urban self-organized grassroots unit, respectively related to the ambiguous property rights, an informal rental market, and the vacuum of state regulation. The urban village is therefore viewed as an unregulated asset despite its unruliness and disorder. Meanwhile, the formation and dynamics of the urban village are understood from the perspectives of land use transformation and property rights redistribution, with an additional emphasis on the succession of traditional social norms and networks. In this sense, the urban village can be seen as a transitional neighbourhood, characterized by unstable land rights and a mixture of rural and urban society. Drawing from the empirical data of 11 urban villages from six large Chinese cities, this paper presents the general characteristics of urban villages. This study points out that the vacuum of state regulation in the urban village makes possible a means of subsistence for landless villagers and provides low-cost residential space for migrants. The transformation of the urban village under state regulation would produce complicated results.
Examining neighborhood effects on residents’ daily activities in central Shanghai, China: Integrating “big data” and “thick data”
Environment And Planning B: Urban Analytics And City Science, Mar 31, 2022
This research combines “big data” and “thick data” approaches to examine the correlation and caus... more This research combines “big data” and “thick data” approaches to examine the correlation and causation between residential neighborhood features and people’s daily commuting and traveling patterns by integrating two datasets: household survey data and mobile phone data. We focus on “lilong” neighborhoods—a primary form of traditional residential neighborhood in central Shanghai. The characteristics of lilong neighborhoods are assessed using “thick data” from surveys in 105 lilongs, while residents’ daily activities are mapped out using “big data” from two weeks of mobile phone usage. We match these two datasets at neighborhood level based on their geospatial references. Four multinomial logistic regression models are developed to examine neighborhood effects on lilong residents’ daily activities. Our research confirms the major mechanisms of neighborhood effects and unravels their relative importance in shaping the patterns of residents’ daily activities. Conceptually, this study sheds new light on the understanding of how people’s life quality and wellbeing are affected by neighborhood characteristics through highlighting the importance of social interactions and the access to/quality of public facilities. Methodologically, incorporating household survey data (thick data) and mobile phone data (big data) is proven to be a novel and effective approach for examining neighborhood effects at a relatively large scale.
【Abstract】The emergence of housing rental market in communities undergone studentification is an ... more 【Abstract】The emergence of housing rental market in communities undergone studentification is an unique phenomenon in China's urbanization process. The positive and negative externalities of this phenomenon are coexisting, and significantly transforming urban social, economic, and spatial structure. Using Nanting Village in Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center as study case, this research attempts to understand the emerging housing rental market in the studentified village from a new institutional economics perspective. The research shows that, under the background of studentification, housing rental in Nanting Village is complex phenomenon. Two types of leases, short term rental (including daily rental) and long-term rental coexist. We observed a unque pattern and high flexibility in the relationship between supply and demand. Formal institutional arrangements at all government levels have not been fully implemented, therefore the constraints of formal institutions are not palpable. In the meantime, a number of informal institutions are formed, and some of them are even against the formal institutions. In order to reduce transaction costs and maximize their profits, villagers employ various strategies, e.g. building houses illegally; avoiding rental agents; selling properties during the peak rental season. In addition, in the pursuit of minimizing transaction costs and maximizing rental income, an informal agreement on housing rental price was formed through a tacit process of price-testing between landlords. Throughout the housing rental process, different stakeholders, including students, villagers, and administrative departments, have demonstrated different patterns of rent-seeking behavior.
From campaign-style governance to multiple environmentalities: urban political ecologies of e-waste regulation in Guiyu, China
Urban Geography
Recent urban political ecology (UPE) literature on urban environmentality, drawing on Foucauldian... more Recent urban political ecology (UPE) literature on urban environmentality, drawing on Foucauldian power analytics, sheds important light on how powers in non-coercive, non-sovereign, and diffused forms emerge and produce docile environmental subjects. Meanwhile, much literature on urban environmental politics in the Global South works with an environmental governance approach, focusing on the role of sovereign power in governing urban socio-ecological changes. This paper collapses the distinction between sovereign and non-sovereign forms of governance by engaging with the multiple environmentalities thesis. This theoretical perspective is illustrated through a case study of a highly polluted global e-waste processing hub, namely Guiyu Town, Guangdong Province, China. In all, this study not only highlights the relevance of the multiple environmentalities paradigm to UPE but also paves a way towards developing situated theories and empirics amidst environmental politics in the urban South.
Urban neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) inference: A machine learning approach based on semantic and sentimental analysis of online housing advertisements
Contested Worldings of E-Waste Environmental Justice: Nonhuman Agency and E-Waste Scalvaging in Guiyu, China
Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2021
Current environmental justice (EJ) research is moving beyond the distributional paradigm to embra... more Current environmental justice (EJ) research is moving beyond the distributional paradigm to embrace frameworks that emphasize the plurality of EJs. This study proposes that actor-network theory (ANT), which foregrounds nonhuman agency and heterogeneous associations, holds great potential for pushing forward this research agenda. It presents an ANT-informed analysis of the plural epistemologies of EJ by focusing on a global e-waste scalvaging hub—Guiyu in China. E-waste is considered a fluid and emergent material actant. The multiplicity of e-waste materialities coconstitutes the disparate worldings of EJ, with a wide range of actors involved in the knowledge-making practices. Disparate EJ realities concerning e-waste scalvaging have been worlded and enacted through the heterogeneous associations among numerous nonhuman actors, including discarded electronic devices, environmental conditions, pollutants, toxic substances, artifacts, discourses, tools and techniques, and a variety of human stakeholders, ranging from nongovernmental organizations, media, and academics to local scalvagers relying on e-waste for livelihood and wealth. In tracing these heterogeneous associations, this study juxtaposes two competing EJ worldings related to the ontological indeterminacy of e-waste. It first problematizes the worlding of North-to-South dumping that not only mispresents the complex geographies of e-waste, but also epitomizes a simplified distributional model of EJ.Then it ventures to theorize an often-neglected and underresearched dimension: EJ as situated capabilities and functionings concerned by the local community. This study thus adds to ongoing efforts to advance pluralist epistemologies of EJ.
Housing provision restructuring and state-led financialisation in post-global recession China
Congress Theme: Global Crisis: Planning and Challenges to Spatial JusticeTrack 3 - 13. Government... more Congress Theme: Global Crisis: Planning and Challenges to Spatial JusticeTrack 3 - 13. Government's Role in Community Planning and Regulation
China’s New Generation Migrant Workers’ Urban Experience and Well-Being
Mobility, Sociability and Well-being of Urban Living, 2015
Among the tens of millions of migrant workers in Chinese cities, a substantial proportion are new... more Among the tens of millions of migrant workers in Chinese cities, a substantial proportion are new generation migrants. Yet, their distinction from the old generation and their unique urban experience and well-being have not been fully explored in the existing literature. Referring to Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus, this chapter unfolds the stories of China’s new generation migrant workers by examining their predicaments and well-being, their changing imagination and representation of the city and home, and their life prospects under a confluence of forces from the state, market, and society. Compared with the first-generation migrants, the new generation is better educated and more willing and adaptable to stay in the city. Unlike their predecessors, most of them do not have farming skills, but they are more creative and have an adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit. Nonetheless, their urban lives suffer from the same level of precarity as their predecessors, sometimes even worse because the rigid hukou system and rural–urban dichotomy endure while competition among themselves becomes much fiercer. In the highly unequal and contested urban field, self-stigmatization and ambiguous identity are common “habitus” for new generation migrants and are reflected in their imagination and representation of the city and home. To a large extent, the field and habitus faced by migrants are shaped by state institutions. Yet, market and societal forces have added new dimensions to migrants’ urban experience.
Bridging formal and informal dynamics of affordable housing development in urban China
5142 Formal and informal dynamics of affordable housing development (Sponsored by China Specialty... more 5142 Formal and informal dynamics of affordable housing development (Sponsored by China Specialty Group, Asian Geography Specialty Group, Urban Geography Specialty Group
In East Asia, a top-down discourse of making creative/cultural cities, accompanied by widespread ... more In East Asia, a top-down discourse of making creative/cultural cities, accompanied by widespread local state-led campaigns and their contestations, are now in full swing. 'Creative/culture-oriented' local governments equipped with various entrepreneurial strategies, as well as the grassroots creative class, have emerged as two distinct forces shaping new urban spaces that differ significantly from their Western counterparts. East Asian cities have thus gained value for the revisiting and interrogation of established academic debates regarding creative/cultural cities, which until recently were based primarily on Western experiences. This themed issue thus aims to present a fresh and enriched understanding of the making of creative/cultural cities in East Asia and the emerging contestations based on two sets of interrelated analyses: first, a multi-scalar analysis of the role of the state in the making of creative/cultural cities and various forms of creative and cultural clusters; and second, the discontent and resistance of the creative class and wider social groups against top-down strategies. We hope that this concerted effort can contribute to the unravelling of the complexity and peculiarity of the policies, practices, outcomes, and, especially, contestations of East Asia's creative/cultural city making efforts. More importantly, we expect this collective effort to be added to the growing body of work challenging Western urban theories, which can be of limited utility in understanding urbanism elsewhere.
This research details the mundane practices of policy mobility and entrepreneurial endeavour in J... more This research details the mundane practices of policy mobility and entrepreneurial endeavour in Jiyuan in relation to the city's changing administrative position, and is one of the first attempts at understanding how entrepreneurial policies are mobilized, mutated and diffused in a small inland Chinese city. We interpret Jiyuan's evolving development strategies and trajectory through two interrelated conceptual lenses––policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism––bridged by an analysis of the politics of scale. Over the past three decades, governance strategies in Jiyuan have evolved from policy imitation, during the germination of urban entrepreneurialism, to policy mutation and diffusion, under the amplification of entrepreneurialism, as the city has moved up the administrative levels and urban hierarchy. Policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism in Jiyuan, involving a multi-scalar process, are being shaped by the interactions between the city, the region, the central state and global capital under the confluence of globalization and marketization. The 'successful' story of a small entrepreneurial city tells a new tale that can inform wider contexts by painting a fuller portrait of the evolution of an entrepreneurial city across different scales and time and bringing cities hitherto 'off the map' back into the picture of urban entrepreneurialism against the backdrop of globalization.
The Speculative City explores property speculation as a key aspect of financialization and its role in reshaping the contemporary built environment. The book offers a series of case studies that encompass a range of cities whose urban fabrics have undergone significant transformation in recent years.
While the forms of these developments shared many similarities, their trajectories and social outcomes were contingent upon existing planning and policy frameworks and the historical roles assumed by the state and the private sector in housing and welfare provision. By paying close attention to the forces and actors involved in property development, this book underscores that the built environment has played an integral part in the shaping of new values and collective aspirations while facilitating the spread of financial logics in urban governance. It also shows that these dynamics represent a larger shift of politics and culture in the ongoing production of urban space and prompts reflections on future trajectories of finance-led property speculation.
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Papers by Shenjing He
Edited by Cecilia L. Chu and Shenjing He.
University of Toronto Press (2022)
The Speculative City explores property speculation as a key aspect of financialization and its role in reshaping the contemporary built environment. The book offers a series of case studies that encompass a range of cities whose urban fabrics have undergone significant transformation in recent years.
While the forms of these developments shared many similarities, their trajectories and social outcomes were contingent upon existing planning and policy frameworks and the historical roles assumed by the state and the private sector in housing and welfare provision. By paying close attention to the forces and actors involved in property development, this book underscores that the built environment has played an integral part in the shaping of new values and collective aspirations while facilitating the spread of financial logics in urban governance. It also shows that these dynamics represent a larger shift of politics and culture in the ongoing production of urban space and prompts reflections on future trajectories of finance-led property speculation.