ABSTRACT
Urbanization describes the shift from rural to urban and is often expressed as percentage increases in urban population, urban land uses, and nonagricultural outputs. This paper examines the normative dimension of urbanization—how government policies seek to guide and condition the integration of villagers into the city. It draws attention to the agrarian society at the interstices between city and countryside where the complex boundaries of rural and urban are being constantly negotiated. As the built-up city sprawls rapidly outward, farmland and village settlements at the periphery have been requisitioned to make way for apartment buildings, shopping centers, warehouses, and factories. The rural to urban transition, as experienced by village communities, is an ongoing process of shifting livelihoods and seeking new ways to retain control over their land. In this dynamic process, urban land uses engulf lingering portions of indigenous villages and leapfrog beyond, leaving the fragmented villages as islands in the urban landscape, referred to in Chinese as chengzhongcun (“urban villages” or “villages in the city”). Contending with ways to bring these rural exceptions under the regulatory regime of urban planning has become a pressing issue for many large coastal cities. What draws my attention to urban village redevelopment is the question of how these villages become part of the city, not only in terms of land or administrative transition from rural to urban, but the ways through which villagers are reconstituted as urbanites. 1
