ABSTRACT
This chapter elucidates the ways in which Beijing's economic and spatial reforms frame and constrain socio-spatial practices of caregiving and community engagement. It considers the concomitant disruption to and rebounding of public and private spaces and the spaces in between them that this transformation brings. The chapter investigates how the changing market forces are applied to residential housing and incorporated into the logic of everyday socio-spatial practice. It suggests to better appreciate the ways in which economic restructuring has prompted drastic change in siheyuan residential ownership, occupancy and demographic makeup. Interstitial spaces thus far have been characterised as private life that spills over into public space. In old Beijing's hutong neighbourhoods, the idiom 'close neighbours are better than distant relatives' continues to underscore the vital importance of geographic proximity for the creation of strong community relations and social networks.
