ABSTRACT
In recent decades, Chinese cities have experienced profound social, economic and spatial transformations. In particular, Chinese cities have witnessed the largest housing boom in history and unprecedented housing privatization. China now is a country of homeowners, with more than 70 per cent of urban residents owning homes, higher than many developed countries.
This book shows how China’s spectacular housing success is not shared by all social groups, with rapidly rising housing inequality, and residential segregation increasingly prevalent in previously homogeneous Chinese cities. It focuses on the two extremes of the residential landscape, and reveals the stark contrast between low-income households who live in shacks in so-called ‘urban villages’ and the nouveaux riches who live in exclusive gated villa communities. Over four parts, the contributors look at the degree to which inequality affects Chinese cities, and the extent of residential differentiation; housing for the urban poor, and in particular, housing for migrants from rural China; housing for the rapidly expanding Chinese middle class and the new rich; and finally, governance in residential neighbourhoods.
Housing Inequality in Chinese Cities presents theoretically informed and empirically grounded research into the polarized residential landscape in Chinese cities, and as such will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, urban geography, urban sociology, and urban studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|83 pages
Housing inequality and residential differentiation
chapter 1|15 pages
Housing inequality, residential differentiation, and social stratification
chapter 2|19 pages
Residential change and housing inequality in urban China in the early twenty-first century
chapter 3|27 pages
Mobility, housing inequality and residential differentiation in transitional urban China
chapter 4|20 pages
Neighborhood differentiation and inequality in Nanjing
part II|55 pages
Housing for migrants and the urban poor
chapter 6|16 pages
Housing access, sense of attachment, and settlement intention of rural migrants in Chinese cities
chapter 7|21 pages
Effectiveness, efficiency and equity
part III|57 pages
Housing for the middle class and the rich
chapter 9|20 pages
The imagination of class and housing choices of the middle class
chapter 10|17 pages
Living the networked life in the commodity housing estates
part IV|50 pages
Neighborhood governance under housing commodification