Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou

The past several decades have seen China undergo a rapid urbanization process. During periods of economic prosperity, cities expropriate outlying lands, often villages, for economic development with the support of various local and national government programs designed to encourage urban expansion....

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Autores principales: Xu, Yingyan, Huang, Xiaoxing
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9265599/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35805517
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137857
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author Xu, Yingyan
Huang, Xiaoxing
author_facet Xu, Yingyan
Huang, Xiaoxing
author_sort Xu, Yingyan
collection PubMed
description The past several decades have seen China undergo a rapid urbanization process. During periods of economic prosperity, cities expropriate outlying lands, often villages, for economic development with the support of various local and national government programs designed to encourage urban expansion. However, the autonomy of the villages has not been paid enough attention. How does incorporation into an urban development zone affect the community identity and autonomy of a village? How does the village bargain with external urban institutions? This research is based on ethnographic research and interviews conducted in 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2021. The results reveal that villagers are generally willing to accept the loss of their collective land in exchange for a larger share of the promised prosperity of industrialization, but over time they tend to find that the immediate benefits of expropriation are outweighed by long-term costs. They lose the support of the state and are exposed to new vulnerabilities, such as pollution and economic instability. Indeed, they agree to undertake unknown future risks in exchange for short-term gains. They cannot gain the right to the city, but gradually lose control of the village.
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spelling pubmed-92655992022-07-09 Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou Xu, Yingyan Huang, Xiaoxing Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The past several decades have seen China undergo a rapid urbanization process. During periods of economic prosperity, cities expropriate outlying lands, often villages, for economic development with the support of various local and national government programs designed to encourage urban expansion. However, the autonomy of the villages has not been paid enough attention. How does incorporation into an urban development zone affect the community identity and autonomy of a village? How does the village bargain with external urban institutions? This research is based on ethnographic research and interviews conducted in 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2021. The results reveal that villagers are generally willing to accept the loss of their collective land in exchange for a larger share of the promised prosperity of industrialization, but over time they tend to find that the immediate benefits of expropriation are outweighed by long-term costs. They lose the support of the state and are exposed to new vulnerabilities, such as pollution and economic instability. Indeed, they agree to undertake unknown future risks in exchange for short-term gains. They cannot gain the right to the city, but gradually lose control of the village. MDPI 2022-06-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9265599/ /pubmed/35805517 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137857 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Xu, Yingyan
Huang, Xiaoxing
Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou
title Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou
title_full Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou
title_fullStr Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou
title_full_unstemmed Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou
title_short Community Bargaining with Urban Growth: The Case of J Village in Guangzhou
title_sort community bargaining with urban growth: the case of j village in guangzhou
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9265599/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35805517
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137857
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