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4. Funded Research Projects

4.3 Residential Mobility and Neighbourhood Attachment in
China (newly funded project)

Principal Investigator: Prof. Li Si-ming

Director of LEWI, Convenor of Urbanization and
Mobility Working Group of LEWI and
Chair Professor of Geography

Co-investigator: Dr. Barber Lachlan
Assistant Professor of Geography

Source of Funding: Faculty Research Grant, HKBU
Amount Awarded: HKD162,850

Brief Introduction:

Increased population mobility, wholesale redevelopment of the inner-city core

and work-unit compounds, and suburbanization in recent decades have brought
significant social and spatial changes to urban neighbourhoods, not the least the

subjective feelings of the residents, in cities in China. Prior research has focused
on forced relocation and rural-urban migration. Little is known about how
neighbourhood attachment is conditioned upon changes in neighbourhood

demographics. The proposed project tries to address this deficiency in the
literature by examining the attitude of both longer-time residents and

newcomers towards their neighbourhood as well as neighbourly relations and
participation in neighbourhood affairs. Such an analysis offers a new window to

exploring neighbourhood change and, by implications, urban spatial dynamics
in general. Data from a large-scale household survey conducted in Guangzhou

in 2012 will form the major part of the study.

27 HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY | David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies