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4. Funded Research Projects

Previous studies emphasized the economic loss and the destructive impacts on the

traditional rural life, but did not examine in details how villagers were relocated
in the commercialized urban space, which has complicated implications for
property (re)distribution and community rebuilding.

From the bottom-up segregation perspective, when the urban expansion
encroached into surrounding villages, many former villagers constructed self-
developed housing at high densities, and such informal constructions resulted in

the crowded “urban villages” or migrant enclaves. Furthermore, some
“compensation land” was ceded back to villagers by governments based on

negotiation to smooth the development process, and villagers won claim over
land and housing properties in a form of “village corporatism”. Consequently,

bottom-up segregation stands for a new way of property (re)distribution in which
the insiders’ rights were prioritized, and an alternative path of community

rebuilding that might alter living environment and restructure community
governance.

This project will serve as a pilot study in one village in Ningxia that was recently
urbanized and witnessed two pathways of rehousing villagers. In most villagers’

teams, villagers were relocated to commercial housing communities in a top-down
zoning process. But the biggest team managed to get a piece of “compensation

land” and constructed a collective neighbourhood of single-family houses for its
team members. This project aims at following the evolution of different rehousing

projects, examining their sustainability, and exploring their implications on
property (re)distribution and community rebuilding, including homeownership,
housing values, living environment and community governance.

This project will generate a qualitative dataset of 100 relocated village

households and 10 local “planners” (officials and developers) and a baseline
study on rehousing processes and their social and spatial impacts. The findings

will also allow for a qualitative comparison with research on other urban
residents and research of urbanization in coastal areas. The findings can inform

future large-scale national quantitative studies on urbanization, by documenting
the grassroots voices and strategies, the room for institutional innovation, and the
potential outcomes of urbanization with long term concerns with efficiency, justice,

and sustainability.

HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY | David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies 32