Sustainable urban and village regeneration in China: implications for the Global South

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Our ESRC-DFID project on the development of migrant villages under China's rapid urbanization reveals the value of these informal settlements and advocates an in situ approach to village redevelopment. These villages are developed informally but provide a valuable source of affordable housing to the low-income population. Many villages in rural areas are affected by the process of urbanization. The transition from a rural village to an urban residential area is in fact a dynamic process. Depending upon their location, these villages present a full spectrum from rural to urban settlements. While our previous research focuses on peri-urban areas, there is an emerging opportunity to examine villages in the urban and rural environments. Related to this research, we are witnessing some concurrent changes in urban policies in rural settlement redevelopment. Jiangsu province is implementing a village improvement programme that adopts an incremental regeneration approach, while Guangdong province has promulgated the renewal of old urban areas, villages and factories (so-called 'three olds renewal', sanjiu gaizao). This impact and engagement project will select one village from Jiangsu and one from Guangdong to benchmark the practice of village improvement with our principle of in situ regeneration and present them as a demonstration project so as to fully develop the potential of sustainable urban regeneration in Chinese cities as well as cities in the Global South. As our original research project provided evidence-based social science research to demonstrate the imperative of in situ regeneration, this project supports 'research uptake' to translate the research findings and principles into a more prescriptive policy instrument. Towards this end, we will develop a village improvement toolkit, with concrete examples from these two pilot villages. The toolkit will explore in detail the critical elements - land, capital and residents - in realising sustainable redevelopment. This approach will benefit the poor and extend some viable local practices which are being demonstrated in China today. While policy practices are context-sensitive and might not be transferable, the research impacts generated here will present new possibilities for cross-fertilizing the experience of the Global South. To facilitate cross-country learning, the project will organize an impact workshop in London with the participation of policy users from Jiangsu and Guangdong as well as national policy research institute and professional planning organisations. Potential users from international development communities will also be invited to participate. The project will maintain a website to accommodate a photo archive of these pilot projects and a manual for pro-poor regeneration to enhance research impacts. The project aims to collect the best practices in the two major provinces to explore their potential for developing a new pathway to urbanization in China. There is an emerging opportunity for extending the impact to wider national practices, as China has adopted 'new styles of urbanization' as its national development strategy.