- Department of Geography and Environment
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom - +44 (0)20 7955 6383
- London School of Economics and Political Science, Southeast Asia Centre, Department Memberadd
- Urban Studies, Gentrification,urban Development,slum Redevelopment Etc, Urban Redevelopment, Global South, East Asia, China, and 75 moreHeritage Conservation, Housing Policies, Urban Geography, “Post-Socialist” urban transformations, Anthropology of space, Human Geography, Post-Socialist Societies, Urban Politics, Urban And Regional Planning, Urban Planning, Gayatri Spivak, China studies, Governance, Urban Regeneration, Affordable Housing, Regional and Local Governance, Displacement, South Korea, Socialist and Post-Socialist Area Studies, Urban Planning and Policy, Sports Mega Events, Large Scale Urban Interventions, Security and Surveillance, Urban Morphology, Political Economy of Sport, Architecture, Human Rights, Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony, Antonio Gramsci, Housing, Housing Policy, Critical Theory, Neoliberal Urbanism, Asian cities, Contested Cities, Gentrification, Urbanism, Urban Sociology, Urbanisation, Comparative Urbanism, Uneven Development, Comparative Urban Studies, Right to the city, Southeast Asian Studies, East Asian Studies, Urbanization, Temporality, Spatiality, Asian Urbanism, Uneven Geographies, Urban Morphology and Asian Cities, Green Belts, Beijing, Asian Studies, Korean Studies, Urban Social Movements, Protest and resistance, Evictions, Seoul, David Harvey, Accumulation by Dispossession, Planetary urbanization, Comparative studies, global gentrification, planetary gentrification, Developmental State, Urbanization in Developing Areas, Latin American Studies, Urbanisms In the Global South, urban developmentalism, developmental urbanization, Entrepreneurial State, City and Regional Planning, Mega Events, and Spectacleedit
- Professor of Geography and Urban Studies. Also Director of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. His research ... moreProfessor of Geography and Urban Studies. Also Director of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation with particular attention to cities in Asian countries such as Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea and China. His research themes include the politics of displacement; gentrification; real estate speculation; the right to the city; mega-events as urban spectacles. His most recent project on circulating urbanism has also brought him to work on Ecuador. Visit http://urbancommune.net/bio for a more extended bio.edit
Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, this collection discusses the socio-political processes of how neoliberalization entwines with local political economies and legacies of... more
Considering Asian cities ranging from Taipei, Hong Kong and Bangkok to Hanoi, Nanjing and Seoul, this collection discusses the socio-political processes of how neoliberalization entwines with local political economies and legacies of ‘developmental’ or ‘socialist’ statism to produce urban contestations centered on housing. The book takes housing as a key entry point, given its prime position in the making of social and economic policies as well as the political legitimacy of Asian states. It examines urban policies related to housing in Asian economies in order to explore their continuing alterations and mutations, as they come into conflict and coalesce with neoliberal policies. In discussing the experience of each city, it takes into consideration the variegated relations between the state, the market and the society, and explores how the global pressure of neoliberalization has manifested in each country and has influenced the shaping of national housing questions.
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This is the first book in Polity's new 'Urban Futures' series. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare... more
This is the first book in Polity's new 'Urban Futures' series.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare 'gentrification' in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.
Drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.
Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare 'gentrification' in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.
Drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.
Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.
Research Interests:
Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, working in tandem with other urban processes to lay the foundations for the exploitative processes of gentrification world-wide. Global... more
Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, working in tandem with other urban processes to lay the foundations for the exploitative processes of gentrification world-wide. Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement critically assesses and tests the meaning and significance of gentrification in places outside the 'usual suspects' of the Global North. Informed by a rich array of case studies from cities in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Southern Europe, and beyond, the book (re)discovers the important generalities and geographical specificities associated with the uneven process of gentrification globally. It highlights intensifying global struggles over urban space and underlines gentrification as a growing and important battleground in the contemporary world. The book will be of value to students and academics, policy makers, planners and community organisations.
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The paper aims to investigate the relations between work and urban space, focusing on the struggles of street vendors for the “right to the city centre” in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We join critical debates on Brazil’s internationally... more
The paper aims to investigate the relations between work and urban space, focusing on the
struggles of street vendors for the “right to the city centre” in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We join
critical debates on Brazil’s internationally praised urban reform by focusing on informal
workers. Beyond lacking the protection of labour laws, the “right to the city” (RttC) of such
workers has been consistently denied through restrictive legislations and policies. In the context of the “crisis” of waged labour, we explore the increasing centrality of urban space for
working-class political struggles. Looking at Belo Horizonte, the paper traces the relation between urban participatory democracy and the development of legal-institutional frameworks
that restricted street vendors’ access to urban space in the city. In the context of an urban revitalisation policy implemented in 2017, we then explore the use of legal frameworks to remove street vendors from public areas of the city and the resulting political resistance movement. The discussion focuses on the emergence of the Vicentão Occupation, a building squatted by homeless families and street vendors in conflict with the local state. Though this case,
we explore the radical potential of contemporary articulations of Henri Lefebvre’s framework
emerging from the confluence of diverse local urban struggles for “the right to the city centre”. Ultimately we argue for an understanding of the RttC as a process and a site of continual
struggle whose terrain is shaped, but cannot be replaced by, legal frameworks that need to be
constantly contested and evolving to reflect the shifting socio-spatial relations.
struggles of street vendors for the “right to the city centre” in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We join
critical debates on Brazil’s internationally praised urban reform by focusing on informal
workers. Beyond lacking the protection of labour laws, the “right to the city” (RttC) of such
workers has been consistently denied through restrictive legislations and policies. In the context of the “crisis” of waged labour, we explore the increasing centrality of urban space for
working-class political struggles. Looking at Belo Horizonte, the paper traces the relation between urban participatory democracy and the development of legal-institutional frameworks
that restricted street vendors’ access to urban space in the city. In the context of an urban revitalisation policy implemented in 2017, we then explore the use of legal frameworks to remove street vendors from public areas of the city and the resulting political resistance movement. The discussion focuses on the emergence of the Vicentão Occupation, a building squatted by homeless families and street vendors in conflict with the local state. Though this case,
we explore the radical potential of contemporary articulations of Henri Lefebvre’s framework
emerging from the confluence of diverse local urban struggles for “the right to the city centre”. Ultimately we argue for an understanding of the RttC as a process and a site of continual
struggle whose terrain is shaped, but cannot be replaced by, legal frameworks that need to be
constantly contested and evolving to reflect the shifting socio-spatial relations.
Research Interests:
Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fast cities' where time and space are compressed to materialise 'real' Asia experiences. However, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who... more
Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fast cities' where time and space are compressed to materialise 'real' Asia experiences. However, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who see Asian cites as reference points? Moreover, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who have living memories of such fast-paced development, and how might this be different for their future generations? This intervention addresses these two questions by reflecting on the politics of temporality, calling for critical attention to the ideological imposition of 'fast' development in Asia and beyond. We argue that the 'Asian speed' of development was enabled in specific historical and geographical conjunctures, which entailed the appropriation of individual and collective aspirations through the invention of a certain kind of futurity and in so doing, consolidated of local politico-economic structures that displace both the present and the future.
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In an effort to contribute to the contemporary debates on accumulation by dispossession (ABD), we argue for a closer attention to the link between the state and the ABD. We propose contextualizing ABD within the institutionalization of... more
In an effort to contribute to the contemporary debates on accumulation by dispossession (ABD), we argue for a closer attention to the link between the state and the ABD. We propose contextualizing ABD within the institutionalization of the process of replacing communal property rights with private property rights. In such institutionalization, the state plays a critical role as the final guarantor of property rights. As such, the socio-spatial specificities of the state would strongly influence how ABD unfolds and how it is understood. In the empirical part of this paper, we use this approach to focus on a specific type of capitalist state, that is, the developmental state, to examine the emergence of apartment-dominated residential landscapes in Gangnam District, Seoul, in the 1970s through the use of ABD.
The chapter discusses how important housing questions are for Asian cities and citizens in the contemporary era of neoliberalization. It highlights the importance of understanding the path-dependent nature of neoliberalization especially... more
The chapter discusses how important housing questions are for Asian cities and citizens in the contemporary era of neoliberalization. It highlights the importance of understanding the path-dependent nature of neoliberalization especially in the context of Asia’s condensed development under the developmentalist states. It also shows how housing has been at the heart of urban contestations in Asian cities, especially given its significance for wealth generation and upward class mobility when the formation of middle classes would have been the state’s legitimacy project. The chapter concludes by providing a summary of each contributing chapter.
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*The author copy of the paper can be downloaded by following this link: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/91490/ This chapter on Asian urbanism begins by examining how Asian urbanism can be seen as both actually existing and imagined, taking into... more
*The author copy of the paper can be downloaded by following this link: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/91490/
This chapter on Asian urbanism begins by examining how Asian urbanism can be seen as both actually existing and imagined, taking into consideration the ways in which Asian urbanism has entailed the use of successful Asian cities as reference points for other cities in the Global South on the one hand, and how such referencing practices often entail the rendering of Asian urbanism as imagined models and ideologies that are detached from the realities of the receiving end of the model transfer on the other. The ensuing section examines how Asian urbanism can be situated in the context of state-society relations, with a particular emphasis on the role of the Asian states that exhibited developmental and/or authoritarian orientations in the late twentieth century. The penultimate section explores the socio-spatiality of Asian urbanism, summarising some salient characteristics of Asian urbanism. The final section concludes with an emphasis on the need of avoiding Asian exceptionalism, and also of having a pluralistic perspective on Asian urbanism.
This chapter on Asian urbanism begins by examining how Asian urbanism can be seen as both actually existing and imagined, taking into consideration the ways in which Asian urbanism has entailed the use of successful Asian cities as reference points for other cities in the Global South on the one hand, and how such referencing practices often entail the rendering of Asian urbanism as imagined models and ideologies that are detached from the realities of the receiving end of the model transfer on the other. The ensuing section examines how Asian urbanism can be situated in the context of state-society relations, with a particular emphasis on the role of the Asian states that exhibited developmental and/or authoritarian orientations in the late twentieth century. The penultimate section explores the socio-spatiality of Asian urbanism, summarising some salient characteristics of Asian urbanism. The final section concludes with an emphasis on the need of avoiding Asian exceptionalism, and also of having a pluralistic perspective on Asian urbanism.
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We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their will with no or poor compensations (e.g. Hoffman 2014; Johnson 2013; Pomfret 2013). Sargeson (2013) argues that violence is an integral element... more
We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their will with no or poor compensations (e.g. Hoffman 2014; Johnson 2013; Pomfret 2013). Sargeson (2013) argues that violence is an integral element of China’s urbanisation project, authorising urban development. In this chapter, we show that such use of state violence goes hand in hand with another dimension of state action, that is co-optation of villagers (cf. Gramsci 1971) by the imposition of what Henri Lefebvre (2003) refers to as ‘official urbanism’. Drawing on Lefebvre’s critiques of urbanism, this chapter aims to reflect upon the use of official urbanism to advance China’s ‘urban age’, and addresses two analytical objectives by dissecting green belt policy in Beijing. First, we demonstrate China’s urbanism as an institution and an ideology is a state project: it is integrated with both economic and political practices, and plays a critical role in sustaining the state strategy of land-based accumulation. Second, we also illustrate that official urbanism, as an ideology, has been successfully instilled into the national ethos, imposing it upon the population (especially villagers) as a new and desirable way of life, which in turn supports the state’s project of urbanism. We conclude that urbanism is one and the same expression of politics of urban space, with the Party-state’s ideological, economic and political ambitions put at the centre. For this reason, any meaningful approach to critiquing existing sets of urban knowledge and practice that produces urban inequalities and injustice in contemporary China should start from negation of the ‘official urbanism’.
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Despite significant contributions made to progressive urban politics, contemporary debates on cities and social justice are in need of adequately capturing the local historical and socio-political processes of how people have come to... more
Despite significant contributions made to progressive urban politics, contemporary debates on cities and social justice are in need of adequately capturing the local historical and socio-political processes of how people have come to perceive the concept of rights in their struggles against the hegemonic establishments. These limitations act as constraints on overcoming hegemony imposed by the ruling class on subordinate classes, and restrict a contextual understanding of such concepts as the right to the city in non-Western contexts, undermining the potential to produce locally tuned alternative strategies to build progressive and just cities. In this regard, this article discusses the evolving nature of urban rights discourses that were produced by urban protesters fighting redevelopment and displacement, paying particular attention to the experiences in Seoul that epitomised speculative urban accumulation under the (neoliberalizing) developmental state. Method-wise, the article makes use of archival records (protesters’ pamphlets and newsletters), photographs, and field research archives. The data are supplemented by the author’s in-depth interviews with former and current housing activists. The article argues that the urban poor have the capacity to challenge the state repression and hegemony of the ruling class ideology; that the urban movements such as the evictees’ struggles against redevelopment are to be placed in the broader contexts of social movements; that concepts such as the right to the city are to be understood against the rich history of place-specific evolution of urban rights discourses; that cross-class alliance is key to sustaining urban movements.
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"...in this special feature we ask, if accumulation by dispossession has become a planetary condition, what has been the role of urbanisation and particular cities in this process? In posing this question our intention is not merely to... more
"...in this special feature we ask, if accumulation by dispossession has become a planetary condition, what has been the role of urbanisation and particular cities in this process? In posing this question our intention is not merely to drag Harvey through various debates, or seek rapprochement by establishing some heterodox synthesis. Instead, what we suggest is that the critique of the impoverished spatial ontologies and over-expanded urban epistemologies diagnose a problem that is more than academic. The need to conceptualise the urban multiplication and planetary diversification of dispossessions is necessary to confront
the shapeshifting apparatuses that reproduce capitalist power. Therefore, in this special feature, our primary aim is not to reject, defend or enlist certain positions and methods in relation to the ‘planetary’. Rather the following articles track the limits of theory when confronted with world-forming and world-destroying processes of accumulation by
dispossession."
the shapeshifting apparatuses that reproduce capitalist power. Therefore, in this special feature, our primary aim is not to reject, defend or enlist certain positions and methods in relation to the ‘planetary’. Rather the following articles track the limits of theory when confronted with world-forming and world-destroying processes of accumulation by
dispossession."
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In this chapter, I discuss some of the salient issues that are at the centre of planetary thinking of gentrification, examining how the inclusion of the urbanization experiences of non-usual suspects in the Global South helps us expand... more
In this chapter, I discuss some of the salient issues that are at the centre of planetary thinking of gentrification, examining how the inclusion of the urbanization experiences of non-usual suspects in the Global South helps us expand our horizon of gentrification research and reinterpret what has been learnt from the Global North. First, the chapter discusses how our understanding of displacement needs to actively take into consideration the temporality, spatial relations and subjectivity. Second, the chapter ascertains the importance of locating gentrification in broader urban processes and also in the context of uneven development. Third, the chapter argues that gentrification is to be treated as a political and ideological project of the state and the ruling class in addition to it being an economic project. The concluding section sums up the arguments and provides some reflections on what it means to do comparative research on global gentrifications from a planetary perspective.
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In this chapter, we discuss what it means to study gentrification beyond the Anglo-American domain, emphasising the possibility of gentrification mutating across time and space, in the same way any other social phenomena associated with... more
In this chapter, we discuss what it means to study gentrification beyond the Anglo-American domain, emphasising the possibility of gentrification mutating across time and space, in the same way any other social phenomena associated with the changing nature of capitalism goes through mutation. We also question here why academia should maintain the Anglo American cultural region as a necessary comparative framework to talk about gentrification elsewhere. Gentrification is now embedded in urbanisation processes that bring together politics, culture, society and ideology. Such urbanisation is uneven and place-specific, thus displaying multiple trajectories, hence there is a need to provincialise (c.f. Chakrabarty, 2000; cr Lees, 2012) gentrification as we know it (namely, the rise of gentrification in plural forms or in other words, provincial gentrifications). However, we argue this must be done without losing the most critical aspects of gentrification that need to be investigated, namely the class remaking of urban space. For us, gentrification is a reflection of broader political economic processes that result in the unequal and uneven production of urban(ising) space, entailing power struggles between haves and have-nots, be they disputes over the upgrading of small neighbourhoods or larger clashes related to social displacement experienced at the metropolitan or even regional scale.
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Urbanization in China has been a political and economic project during the period of economic reform. Using the case study of Guangzhou in south China, this paper aims to examine the process of transformation of Chinese cities into cities... more
Urbanization in China has been a political and economic project during the period of economic reform. Using the case study of Guangzhou in south China, this paper aims to examine the process of transformation of Chinese cities into cities of capital, and scrutinise how this transformation entails the dispossession of urban inhabitants’ rights by the state in order to secure land assets to facilitate urban accumulation. Land expropriation and urban redevelopment serve the function of erasing multiple layers of socialist relations and rights that used to be associated with inherited properties from the planned economy era. Dispossession facilitates capital accumulation and helps local governments realise their developmental aspiration, functioning as a sophisticated political project in China’s urbanization process.
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This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation- funded workshop on Global Gentrification in London in 2012, attempts to problematise contemporary understandings of gentrification, which is... more
This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation- funded workshop on Global Gentrification in London in 2012, attempts to problematise contemporary understandings of gentrification, which is all too often confined to the experiences of the so-called Global North, and sometimes too narrowly understood as classic gentrification. Instead of simply confirming the rise of gentrification in places outside of the usual suspects of North America and Western Europe, a more open-minded approach is advocated so as not to over- generalise distinctive urban processes under the label of gentrification, thus understanding gentrification as constitutive of diverse urban processes at work. This requires a careful attention to the complexity of property rights and tenure relations, and calls for a dialogue between gentrification and non-gentrification researchers to understand how gentrification communicates with other theories to capture the full dynamics of urban transformation. Papers in this special issue have made great strides towards these goals, namely theorising, distorting, mutating and bringing into question the concept of gentrification itself, as seen from the perspective of the Global East, a label that we have deliberately given in order to problematise the existing common practices of grouping all regions other than Western European and North American ones into the Global South.
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What does gentrification mean under speculative urbanisation led by a strong developmental state? This paper analyses the contemporary history of Seoul’s urban redevelopment, arguing that new-build gentrification is an endogenous process... more
What does gentrification mean under speculative urbanisation led by a strong developmental state? This paper analyses the contemporary history of Seoul’s urban redevelopment, arguing that new-build gentrification is an endogenous process embedded in Korea’s highly speculative urban development processes from the 1980s. Property owners, construction firms and local/central governments coalesce, facilitating the extraction of exchange value by closing the rent gap. Displacement of poorer owner-occupiers and tenants was requisite for the success of speculative accumulation. Furthermore, the paper also contends that Korea’s speculative urbanisation under the strong developmental (and later (neo-)liberalising) state has rendered popular resistance to displacement ineffective despite its initial success in securing state concessions. Examining the experience of Seoul in times of condensed industrialisation and speculative urbanisation helps inform the existing literature on gentrification by resorting to non-Western empirics.
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Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In mainland China which has gone through transition from a planned to a market economy, it is necessary to unleash decommodified real estate... more
Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In mainland China which has gone through transition from a planned to a market economy, it is necessary to unleash decommodified real estate properties and make them amenable to investment. This entails inhabitants’ dispossession to dissociate them from claiming their rights to the properties and to their neighbourhoods. This paper argues that while China’s urban accumulation may have produced new-build gentrification, redevelopment projects have been targeting dilapidated urban spaces that are yet to be fully converted into commodities. This means that dispossession is a precursor to gentrification. Dispossession occurs through both coercion and co-optation, and reflects the pathdependency of China’s socialist legacy. The findings contribute to the debates on contextualising the workings of gentrification in the global South, and highlight the importance of identifying multiple urban processes at work to produce gentrification and speculative urban accumulation.
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Currently Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopment in their historic central areas. These are not just mega scale interventions like Porto Maravilha in Rio or Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires... more
Currently Latin American cities are seeing simultaneous processes of reinvestment and redevelopment in their historic central areas. These are not just mega scale interventions like Porto Maravilha in Rio or Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires or the luxury renovations seen in Santa Fé or Nueva Polanco in Mexico City, they include state-led, piecemeal, high-rise interventions in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Panamá, and Bogotá, all of which are causing the displacement of original populations and thus are forms of gentrification. Until very recently, these processes have been under conceptualized and little critiqued in Latin America, but they deserve careful scrutiny, along with new forms of neighbourhood organisation, activism and resistance. In this introduction, we begin that task, drawing on the work begun in an Urban Studies Foundation-funded workshop on Global Gentrification held in Santiago, Chile in 2012. Our aim is not just to understand these urban changes and conflicts as gentrification, but to empirically test the applicability of a generic understanding of gentrification beyond the usual narratives of/from the global north. From this investigation we hope to nurture new critical narratives, be sensitive enough to engage with indigenous theoretical narratives, and understand the dialectical interplay between state policies, financial markets, local politics and people. The papers in this special issue deal with the core issues of state power, urban policies (exerted at metropolitan and neighbourhood levels), an enormous influx of financial investment in derelict neighbourhoods, which produces exclusion and segregation, significant loss of urban heritage from rapidly 'renewing' neighbourhoods, and even some institutional arrangements that make possible anti-displacement activism and self-managed social housing production.
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"...젠트리피케이션에 따른 폐해가 날로 증가하는 상황에서 어떻게 젠트리피케이션에 효과적으로 저항할 것인가? 젠트리피케이션에 대한 저항은 자본 성격의 이해, 그리고 젠트리피케이션을 둘러싼 사회관계의 이해, 지배 이데올로기에 대한 대항 이데올로기의 생산 등을 요구받는다. 근래 들어 주목받고 있는 상업 젠트리피케이션은 주로 건물주와 임차인의 갈등으로 드러나고, 종종 ‘갑질’이라고 지칭되는 건물주의 재산권 행사를(명도소송에 이은... more
"...젠트리피케이션에 따른 폐해가 날로 증가하는 상황에서 어떻게 젠트리피케이션에 효과적으로 저항할 것인가? 젠트리피케이션에 대한 저항은 자본 성격의 이해, 그리고 젠트리피케이션을 둘러싼 사회관계의 이해, 지배 이데올로기에 대한 대항 이데올로기의 생산 등을 요구받는다. 근래 들어 주목받고 있는 상업 젠트리피케이션은 주로 건물주와 임차인의 갈등으로 드러나고, 종종 ‘갑질’이라고 지칭되는 건물주의 재산권 행사를(명도소송에 이은 강제집행을) 보장하는 사유화된 권력과 공권력의 개입, 그리고 이에 저항하는 임차인 ‘을’의 갈등으로 드러난다. 젠트리피케이션에 대한 관심이 높아진 것과 비례해서 이에 대한 소개글과 연구성과 발표가 늘어나고 있지만,4) 젠트리피케이션이라는 도시 과정에 저항하고자 하는 실천, 그리고 이러한 실천이 한국 사회에서 갖는 의미에 대한 학술적 논의는 여전히 부족하며,5) 이러한 논의를 활성화하는 데 보탬이 되고자 이번 ≪공간과 사회≫ 특집호가 ‘발전주의 도시화와 젠트리피케이션’이라는 주제로 기획되었다."
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By juxtaposing the experiences of Guangzhou and Incheon in their preparation for the Asian Games, this chapter aims to show how both cities attempted, sometimes successfully and at other times unsuccessfully, to make use of the Asian... more
By juxtaposing the experiences of Guangzhou and Incheon in their preparation for the Asian Games, this chapter aims to show how both cities attempted, sometimes successfully and at other times unsuccessfully, to make use of the Asian Games to realise their developmental aspirations by investing heavily in the built environment. These attempts included fast-tracking the development process by launching ambitious mega-projects as part of channeling capital into the secondary circuit of the built environment (Harvey, 1978; see also Shin, 2012). As the chapter shows, these efforts were unfortunately speculative and debt-driven, placing a heavy burden on each city’s future developmental prospects.
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[Please note that the uploaded paper is a revised final version. Updated on 29 October 2015] This chapter examines the experience of making Songdo City, a much discussed global model of eco- and smart urbanism in recent years. By... more
[Please note that the uploaded paper is a revised final version. Updated on 29 October 2015]
This chapter examines the experience of making Songdo City, a much discussed global model of eco- and smart urbanism in recent years. By examining the development history and the role of main stakeholders, the chapter ascertains that Songdo City represents the territorial manifestation of the legacy of the Korean developmental state that has been internalizing the neoliberal logics of capital accumulation. In Songdo City, green and smart urbanisms have conjoined to produce entrepreneurial and speculative urbanisation that centers on real estate speculation and state-led investment in the built environment, which are the key characteristics of developmentalist urbanisation in Korea. Songdo City presents a segregated and exclusive space, catering for the needs of the rich and the powerful and becoming their own version of an urban utopia. However, the heavy reliance of Songdo City on real estate investment would turn out to be its own weakness.
This chapter examines the experience of making Songdo City, a much discussed global model of eco- and smart urbanism in recent years. By examining the development history and the role of main stakeholders, the chapter ascertains that Songdo City represents the territorial manifestation of the legacy of the Korean developmental state that has been internalizing the neoliberal logics of capital accumulation. In Songdo City, green and smart urbanisms have conjoined to produce entrepreneurial and speculative urbanisation that centers on real estate speculation and state-led investment in the built environment, which are the key characteristics of developmentalist urbanisation in Korea. Songdo City presents a segregated and exclusive space, catering for the needs of the rich and the powerful and becoming their own version of an urban utopia. However, the heavy reliance of Songdo City on real estate investment would turn out to be its own weakness.
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[The first paragraph of this conclusion chapter is provided here] This edited collection has been like a leap onto a moving train, not quite knowing where it might lead, and having only a vague sense of where it has been. It has been... more
[The first paragraph of this conclusion chapter is provided here] This edited collection has been like a leap onto a moving train, not quite knowing where it might lead, and having only a vague sense of where it has been. It has been exciting and we have learnt a lot.What the different chapters offer is a wider and deeper view of ‘gentrification’ from around the globe than has been managed to date. However, here, the editors and contributors have done more than merely offer a large number of empirical accounts of the diverse forms of gentrification (and its interaction with other urban processes) around the world. In this conclusion, drawing on Ward (2010), we conceptualise and theorise back from the different empirical cases in this book to reveal what we have learned from looking at gentrification globally,and from comparing beyond the usual suspects.
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This article on China’s urbanization examines the main drivers behind China’s urban transformation, its impact on the society and how the impact is unevenly spread across populations and geography. It begins with a brief historical... more
This article on China’s urbanization examines the main drivers behind China’s urban transformation, its impact on the society and how the impact is unevenly spread across populations and geography. It begins with a brief historical summary of China’s urbanization focusing on the post-Liberation period, that is 1949 onward, and moves on to discuss some of the major factors that have contributed to people’s migration and urban physical expansion. Three key characteristics are given particular attention: (1) industrial production and uneven development; (2) land-based accumulation; (3) local state building and state entrepreneurialism. The article further examines some of the important socio-spatial outcomes and challenges that China’s urbanization poses.
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This paper explains what the production of speculative urbanisation in mainland China means for strategising emergent discontents therein. It is argued that China’s urbanisation is a political and ideological project by the Party State,... more
This paper explains what the production of speculative urbanisation in mainland China means for strategising emergent discontents therein. It is argued that China’s urbanisation is a political and ideological project by the Party State, producing urban-oriented accumu- lation through the commingling of the labour-intensive industrial production with heavy investment in the built environment. Therefore, for any progressive movements to be formed, it becomes imperative to imagine and establish cross-class alliances to claim the right to the city (or the right to the urban, given the limitations of the city as an analytical unit). Because of the nature of urbanisation, the alliances would need to involve not only industrial workers and urban inhabitants but also village farmers whose lands are expro- priated to accommodate investments to produce the urban as well as ethnic minorities in autonomous regions whose cities are appropriated and restructured to produce Han-domi- nated cities. Education emerges as an important strategy for the discontented who need to understand how the fate of urban inhabitants is knitted tightly with the fate of workers, villagers and others who are subject to the exploitation of the urban-oriented accumulation.
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This paper uses Guangzhou’s experience of hosting the 2010 Asian Games to illustrate Guangzhou’s engagement with scalar politics. This includes concurrent processes of intra-regional restructuring to position Guangzhou as a central city... more
This paper uses Guangzhou’s experience of hosting the 2010 Asian Games to illustrate Guangzhou’s engagement with scalar politics. This includes concurrent processes of intra-regional restructuring to position Guangzhou as a central city in south China and a ‘negotiated scale-jump’ to connect with the world under conditions negotiated in part with the overarching strong central state, testing the limit of Guangzhou’s geopolitical expansion. Guangzhou’s attempts were aided further by using the Asian Games as a vehicle for addressing condensed urban spatial restructuring to enhance its own production/accumulation capacities, and for facilitating urban redevelopment projects to achieve a ‘global’ appearance and exploit the city’s real estate development potential. Guangzhou’s experience of hosting the Games provides important lessons for expanding our understanding of how regional cities may pursue their development goals under the strong central state and how event-led development contributes to this.
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This chapter examines a redevelopment project in Guangzhou, China, discussing the extent to which the local state has actively sought to bring about the commodification of a historic inner-city residential neighbourhood. It is argued that... more
This chapter examines a redevelopment project in Guangzhou, China, discussing the extent to which the local state has actively sought to bring about the commodification of a historic inner-city residential neighbourhood. It is argued that while local residents attempted to raise issues in various ‘sanctioned’ spaces organised by the government, their voices to influence the fate of their own neighbourhoods were overshadowed by the local leaders’ ambition to tap into the developmental potential of local places. Nevertheless, it is also shown from the residents’ efforts that what may be necessary for local residents is perhaps an instance of collective mobilisation on the basis of their own vision of neighbourhood and city development, garnering support from the wider society.This becomes all the more important as Guangzhou matures and is expected to inevitably give more emphasis on the re-use of existing urban fabric.
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Hosting mega-events such as the Olympic Games tend to accompany numerous media coverage on the negative social impact of the Games, and the people in the affected areas are often considered to be one victim group sharing similar... more
Hosting mega-events such as the Olympic Games tend to accompany numerous media coverage on the negative social impact of the Games, and the people in the affected areas are often considered to be one victim group sharing similar experiences. The research in this paper tries to unpack the heterogeneous groups in a particular sector of the housing market, and gain a better understanding of how the Olympic Games affects different resident groups. We take the example of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games and resort to empirical findings in an attempt to critically examine the experience of migrant tenants and Beijing citizens (landlords in particular) in ‘villages-in-the-city’ (known as cheongzhongcun) by delivering their own first- hand accounts of city-wide preparation for the Beijing Summer Olympiad and the pervasive demolition threats to their neighbourhoods. The paper argues that the Beijing Summer Olympiad produced uneven, often exclusionary, Games experiences for a certain segment of urban population.
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Wholesale clearance and eviction that typify China’s urban development have often resulted in discontents among urban residents, giving rise to what critics refer to as property rights activism. This paper is an attempt to critically... more
Wholesale clearance and eviction that typify China’s urban development have often resulted in discontents among urban residents, giving rise to what critics refer to as property rights activism. This paper is an attempt to critically revisit the existing debates on the property rights activism in China. The paper refers to the perspective of the “right to the city” to examine whose rights count in China’s urban development contexts and proposes a cross class alliance that engages both migrants and local citizens. The alliance itself will have substantial political implications, overcoming the limited level of rights awareness that mainly rests on distributional justice in China. The discussions are supported by an analysis of empirical data from the author’s field research in Guangzhou, which examines how local and non-local (migrant) residents view nail-households resisting demolition and forced eviction.
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Intergenerational support between parents and children in Chinese cities has been dramatically affected by recent social changes. In this paper, we investigate the changing pattern of intergenerational housing support between retired old... more
Intergenerational support between parents and children in Chinese cities has been dramatically affected by recent social changes. In this paper, we investigate the changing pattern of intergenerational housing support between retired old parents and their children, and the legacy of public housing in shaping this pattern. By initially establishing an up-to-date picture of intergenerational housing support between retired old parents and their children, we seek to determine how this support depends on whether parents have previously been allocated public housing, and if so, on whether they have disposed of it or have continued to occupy it. We use a survey with 1000 retired old people from Tianjin, China in 2009 for the analysis. The analysis utilises a support flow model to go beyond studying housing support per se, and study the flow of intergenerational support in both directions and in different forms.
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This paper revisits China's recent experiences of hosting three international mega-events: the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games. While maintaining a critical political economic... more
This paper revisits China's recent experiences of hosting three international mega-events: the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games. While maintaining a critical political economic perspective, this paper builds upon the literature of viewing mega-events as societal spectacles and puts forward the proposition that these mega-events in China are promoted to facilitate capital accumulation and ensure socio-political stability for the nation's further accumulation. The rhetoric of a ‘Harmonious Society’ as well as patriotic slogans are used as key languages of spectacles in order to create a sense of unity through the consumption of spectacles, and pacify social and political discontents rising out of economic inequalities, religious and ethnic tensions, and urban–rural divide. The experiences of hosting mega-events, however, have shown that the creation of a ‘unified’, ‘harmonious’ society of spectacle is built on displacing problems rather than solving them.
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Property-led urban redevelopment in contemporary Chinese cities often results in the demolition of many historical buildings and neighbourhoods, invoking criticisms from conservationists. In the case of Beijing, the municipal government... more
Property-led urban redevelopment in contemporary Chinese cities often results in the demolition of many historical buildings and neighbourhoods, invoking criticisms from conservationists. In the case of Beijing, the municipal government produced a series of documents in the early 2000s to implement detailed plans to conserve 25 designated historic areas in the Old City of Beijing. This paper aims to examine the recent socio-economic and spatial changes that took place within government-designated conservation areas, and scrutinise the role of the local state and real estate capital that brought about these changes. Based on recent field visits and semi-structured interviews with local residents and business premises in a case study area, this paper puts forward two main arguments. First, Beijing’s urban conservation policies enabled the intervention of the local state to facilitate revalorisation of dilapidated historic quarters and to release dilapidated courtyard houses on the real estate market. The revalorisation was possible with the participation of a particular type of real estate capital that had interests in the aesthetic value that historic quarters and traditional courtyard houses provided. Second, the paper also argues that economic benefits generated by urban conservation, if any, were shared disproportionately among local residents, and that local residents’ lack of opportunities to ‘voice out’ further consolidated the property-led characteristic of urban conservation, which failed to pay attention to social lives.
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The urban experiences of South Korea in times of its rapid urbanisation and economic growth show that wholesale redevelopment had been a dominant approach to urban renewal, leading to redevelopment-induced gentrification. This was led by... more
The urban experiences of South Korea in times of its rapid urbanisation and economic growth show that wholesale redevelopment had been a dominant approach to urban renewal, leading to redevelopment-induced gentrification. This was led by a programme known as the Joint Redevelopment Programme, transforming urban space that was once dominated by informal settlements into high-rise commercial housing estates. This paper tries to explain how this approach was possible at city-wide scale in its capital city, Seoul. Through the examination of redevelopment processes in a case study neighbourhood, it puts forward three arguments. First, the development potential arising from the rent gap expansion through under-utilisation of dilapidated neighbourhoods provided material conditions for the sustained implementation of property-based redevelopment projects. Second, this paper critically examines the dynamics of socio-political relations among various property-based interests embedded in redevelopment neighbourhoods, and argues that external property-based interests have enabled the full exploitation of development opportunities at the expense of poor owner-occupiers and tenants. Third, South Korea had been noted for its strong developmental state with minimum attention to redistributive social policies. The Joint Redevelopment Programme in Seoul was effectively a market-oriented, profit-led renewal approach, in line with a national housing strategy that favoured increased housing production and home-ownership at the expense of local poor residents’ housing needs.
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The entrepreneurial nature of local government activities has significantly influenced socioeconomic and spatial changes in urban China. It is against this backdrop that property-led redevelopment projects were implemented in Beijing... more
The entrepreneurial nature of local government activities has significantly influenced socioeconomic and spatial changes in urban China. It is against this backdrop that property-led redevelopment projects were implemented in Beijing after 1990, guided by a programme whose very success depended on the participation of real estate capital for financial contributions. In 2000, however, a new policy was put in practice, which aimed at supplying affordable housing on government-provided land to increase the rehousing rate. This paper analyses the implications of this shifting emphasis on Beijing’s redevelopment policy and examines whether the local government has become less entrepreneurial and more socially inclusive in its redevelopment approach. Based on the case study of two redevelopment projects, the paper argues that the local state’s entrepreneurial nature has persisted and that this is largely due to its power to dispose of urban land use rights, effectively making local governments de facto landlords.
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Beijing's selection as the host city of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games was reportedly received with joy among Beijing residents. As part of the city's preparation of this mega-event, massive reinvestment in Beijing's urban space was... more
Beijing's selection as the host city of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games was reportedly received with joy among Beijing residents. As part of the city's preparation of this mega-event, massive reinvestment in Beijing's urban space was carried out in order to transform the city to have a global look. This accompanied large-scale demolition and redevelopment of dilapidated inner-city neighbourhoods and migrants' enclaves. In this regard, this paper seeks to discuss the drivers of the Beijing Summer Olympiad, and critically examine its social legacy. The paper argues that the benefits and costs of hosting the Beijing Olympic Games were disproportionately shared among local residents due to their differences in socio-economic status and place of residence, and that the hardest hit were poorer residents in dilapidated inner-city neighbourhoods and migrants' enclaves. The Olympic Games preparation facilitated the rebuilding of Beijing, contributing to significant loss of affordable housing stocks for urban poor families and migrants. It is therefore necessary to address the social impacts of the Beijing Olympic Games within a framework of wider urban policy contexts.
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This paper examines the displacement experiences of urban poor tenants in Seoul, South Korea, and the constraints on their financing of postdisplacement housing. Since the mid-1980s, urban renewal of slums and dilapidated neighbourhoods... more
This paper examines the displacement experiences of urban poor
tenants in Seoul, South Korea, and the constraints on their financing of postdisplacement housing. Since the mid-1980s, urban renewal of slums and dilapidated neighbourhoods in Seoul has been geared towards clearance and wholesale redevelopment. This approach is accompanied by legalization of land tenure for dwelling owners without de jure property rights, and is based on profit-led partnerships between property owners (both on-site dwelling owners and absentee landlords) and developers. Since the end of the 1980s, tenants have been given the option, if eligible, of in-kind compensation (access to a public rental fl at) or cash compensation. Neither choice, however, reflects the needs of poor tenants who still find it difficult to finance inevitably increased housing expenditures. Policy measures are necessary to increase the range of options available to tenants upon displacement.
tenants in Seoul, South Korea, and the constraints on their financing of postdisplacement housing. Since the mid-1980s, urban renewal of slums and dilapidated neighbourhoods in Seoul has been geared towards clearance and wholesale redevelopment. This approach is accompanied by legalization of land tenure for dwelling owners without de jure property rights, and is based on profit-led partnerships between property owners (both on-site dwelling owners and absentee landlords) and developers. Since the end of the 1980s, tenants have been given the option, if eligible, of in-kind compensation (access to a public rental fl at) or cash compensation. Neither choice, however, reflects the needs of poor tenants who still find it difficult to finance inevitably increased housing expenditures. Policy measures are necessary to increase the range of options available to tenants upon displacement.
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Over the last decade, there has been growing attention to the issue of neighbourhood governance and community participation in China. The focus has been on the extent to which community involvement in rule-making and decision-making... more
Over the last decade, there has been growing attention to the issue of neighbourhood governance and community participation in China. The focus has been on the extent to which community involvement in rule-making and decision-making processes could be promoted. The issue of community participation in urban redevelopment, however, has received little attention. Urban redevelopment in contemporary Chinese cities is taking place on an unprecedented scale, dissolving long-standing local communities and demolishing poverty-stricken neighbourhoods. Examining the case of Beijing, this paper questions current redevelopment planning and residents’ appeal procedures. It considers the extent to which local communities in dilapidated neighbourhoods have difficulty making an impact on decisions affecting their neighbourhoods’ redevelopment. The paper considers the extent to which local residents could express discontent and put forward ‘rightful claims’. The paper concludes that community participation in neighbourhood redevelopment remains at the bottom of the ladder of participation, and that the vested interests of local authorities and developers in urban redevelopment projects restrict poor residents’ active participation in decision-making processes.
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The thesis studies the dynamics of urban residential redevelopment programmes in Seoul and Beijing that have been effectively transforming dilapidated neighbourhoods in recent decades. The policy review shows that neighbourhood renewal... more
The thesis studies the dynamics of urban residential redevelopment programmes in Seoul and Beijing that have been effectively transforming dilapidated neighbourhoods in recent decades.
The policy review shows that neighbourhood renewal programmes saw difficulties in ensuring cost-recovery and replicability in both cities, and that this has led to the formation of residential redevelopment programmes that depend heavily on the participation of real estate developers in spite of social, economic and political differences between the cities of Seoul and Beijing. Based on research data collected from a series of
area-based field research visits in Seoul and Beijing between 2002 and 2003, the thesis examines how developer-led partnerships in urban redevelopment take place in different urban settings, what contributions are made by participating actors and how redevelopment benefits are shared among the existing and potential residents in
redevelopment neighbourhoods.
The main arguments in this thesis are as follows. Firstly, the emergence of profit-making opportunities in dilapidated neighbourhoods forms the basis of developer-led partnership among property-related interests that include the local government, professional developers and property owners. Poor owner-occupiers and tenants in both Seoul and Beijing assume a more passive role. Secondly, local authorities intervene to ensure that the
partnership framework works, but this is carried out largely in favour of professional developers and absentee landlords whose material contributions are significant. Thirdly, redevelopment benefits are shared among existing residents in differentiated ways. The most affected in negative ways are the marginalised population whose social and economic status is increasingly threatened by the market risks in times of globalisation, urban growth and redevelopment in the 1990s.
This thesis concludes that partnerships in neighbourhood redevelopment do not have benign outcomes for all. Stronger government intervention is necessary in order to safe-guard the interests of existing residents in dilapidated neighbourhoods, ensure their participation, and in particular, increase the protection of those increasingly marginalised by the process of redevelopment.
The policy review shows that neighbourhood renewal programmes saw difficulties in ensuring cost-recovery and replicability in both cities, and that this has led to the formation of residential redevelopment programmes that depend heavily on the participation of real estate developers in spite of social, economic and political differences between the cities of Seoul and Beijing. Based on research data collected from a series of
area-based field research visits in Seoul and Beijing between 2002 and 2003, the thesis examines how developer-led partnerships in urban redevelopment take place in different urban settings, what contributions are made by participating actors and how redevelopment benefits are shared among the existing and potential residents in
redevelopment neighbourhoods.
The main arguments in this thesis are as follows. Firstly, the emergence of profit-making opportunities in dilapidated neighbourhoods forms the basis of developer-led partnership among property-related interests that include the local government, professional developers and property owners. Poor owner-occupiers and tenants in both Seoul and Beijing assume a more passive role. Secondly, local authorities intervene to ensure that the
partnership framework works, but this is carried out largely in favour of professional developers and absentee landlords whose material contributions are significant. Thirdly, redevelopment benefits are shared among existing residents in differentiated ways. The most affected in negative ways are the marginalised population whose social and economic status is increasingly threatened by the market risks in times of globalisation, urban growth and redevelopment in the 1990s.
This thesis concludes that partnerships in neighbourhood redevelopment do not have benign outcomes for all. Stronger government intervention is necessary in order to safe-guard the interests of existing residents in dilapidated neighbourhoods, ensure their participation, and in particular, increase the protection of those increasingly marginalised by the process of redevelopment.
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Research Interests: Urban Planning and China
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In this book Jie Chen explores attitudinal and behavioural orientation of China’s new middle class to democracy and democratization. Hyun Bang Shin finds that this is a valuable addition to our understanding of the future of Chinese... more
In this book Jie Chen explores attitudinal and behavioural orientation of China’s new middle class to democracy and democratization. Hyun Bang Shin finds that this is a valuable addition to our understanding of the future of Chinese society and politics, and especially of the country’s future prospect of political reform that is perceived not to have progressed as much as the economic reform. It is strongly recommended to observers of China who may wish to find out more about the meaning of middle class expansion in contemporary China.