Residential relocation under market-oriented redevelopment: the process and outcomes in urban China

Residential displacement by urban regeneration in western economies and forced relocation in the Third World countries are contentious issues. This paper, based on a household survey in Shanghai, examines the process and outcomes of residential relocation under market-oriented urban redevelopment in China. The results show that commodification of the socialist tenancy right helped to initiate large-scale urban redevelopment. First, there has been a complicated process of negotiation during residential relocation, involving residents, development companies, and government agencies. The de facto right of public housing tenants is considered by a pragmatic attitude in urban redevelopment in the early years. Second, residential relocation is accompanied by the changes in housing tenure, housing conditions, and the improved built form of planned residential districts. Nevertheless, the social conflict has become intensified recently because the deepening of commodification began to favour property developers by constraining the compensation standard for relocated households.     

State power and environmental initiatives in China: Analyzing China’s green building program through an ecological modernization perspective

This paper applies the ecological modernization (EM) framework to analyze China’s green building program. EM focuses on the effective institutionalization of environmental objectives into respective political and economic systems, and thus provides valuable insights into the roles of the state and other stake holders in environmental regulation. Since the mid-2000s, the Chinese government has advanced an aggressive green building campaign, which is distinguished by its speed, scale, and evolution from one of voluntary participation to a top-down implementation through administrative hierarchies. While this has resulted in a remarkable growth of green building projects, questions remain about the effectiveness and sustainability of such a state-centered approach. Though interviews with officials, planners, architects, real estate developers, and property managers in several Chinese cities, data analysis of the green building stock, and surveys of architects, this paper analyzes Chinese green building patterns and situates such patterns among the contradictory motivations of different levels of government and their relationships to different stake holders. This research finds that the top-down state apparatus is not sufficient to overcome these contradictions and the profit motives of the property developers. However, many under-developed opportunities exist to leverage property developers, building professionals, and the public to engage in green building practices. In the end, I argue that the state must embrace reform to build flexible and collaborative movements with other parties with strong public participation. China’s ecological modernization process may feature a stronger state and faster changes, but it is not exempted from the need of political modernization.     

轨道交通规划环境影响评价公众参与的探讨

公众参与是环境影响评价的重要内容,城市轨道交通规划环评不同于一般的建设项目,其线路一般选择在城市中心繁华地区、城市交通主干道,环境影响的范围较广,城市轨道交通规划环境影响评价公众参与的广度和深度均应比建设项目环境影响评价公众参与的要求高,本文对轨道交通规划环境影响评价公众参与的必要性进行了阐述,其中包括公众参与是轨道交通规划环境影响评价过程的重要组成部分和现阶段社会主义民主的充分体现;是提高公众环境意识、化解社会矛盾和提高轨道交通规划环境影响评价有效性的重要途径。     

美丽乡村建设背景下村土地利用规划编制技术探索——以浙江省为例

美丽乡村建设的现实需求催生了村土地利用规划。但在我国土地利用规划体系中,村土地利用规划还是新生事物,编制经验不足,技术方法不成熟。为有效引导美丽乡村建设有序开展,浙江省率先开展了村土地利用规划编制技术试点,着重在规划编制的数据基础、调查方法、空间布局、需求驱动、地方特色、公众参与和协调衔接等方面进行了有益尝试,并结合实际对不同比例尺数据衔接、规划法律定位和编制主体和审批权限等问题进行了探讨。     

公众参与理论、方法及其在水资源集成管理研究中的国际进展

通过对国际上公众参与相关概念的辨析及其理论发展轨迹的评述，系统的总结出公众参与理论的主要内容与特征，并分别就公共参与的权利关系变化、主流价值观演变和组织管理方式特点展开详细说明。在此基础上，对国际水资源集成管理的公众参与目的、价值体现及具体实施目标、过程设计和保障条件做出全面、系统的解释说明；分别就公众参与式管理的过程、实力和关系作用，参与式管理过程核心控制点，各个运行环节监督评估效果的异同特征做出理论总结。基于对国际上公众参与理论及其应用的分析与总结基础上，提出就中国政治体制和现实实践条件而言，均需加强和发挥政府在参与式水管理的作用。进一步展望中国公众参与的研究方向与应用领域，得出具有中国特色的水资源集成管理中公众参与的定性、定量结合实证研究的发展方向。     

Disaster Management and Community Planning, and Public Participation: How to Achieve Sustainable Hazard Mitigation

The paper offers first a brief historical overview of disaster management planning. Second, it reviews Australian and American research findings and show that they urge the field of disaster management to shift its focus from response and recovery to sustainable hazard mitigation. It is argued that in order for this shift to occur, it is necessary to integrate disaster management and community planning. Current practice seldom reflects such a synthesis, and this is one of the reasons why hazard awareness is absent from local decision-making processes. Third, it is asserted that if mitigative strategies are to be successfully implemented, then the disaster management process must incorporate public participation at the local decision-making level. The paper concludes with a case study of California's Portola Valley, which demonstrates that when public participation is integrated into disaster management planning and community planning, the result is sustainable hazard mitigation.     

Gated community and residential segregation in urban China

Research on gated community in Chinese cities has been growing very fast, but empirical studies are limited, especially those on the relationship between gated community and residential segregation. A retrospective questionnaire survey was conducted in three gated communities in Chongqing, China. The findings from the survey include that, after moving into the gated communities, many homeowners’ contact with other people decreases. It is also found that homeowners’ participation in local public affairs decreases. These results hold even when we compare with the reference group and control for duration of stay. They support the view that gated community aggravates residential segregation. However, the survey shows that many homeowners feel the income differences among the neighbors increase and the changes of several types of external activities don’t show a consistent pattern. All these empirical findings suggest that a complex relationship between gated community and residential segregation exists in urban China and the removal of work unit from the housing system affects people’s experience in gated community.     

Public participation in policy making: the state-of-the-art in Canada

This paper critically reviews the current status of public participation in Canada. Postulating that public participation implies an open, democratic form of planning and policy making, the paper examines factors which have influenced the attainment of meaningful public input in practice. Public participation in Canada has evolved greatly in the past 15 years but several key issues remain unresolved: provisions for participation remain, in large part, discretionary; procedures for the funding of intervenors require further development; and the emphasis in many jurisdictions remains upon the operational level involvement of the lay public, with a public hearing as the final arbiter of public opinion. More attention to the formal evaluation of participatory exercises is essential to the resolution of these concerns. In particular, more attention should be given to the context within which participation occurs. Moreover, greater consideration should be given to public involvement at the normative and strategic levels of planning. The paper concludes by briefly exploring the implications for practice that the concept of ‘normative participation’ might have in Canada.     

Regional planning and citizen participation in South Korea: The case of Chungbook Province

Regional planning in Korea has seldom been influenced by the demands and pressures of interested groups or citizens. To remedy this and open up the planning process to citizen participation, the Korean government developed the Regional Development Regulations of 1981. This mechanism directs regional development planning and citizen participation in it.The experience of the Chungbook Regional Development Plan (1981–1982) is characteristic of the present process of citizen participation in planning in Korea. The methods of insuring citizen participation are fourfold: the citizen advisory committee, the survey of citizens' opinions, the study conference, and the public hearing. Nonetheless, both planners and citizens often assess the participatory elements as being unsatisfactory.Citizen participation in the planning process in Korea can be improved. Specific measures include the addition of a pre-plan phase to the current regional planning process. This phase would require widespread publicity informing citizens of the opportunity to participate in the planning process and improved mechanisms to elicit from citizens their views on the key issues of the regional plan before the decision making phase begins. Finally, the government needs to develop a long-term approach to improving citizen participation in the regional planning process. This should involve the development of training programs that advocate a bottom-up approach to planning based on grassroots citizen participation.     

Broadening participation,creating community,and learning that it never goes as planned

This paper presents the experience of a service-learning course which used community geography to study a proposed research and community center in DeKalb, IL. The center was proposed as a jointly-developed project by the Northern Illinois University and local governmental entities. The original goal of the course was to explore the viability of the proposed project and solicit feedback from the community through traditional engaged planning and public participation. As students began interacting with university and residential communities, it became clear that both communities had input for the center, and found similarities in their experiences and perceptions. While noted divisions in interest groups are known in DeKalb, both communities found themselves surprisingly interested in meaningful discussion to better understand each other through their shared experiences. In response, our theoretical approach shifted to community geography. Students, university employees, and local residents introduced and analyzed questions together as researchers and participants, and developed recommendations to address shared concern. Students then prepared a report advocating for those concerns to submit to university and community leaders. Following the evolution of this project, this paper presents lessons learned and areas for application of community geography as a pedagogical technique, as an important component of geography curriculum, and as a research framework for town-gown relationship inquiry.

     

Impact of urban water system treatment on the surrounding residential land price

Land price is the central link in the urban land market movement. Along with socio-economic development, urban land price continuously changes. Therefore, it is critically important to study the impact of urban water system treatment on the residential land price under an “ecological city” development model. A hedonic model was established in which the characteristic variable of distance between land and water system after being treated was used as the metric of the impact of urban water system treatment on the residential land price, with an aim to quantitatively study the influence of urban water system treatment on the residential land price. Results indicated that (1) the urban water system treatment had a positive impact on the residential land price. In addition, the residential land price shows a negative correlation to the distance between land and water system after being treated; (2) for every one-unit increase of distance between land and water system after being treated, the logarithm of residential land unit prices decreases by 0.025, and the residential land unit prices decrease by 2.47%. The findings of this study provide a valuable reference for local water resource planning and land management.     

Public participation in China’s green communities: Mobilizing memories and structuring incentives

In recent years, there has been heightened interest in creating more environmentally sustainable forms of urban development in China. Central in these greening initiatives has been increased attention on promoting public participation in community-based environmental activities. Focusing on China’s green community initiatives, we examine the production and effects of participation in a state-led development program. Our analysis considers how incentives for program organizers and participants are structured by broader political and economic imperatives facing Chinese cities. We also consider what influence China’s history of neighborhood-based mobilization campaigns had on the meanings and methods of participation in green communities. To understand how urban development processes and memories of mobilization influence participation at the local level, we present two examples of the community greening process from the city of Guangzhou, comparing policy outcomes between a new and older neighborhood. This article seeks to demonstrate that the participatory processes associated with such an urban environmental initiative cannot be adequately understood without reference to earlier participatory practices and broader policy priorities guiding development in Chinese cities.     

A survey of household domestic water consumption patterns in rural semi-arid village, India

In India, as a result of development, the demand for water is increasing both in urban and rural areas. This may increase tensions and disputes over sharing of water resources. For water demand management, it is crucial to know the details of actual water use on a household level. Therefore, this paper explores the pattern of domestic water consumption in semi-arid Dhani Mohabbatpur village of Hisar district in Haryana state of India, to improve the understanding of how local communities in the region relate to water, based on questionnaires and interview surveys of 763 households. The study has examined the households daily and activity wise water consumption, sources, quality, duration, frequency of water supply, distance of different sources and the level of awareness about rainwater harvesting. Results of the study revealed that the daily average water consumption for the village was found to be 117.0 l per person per capita per day (SD = 35.8). Washing of clothes consumes the highest amount of water, whereas 85 % of the households are using government water supplies with very safe water quality. However, 77 % households are not satisfied with duration of water supply and 86 % do not have awareness about rainwater harvesting technology. This needs to be addressed immediately by changing public perception through media and by organizing public awareness programs. It is hoped that the results of the study would benefit the policy and planning executives in India in optimizing the existing water resources for rural development.     

Planning in the age of Facebook: the role of social networking in planning processes

There has been rapid growth in the use of online social networking sites, such as Facebook. The public is increasingly using these sites for organizing around place-based issues. This research examines the extent to which the public and planners are using social networking sites to organize the public around place-based planning issues. Using content analysis of social networking sites, place-based planning groups are identified and analyzed. The administrators for the groups were contacted to determine their goals and satisfaction with their groups’ work. Planning departments in the same communities were then contacted to determine the degree to which the social networking groups influenced the planning process. The results of this study found that the public primarily organizes to oppose development projects. While on average these groups attract hundreds of people, planners and group administrators report that there is minimal influence on the planning process.     

三亚市农村居民点整理与农村城镇化研究

三亚市土地后备资源有限,人地关系十分紧张,而当前农村居民点用地布局紊乱、缺乏统一规划、基础设施条件差、不少空地和老宅基地得不到有效利用而形成了＂空心村＂,随着建设国际旅游岛的提出,三亚市用地情况越来越紧张,要改善这一现状,只有通过土地整理,充分利用闲置土地、提高土地的集约利用水平、促进经济增长方式的转变,才能缓解当前用地紧张的状况,满足三亚市农村城镇化、农村生态化的要求。     

What has happened in Spain? The real estate bubble,corruption and housing development: A view from the local level

How have the recent real estate, mortgage and financial crises affected different countries, territories and cities? How have the different public and private stakeholders behaved and how accountable have they been for the origin and development thereof? What links are there among the local, national and global contexts in the crises? Recent geographic research ought to attempt to answer these questions, but there have, however, been few in-depth studies on the link between urbanisation, financial markets and the global crisis. The present paper analyses one of the principal causes of Spain’s recent evolution: urbanisation of the territory, the start and consequences of housing bubble; our study emphasises the differential elements in relation to the crisis in other countries. We study in greater depth the municipality of Torrelodones, which constitutes a reference due to the appearance of a residents’ movement opposed to the development process and which is a perfect example of the dynamics that led to the economic and social crisis. We describe in detail the lack of any strategic vision, participation or transparency in town planning decision-making, the processes by which reports and inspections were doctored, and the mechanisms of corruption of public decision-making in town planning. Finally, we analyse the concrete manner in which huge losses in mortgage markets occurred, with the collapse of the real estate bubble and the financial markets, which subsequently forced a State bailout.     

我国城市规划中的公众参与研究

公众参与是随着政治文明和法制建设不断成熟、发展而产生的一种民主理念,已经成为城市规划工作中一项必不可少的内容。文章就我国城市规划中公众参与的现状提出我国城市规划过程中公众参与的必要性和紧迫性,总结出我国现阶段公众参与的现状与问题,并提出对策和合理化建议,从而把公众参与真正落实到我国的城市规划过程当中。     

‘Bringing government to the people’: women, local governance and community participation in South Africa

This paper considers the ongoing political transformations in South Africa in the context of debates about good governance and participatory democracy. It first appraises the current transformations of local government in South Africa, focusing specifically on relationships between gender equality and citizenship on the one hand, and local government policy, legislation, and community participation on the other, and then explores meanings of participation and how they inform approaches towards local socio-economic development. The findings of primary research conducted with civil society organisations and black women in communities in the Cape Town metropolitan area are explored through three interrelated themes. First, the model of structured participation that is central to South Africa’s democratic transformation is assessed from the perspective of black women. Second, cultures of alienation, both within local governance structures and amongst black women and the extent to which recent restructuring is combating or contributing to these are explored. Third, how participation policies are dealing with conflict within and between target groups are analysed, whether stakeholder group politics obliterate important differences in interests and whether alternative structures might be more effective in terms of women’s participation and empowerment. Finally, the findings are interpreted in relation to theoretical concepts of good governance and participatory democracy, and the potential and problems of realising South Africa’s transformation process toward developmental local government are assessed.     

The role of NGOs in public and private land development: The case of Dhaka city

Through a series of case studies, this paper discusses the three stakeholders in land development for housing in Dhaka city: the public and private sectors, and NGOs. In a scenario in which urban planning merely serves to the fulfil formal requirements and benefit certain groups, in which the public sector is an accomplice to the private sector, and where NGOs have their own private interests; urban planning in the public interest is interlocked with private interests. NGOs are important tertiary stakeholders in planning and service provision. While they vary in their types and objectives, environment NGOs in particular often find themselves in an antagonistic position concerning public and private land development. However, the interventions to the public and private sectors placed by the NGOs can provide a platform for future negotiation and participation in policy formulation.     

土地利用规划的实施管理研究

土地规划实施管理的研究是新一轮土地利用规划的亮点,该文通过对规划实施存在问题及实施难的原因分析,对比国内外的土地利用规划,借鉴国外土地利用规划实施管理的理论与实践,最后对我国土地利用规划实施保障措施提出对策建议。在土地利用规划实施管理保障框图的基础上,该文特别就借鉴外国土地规划的理论与实践、基层地方的作用、公众参与和经济措施4个方面提出相关建议。