China's Urban Speed Machine: The Politics of Speed and Time in a Period of Rapid Urban Growth

China's urban transformation since 1978 is notable for both its scale and speed. Focusing on the dimension of speed, we propose the concept of the ‘urban speed machine’ to assess its role in shaping the politics and political economy of Chinese urbanization. We argue that in China speed must not be understood merely by means of measurable outcomes of change, but rather that speed is an essential and vital element embedded within China's specific processes and mechanisms driving urban growth. In this sense, speed is constantly at the forefront of local cadres’ considerations, since moving fast to achieve urban growth is an expression of political imperatives and pervasive city‐based accumulation strategies. The Chinese urban speed machine, as we conceive it, mainly involves three state‐dominated institutional arenas: the Communist party's personnel review system, the planning mechanism and local finance. We also discuss regional variability vis‐à‐vis the nature of speed in urbanization and in the differing responses to problems of fast‐city growth in recent years. This article's core contributions are to clarify the paramount importance of speed in the political economy of urban growth and illuminate a relational understanding of the politics of speed in China's urban change.     

The Institution of Hukou‐based Social Exclusion: A Unique Institution Reshaping the Characteristics of Contemporary Urban China

This conceptual article contributes to institutional analysis and the neo‐institutional theory literature by identifying and analysing the linked rules, values, norms and patterned practices that surround and structure the way rural migrant workers are treated in urban areas of China in terms of Scott's integrated model of institutions. It argues that these hukou‐based rules, values, norms and patterned practices that discriminate against rural migrants can be considered to be a unique institution — the institution of hukou‐based social exclusion (IHSE). IHSE has dominated Chinese urban society for 3 decades and significantly shaped the lives of millions of rural migrant workers, the character of contemporary China and the nature of managerial practices among Chinese firms. This is the first article to examine the social exclusion of rural workers from the perspective of neo‐institutionalism, providing the first systematic analysis of the regulative, normative and cognitive dimensions that together socially exclude migrants in urban areas of China. It presents a holistic picture of the newly identified institution that offers new insights into China's urban society and management, and a new starting point for research.     

A Limitless Urban Theory? A Response to Scott and Storper's ‘The Nature of Cities: The Scope and Limits of Urban Theory'

The recent article in this journal by Scott and Storper (2015) suggested that the field of urban studies currently contains a multitude of varied theoretical viewpoints and argued for a unified general urban theory encompassing all urban scholarly work. Their proposal is that such a theory is based upon a foundational understanding of agglomeration and clustering. This response counter‐argues this, suggesting that such a proposal leaves urban theory too instrumental, deterministic and economistic. Moreover, Scott and Storper argue that there is a need to isolate the urbanization process from a wider suite of social, cultural and economic processes in which the urban is said to be ‘embedded'. If we are to embrace a unified urban theory, however, it should be one which views cities as differing intensities of an urbanization process, and does not try to draw arbitrary boundaries about what is and what is not a city. If we are to strive for a general urban theory, then it would be far more beneficial to champion an ontology of an urbanization process with varying degrees of (de)intensification.     

What Do Cities Have to Do with Democracy?

The relationship between urbanization and democratization remains under‐theorized and under‐researched. Radical urban theory has undergone a veritable normative turn, registered in debates about the right to the city, spatial justice and the just city, while critical conceptualizations of neoliberalism present ‘democracy’ as the preferred remedy for injustice. However, these lines of thought remain reluctant to venture too far down the path of political philosophy. The relationship between urban politics and the dynamics of democratization remains under‐theorized as a result. It is argued that this relationship can be usefully understood by drawing on lessons from avowedly normative styles of political theorizing, specifically post‐Habermasian strands of critical theory. Taking this tradition seriously helps one to notice that discussions of urbanization, democracy, injustice and rights in geography, urban studies and related fields invoke an implicit but unthematized democratic norm, that of all‐affected interests. In contemporary critical theory, this norm is conceptualized as a worldly register of political demands. It is argued that the conceptual disaggregation of component values of democracy undertaken through the ‘spatial turn’ in recent critical theory reorients the analysis of the democratic potentials of urban politics around the investigation of the multiple forms of agency which urbanized processes perform in generating, recognizing and acting upon issues of shared concern.     

快速城市化背景下的土地问题述评

改革开放以后,我国迅速进入到了快速城市化阶段,而快速城市化与快速经济增长互为因果,成为我国转型发展的主要动力。土地制度的改革是三十年来我国经济体制改革的重要组成部分,也是我国城市快速扩张及工业高速发展的重要动力。但是,我国城市化进程中的土地问题也非常突出:一方面,土地生产要素的紧缺已成为我国东部沿海发达地区最大的"门槛",耕地保护因此面临巨大压力;另一方面,土地资产的暴涨也引致了房价暴涨等严重的社会不公问题,"以地生财"的土地财政成为社会关注的焦点。因此,土地制度的改革仍然是我国经济体制改革的重点,而建立统一的城乡土地市场、改革"土地财政"、强化城市增长管理、抑制城市蔓延则是土地制度改革的重点。     

Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism

Urban political ecology (UPE), an offshoot of political ecology that emerged in the late 1990s, has had two major impacts on critical urban studies: it has introduced critical political ecology to urban settings, and it has provided a framework for retheorizing the city as a product of metabolic processes of socionatural transformation. However, there was another goal in early UPE programmatic statements that has largely fallen by the wayside: to mobilize a Lefebvrian theoretical framework to trouble traditional distinctions between urban/rural and society/nature by exploring urbanization as a global process. Instead of following this potentially fruitful path, UPE has become bogged down in ‘methodological cityism’––an overwhelming analytical and empirical focus on the traditional city to the exclusion of other aspects of contemporary urbanization processes. Thus UPE's Lefebvrian promise, of a research program that could work across traditional disciplinary divisions and provide insights into a new era of planetary urbanization, has remained unfulfilled. In this article we trace UPE's history to show how it arrived at its present predicament, and offer some thoughts on a research agenda for a political ecology not of the city but of urbanization.     

Unveiling Urban Sprawl in the Mediterranean Region: Towards a Latent Urban Transformation?

The relationship between form and function in European Mediterranean cities has been widely addressed from various perspectives. A number of studies indicate that, until the 1980s, compactness was a key trait of several cities of the Northern Mediterranean. However, after the ‘compact growth’ period, these cities experienced patterns of urbanization that differed from their traditional trends. Since the 1990s, sprawl, coupled with population decline in the inner cities, has become the main pattern of urban development. This article explores the key features of exurban development in the Mediterranean region in order to provide material for a discussion based on the differences and similarities in the characteristics of sprawl processes originating in the US and Northern Europe. It concludes that any debate on policy responses to sprawl must be specifically formulated according to the scope, administrative level, housing and planning system, territorial and socioeconomic characteristics of the urban system under examination. It is our belief that sprawl requires site‐specific analyses and policy strategies for the region being studied if the process is to be effectively controlled.     

Gentrifying China's Urbanization? Why Culture and Capital Aren't Enough

China's urban areas are expanding and changing, with significant physical and social consequences. The analysis of such consequences often constructs the violence and demolition that precedes the redevelopment of villages and neighbourhoods as the direct result of the authoritarian nature of the Chinese state. Such violence is visible in countless cases where the state prevails over the rights of homeowners, farmers or simple citizens in the process of building, rebuilding or pacifying the cities. Much of this violence, together with the agency it generates among local communities, advances processes that elsewhere have been classified as ‘gentrification’, resulting in the replacement of one class with another and an increase in the market value of (state‐owned) land. This essay argues that this process is not epiphenomenal to urbanization; rather, the upgrading (of people and buildings) is central to both local and national state projects to develop cities, the goal of which is to increase control over the territory while increasing the market and symbolic value of urban areas.     

City size and urban labor productivity in China: New evidence from spatial city-level panel data analysis

The previous literature has generally found that most Chinese cities were undersized in the 1990s. However, little is known about how urban agglomeration in China has evolved since the country began to experience much faster urbanization and deep marketization after 2000. Based on panel data of 281 cities between 2000 and 2013, our spatial panel data regression results show that the scale impact of city size on urban productivity appears to have an inverted U shape, and its effect will grow when the cities’ industrial structure becomes more dominated by the service sector. There are also significant spatial interactions and spatial heterogeneity of urban agglomeration among Chinese cities. Furthermore, we compute the optimal size for each city and find that most Chinese cities are still undersized in recent years. Based on our findings, we argue that the Chinese government should focus on promoting sufficient growth of medium sized cities in its new urbanization strategy.     

Self‐help in housing and chengzhongcun in China's urbanization

This article focuses on the housing issues of rural migrants arising from urbanization, with particular reference to chengzhongcun, a topic with considerable impact on policymaking. An attempt is made to understand the underlying rationale of self‐help in housing and the important role of chengzhongcun in sheltering rural migrants in the context of China's rural‐urban dichotomy. As demonstrated in this study, chengzhongcun accommodate, with little in the way of government resources and assistance, millions of rural migrants because of their social accessibility and affordability. While not denying their social problems, we argue that chengzhongcun in fact act as an innovative and positive agent to promote urbanization in present day China by housing massive numbers of rural migrants and assimilating them into cities. Current government policies towards chengzhongcun have generated a wide range of interest conflicts and confrontations. The consequences of such conflicts show that the government policies were problematic and unworkable, as they violated basic market principles as well as citizen rights. Policy strategy towards the redevelopment of chengzhongcun must acknowledge their credibility in the Chinese road to urbanization and requires more thoughtful and prudent consideration of migrants' demands for affordable housing.     

环境政策背景下的都市农业发展——以北京市为例

都市农业具有不同于传统农业的产业化和集约化的特点,更易受到环境政策的调控。北京作为首都,具有发展都市农业的便利条件和独特优势。在分析北京现代都市农业和环境农业政策的基础上,认为都市农业发展打破了城乡界限,为环境农业政策推行赢得了微观意愿基础,同时环境政策也会推动都市农业的发展,提高其国际化程度和影响力。因此应在完善环境农业规制手段、加强农业标准化建设以及重视环境农业政策中的经济手段等方面进行制度创新,在赢得良好生态环境的同时,通过都市农业的发展优化城市化进程。     

新生代农民工融入城市的跨文化适应研究

在工业化和城镇化快速发展的今天,新生代农民工既是我国城市产业工人的重要组成部分,又是统筹城乡发展的主力军。解决新生代农民工市民化问题,对实现全面小康社会具有重大的现实意义。在城市适应的过程中,新生代农民工只有适应城市文化,才会最终完成自己的角色转变,真正融入城市。     

中国的城市化进程与城市中国

随着中国城市化水平的提升,"城市中国"论也逐渐受到了学界的关注。认为作为研究对象,"城市中国"是个需要慎重对待的观点。鉴于我国城市化的现状,认为"城市中国"仍是一个美好的远景。     

中国城镇化的战略问题

论述了中国城镇化面临的速度与目标、人口与土地、城乡人口结构及城乡居民点结构、城镇化政策的重点等战略问题,并以对两个方案的对比分析对这些问题进行讨论,得出须从体制、机制层面更多地激励中小城市及小城镇集约合理地使用土地资源;面向原乡村居民发展低成本房地产业,吸引其落户,应成为重要的政策导向.     

乡村运动:城市功能的外溢——新农村建设与城市化进程的内在逻辑

通过总结在城市化进程不同阶段中农村经济社会发展的基本特征,对比分析邻国日本、韩国乡村的发展经验,对我国的农村发展问题进行了深入研究。提出新农村建设策略应该是以建立在区域差异性基础上的城市化水平为轴线,通过区域功能分工实现城市功能延续,逐步推进新农村建设,最终达到城乡一体化发展的境界。     

以都市农业发展促新农村建设:概念·观察·思考

在对有关新农村建设进行实践观察和文献整理的基础上,重点探讨了现代都市农业的概念,研究了都市农业发展在新农村建设中的价值和作用,文章指出,都市农业的发展可以成为新农村建设的动力和契机,但都市农业的开发并不能等同于新农村建设本身.政府主导下的新农村建设要重点思考农民的参与问题,思考如何有效地实现城乡的良性互动,逐步实现全社会都来帮助农民的局面,更好地提高中国农业的组织化程度,促进三农问题的破解.     

Impacts of Privatization of Customary Land Rights in Zambia: A Comparative Study of Rural and Peri‐urban Locations

In its quest for development, Zambia is pursuing a land policy that facilitates privatization of customary land. This article investigates the effects of privatization in terms of how it shapes people's behaviour and perception of private tenure and related tenure dynamics. Findings have shown that the appetite to privatize land is growing stronger in peri‐urban areas as land becomes more scarce. Furthermore, privatization of land appears to be a threat to traditional political structures as allegiance and loyalty towards chiefs diminish and tension and struggles over land in peri‐urban areas increase. Similarly, privatization of land erodes people's faith in the role that cultural and ancestral beliefs play in traditional land management. Also, people in rural areas tend to favour private tenure more if ‘privatization of customary land’ means allocation of land to outsiders. If, by contrast, the phrase is taken to mean communities registering their own land, peri‐urban communities tend to have a stronger desire to register land. Furthermore, rural communities were found to be less informed about land policy and seemed less keen to be involved in land policy processes when compared to peri‐urban residents. However, rural people may have no reason to inform themselves about land policy until they realise that the policy is likely to affect them.     

Trustworthiness and ethical considerations: a review of personal connections in China

This study is to assess the significance of guanxi or personal connections in Chinese management, its contribution to trust in business dealings, and its relation to ethical judgement in Chinese management. The paper begins with a background to the term Guanxi where it argues that personal connections would be an adequate and preferable term for guanxi, since although the phenomenon in practice is specific to China it is not unique to China. Guanxi or personal connections in China should be seen as part of China’s traditional culture, but without attaching a mystical value to the concept. Understanding of the phenomenon and awareness of how to deal with Chinese business is fundamental to trust both domestically and in foreign business dealings. However it is through a grasp of ethical considerations and a deeper awareness of morality that personal connections can be soundly based and goes beyond the rule of law to meet China’s potential for socio-economic success.     

新时代农村物流发展浅析

十八大报告中,＂城镇化＂一词高频出现,在全面打造新型的城镇化中,最艰巨的任务还是在农村的经济发展上。党中央、国务院以科学发展观统领经济社会发展全局,提出建设社会主义新农村的重大战略,在经济发展的同时,我国国民经济逐步发展,现已初步实现了小康社会的基本目标,但随着经济的进一步发展,农村市场体系的结构逐渐显现出弊端,急需快速解决。农村市场体系的核心是农村生产资料和农村日用消费品供应以及农产品销售,它是保证农村物流经济发展和城乡居民生活的物质基础。在电子商务发展的今天,我国农村物流的发展和运作还存在诸多的问题,还需要农村物流系统结构的不断完善来促进农村物流和农村经济的发展。     

The Urban Question under Planetary Urbanization

In Le Droit à la Ville (1968), Lefebvre projects the urban trajectory of his day into the sci‐fi imaginary of Isaac Asimov's remarkable Foundation series, recognizing the germ of ‘Trantor’ in our midst, the planet of 40 billion inhabitants where urbanization has reached its absolute maximum; all 75 million square miles of Trantor's land surface are a single city. In La Révolution Urbaine (1970), Lefebvre had already begun hinting at a new reality, not only an urban society, but of planetary urbanization. Today, four decades on, Asimov's extraterrestrial universe seems closer to home than ever, and closer to Lefebvre's own terrestrial prognostications: planetary urbanization is creating a whole new spatial world (dis)order. But how shall we reclaim the shapeless, formless and boundless metropolis as a theoretical object and political object of the progressive struggle? If the arena of politics has no discernible form, what would be the form of these politics? What, exactly, are urban politics? This article tries to rethink theoretically the urban question and the question of urban politics in our era of planetary urbanization, working through the political role of the urban in the light of recent ‘Occupy’ mobilizations.