Speaker
Description
Portraited as the ‘last mile’ and ‘basic unit’ of social governance in Chinese official discourses, the neighbourhood has recently gained unprecedented importance in Chinese cities. Active neighbourhood participation and multi-actor collaboration become the new norms of neighbourhood governance, characterised by the emergence of multiple new forms of governance led by different stakeholders. Traditional neighbourhood governance predominantly led by state actors and the semi-private governance in gated communities are widely being replaced by ‘neighbourhood co-governance’ in both discourses and practices. In the past decade, three major forms of neighbourhood co-governance have emerged: state-led co-creation, professional-led place-making, and enterprise-party co-development, which is led by the local state, societal actors, and market actors respectively. Not only the leading actors in each type of co-governance matter, but also the configuration of the governing structure, i.e., the roles of key stakeholders and their power relation, is essential to understanding the variegated forms of neighbourhood co-governance. This research aims to answer three sets of questions: What are the distinctive features and underlying mechanisms of these new norms and forms of neighbourhood governance? Do they represent a paradigm shift towards more participatory and inclusive neighbourhood governance? Can they achieve the alleged goals of neighbourhood satisfaction, cohesion, and participation?
To address these timely yet largely unexplored questions, this research employs the theoretical lens used in examining state-market-society relations in China, including the state project of crisis management (He et al., 2020), state infrastructural power (Cai and He, 2022), and state entrepreneurialism (Wu, 2018), to scrutinize the emerging norms and forms of neighbourhood governance. Case studies in Guangzhou illustrate how local governments enhance the inclusiveness and effectiveness of neighborhood governance by engaging various third-party actors, such as local enterprises, community planners and other urban professionals, and residents’ self-help groups (Zhao et al., 2024). Local governments are skillfully avoiding direct confrontation with residents by incorporating urban professionals and empowering social actors to promote co-production among multiscalar participants.
The rise of neighbourhood co-governance in Chinese cities can be conceptualized as an enactment of a distinctive entrepreneurial state project that serves the purpose of crisis management through consolidating state infrastructure power, delivering governance goals, and practicing entrepreneurial governance at the neighbourhood level (He and Cai, 2024). The state-led co-creation helps strengthen the legitimacy and power of local governments in neighbourhood governance by co-opting opinion leaders among residents, integrating resources across administrative boundaries, and seeking empowerment from higher-level governments. Neighbourhood garden-building helps local governments achieve their economic and social governance goals, by bridging governments’ needs for budget saving and residents’ demands for better quality of life. For enterprise-party co-development, the property management company and developers see co-governance as a good opportunity to maintain a good relationship with the local government, leverage more state investment, and sustain property prices, while the participation of residents is mainly limited to party members, elites, and retirees. This research advances our theoretical and empirical understanding of neighbourhood governance and inform urban planning in Chinese cities and beyond.
References
Cai, R. & He, S (2022) Governing homeowner associations in China’s gated communities: the extension of state infrastructural power and its uneven reach. Urban Geography 43, 523–545.
He, S. & Cai, R. (2024) Negotiating the exclusive right to public schools in China’s education-featured gated communities under multiscalar and multidirectional urban entrepreneurialism. Urban Studies. 61 (14), 2756-2777
He, S., Zhang, M., & Wei, Z. (2020). The state project of crisis management: China’s shantytown redevelopment schemes under state-led financialization. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(3), 632-653.
Wu, F. (2018a). Planning centrality, market instruments: Governing Chinese urban transformation under state entrepreneurialism. Urban Studies, 55(7), 1383–1399.
Zhao, N., He, S., Liu, Y., Rui, G., & Wang, S. (2024). Conflict-mediation, consensus-building, and co-production: Three models of co-governance in China’s neighborhood regeneration. Transactions in Planning and Urban Research, 3(4), 401-419.
| Keywords | neighbourhood co-governance; state-market-society relation; state project; state entrepreneurialism |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
