Speaker
Description
Chinese metropolises have concealed numerous conflicts during the era of rapid urbanization, highlighting an urgent necessity to resolve these issues in the context of new-type urbanization. This study focuses on a neighbourhood conflict over a road within Dingshan. Residents of a gated community consider this road to be their internal segment and intend to erect a gate to restrict access. Conversely, this road serves as a vital route for external residents, who regard it as public space, asserting their right to pass through. The conflict between the two sides has persisted for nearly three decades since the establishment of the gated community, triggering multiple group confrontations and even violent clashes.
After the mass production of urban space, a bottom-up regeneration process emerges during its utilization, with the dominant actors shifting from governments and real estate developers to urban residents. The spatial competition and neighbourhood conflict are intense forms of urban regeneration, in which the characteristics of space transcend mere commodities, as described by the theory of spatial production, and become symbolic representations of rights. Therefore, the ‘capital’ narrative used to explain spatial production proves inadequate in the context of spatial regeneration. This study employs Giddens's structuration theory to analyse the situation, pointing out that resources, as mediators of structure and agency, encompass various forms beyond capital, including knowledge and the body, and examines these dynamics within the neighbourhood conflict of Dingshan.
In the initial phase since the 1990s, after the construction of the road, the property rights remained ambiguous. However, residents from both within and outside the community reached an informal consensus that the road would be shared, permitting pedestrian and bicycle access, while without clarifying whether cars were allowed. Over the next decades, the increasing volume of vehicles and people contributed to the gradual accumulation of contradictions.
From 2017 to 2020, residents within the community took an initiative action to establish an owners committee, replaced the property management company with strict regulations, closed the gate, and reinforced the physical boundaries using communal funds. During this period, residents outside the community attempted to pass through by disputing and fighting, resulting in the intermittent opening and closing of the gate.
From 2020 to 2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government officially decided to close the community gate. In light of public health concerns, residents both inside and outside the community temporarily agreed to this measure. After the pandemic, the Municipal Planning Bureau clarified that the road was publicly owned. Consequently, the accessibility of the road led to a conflict between external residents advocating for social justice and internal residents defending their property rights, resulting in a violent confrontation. The incident prompted intervention from higher-level government authorities, who deployed armed police to calm the situation and stationed a police car at the gate, preventing its closure and car access. Subsequently, both sides have largely accepted this resolution imposed by the higher authorities, and the police car remains in place to this day.
Throughout the case, both groups of residents utilized various resources, including capital, knowledge, and the body resources, to engage in the conflict. This situation illuminated the tensions between national and local governance, as well as among different levels and branches of government. The government's actions, which involved the downward distribution of knowledge resources and the upward reclamation of physical (violent) resources, significantly influenced the conflict dynamics. Additionally, this case reveals issues such as the ambiguity in land rights confirmation and regulation, the evasion of institutional responsibility, and inadequate information release.
The materials and data for this study are derived from the author's ethnographic research conducted over the past three years.
| Keywords | Neighbourhood conflict; urban regeneration; space competition; structure, agency and resource |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
