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Governability, Borders and Urban Citizenship



The project consists of two subprojects:


Subproject I: Borders and Governability

Background, Aims and General Structure

The structure of governance in the urban areas of the Pearl River Delta has been greatly affected by the rapid urbanisation of the last two decades and by the overhaul in a number of important administrative factors, including a substantial privatisation of housing provisions, a re-organisation of the traditional socialist community-level administration, but also changes in the social structure such as an increased mobility of the population and the urbanisation of large areas of the traditional rural hinterland. As a consequence governance has become more complex and has required local governments to deal with a much more stratified population and a newly emerging structure of interests. Our research asks whether spatial patterns visible in urban space reflect a conscious attempt to classify the population and make it “more governable” under these new conditions. We find that both formal and informal social and spatial dynamics, as well as a mix of different forms of governing (from self-government to private management, to social control, to paternalist governance) are at work to define the new urban spaces.
The key argument of our research evolves around the relationship of governance and space in our specific mega urban context. We claim that the subdivision of space and the targeted application of different governance modes are used as a tool to ensure the governability of the mega urban region in the Pearl River Delta.

Our overarching aims are fourfold:

Geographically, we distinguish different spatial levels. Most of our research so far was on the local level (micro level, neighbourhood level). However, similar patterns of spatial differentiation are also found on the meso level (development zones, townships) and macro level (cities, municipalities). In the current second phase, we gradually include these levels as well. We furthermore have until now concentrated on the case of Guangzhou as the core of the mega urban region, but are now broadening the focus to neighbouring cities within the Pearl River Delta.

Most importantly, we are proceeding along a sequence of objectives leading from the observation of intra-urban boundaries and spatial segmentation to a discussion of mega urban governability. This sequence of objectives stretches from Phase 1 (2007-2008) to Phase 2 (2009-2010) and prospectively Phase 3 (2011-2012):

KEY CONCEPTS

Governance, in our understanding, is not only what the government is doing, but the totality of political actions of all the parties involved.
A governance mode describes the relationships between the different actors and stakeholders (governing relations), the way decisions are taken (governing logic), the importance of key decision makers and the fundamental political objectives. Governance modes change over time, and they depend on the type of urban area, its history and administrative belonging.
Our concept of boundaries does not focus on national borders but pertains to the practice of inclusion, exclusion and spatial segmentation at different scales. This practice has a governance dimension, but is manifest also in physical, functional, social and mental ways. Our analysis integrates all five aspects of borders:

Aspect

 Indicator

Analysis approach

Governance

Governance modes

Stakeholders, informality, …

Physical

Appearance

Gatedness, urban form…

Functional

Permeability

Interaction, flows, networks …

Social

Socio-economic gap

Residential segregation, …

Mental / cultural

Psychological representation

Meaning of places, identities, …

Analysis

Our micro-level analysis focuses on living (= housing) neighbourhoods. We have identified five differently governed and in different ways bounded neighbourhood types. Since the proliferation of commodity housing (shangpin fang, 商品房) and the privatisation of work unit housing (danwei fang, 单位房) to reform housing (fanggai fang, 房改房) are the main trends in housing development in China, the comparison of these three tells us much to understand major changes in urban governance. With migrant workers making up a considerable proportion of the Chinese urbanites, urbanised villages (chengzhong cun, 城中村) and enterpriseprovided housing (yuangong sushe, 员工宿舍) represent significant – and significantly different governance approaches within the mega city.
Social diversity is one reason for the diversity of governance approaches, but in turn the segmentation of space and different inclusion in governance processes also leads to social segregation and to different paths to urban citizenship.
Our fieldwork is characterised by a combination of bottom-up and top-down perspectives and of qualitative and quantitative methods. We went into the above-mentioned types of neighbourhoods to conduct the following research:

As a result, we classified the neighbourhood types according to key characteristics of their governance as follows:


Neighbourhood type

Governance mode

Commodity housing

Ownership-based governance

Privatised housing

Administration-oriented governance

Socialist work unit housing

Welfare-style governance

Urbanised villages

Traditional-structure-led governance

Enterprise-provided housing

Paternalistic, employment-based governance

The relevance of this classification lies in the fact that the substantial privatization of the residential environment is leading to new flexible forms of governance that affect different social groups differently. Not only social groups have access to housing of remarkably different quality but also to variable opportunities to participate in the governance of the urban space, or in the management of their own neighbourhood.

Research Team

Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou: Australian National University, Canberra:

Publications Subproject I