Urban Villages – Problems or Solutions ​

03/12/2015

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Ongoing discussions concerning "Chinese Urban Villages" or "Rural Villages in the City" (chengzhongcun) with a variety of interested professionals over the last few months led to BWPI recently hosting  a Salon to discuss the various issues at hand. The hope was to find some common ground and prospective solutions but the issues seem far from clear cut.   

Nantou urban village. photo by BWPI

WHAT ARE URBAN VILLAGES?

Once rural collectives, Urban Villages have become swallowed by ever-expanding city development, with increasing flows of migrants looking for work in labour intensive industries and the service sector. They are generally characterised by three types:-  densely developed villages situated in expanded  city centres that do not have any agricultural land; those that still have some land available but are already in suburban areas and growing rapidly; and those on a city outskirts still having a large amount of surrounding land. 

Those villages located at the heart of the cities, which are the main focus of attention, have an important function in Chinese urbanisation in acting as a first point of arrival for migrant labour. Low cost accommodation and an instant network of social connections make them an obvious draw to newcomers. Today, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are supposedly home to 139 and 241 ‘chengzhongcun’ respectively according to many articles and in Shenzhen approximately half the population of 10 million people live in the ‘chengzhongcun’. The villages therefore provide a hugely important role in affordable housing and as a transient community focus.
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Electric cables are exposed overhead. photo by BWPI

THE PROBLEMS

Buildings often lack sufficient sunlight and ventilation. They are generally unsafe because of being poorly built and are crowded. Although electricity is available everywhere, cables are usually connected on buildings instead of passing in underground cable pipes. Almost no public space is provided and roads waterlog due to excessive rainwater and sewage. Also, very few villages benefit from sewers, trash bins or any collection system. Most importantly, the risk of widespread fire is always high given the narrowness of streets and irregular electrical installation. The density of construction and the narrow width of streets often requires streetlights of be kept on for 24 hours. 

Most of these points seem to reflect the characteristics of “slum” dwellings however it is the fact that they fall outside the limits of building regulation, zoning laws and land tenure that is critical. They are generally highly vibrant places due to their mixed-use organisation. Indeed, ground floors on main passages are often used day and night for commercial activity, with services provided, goods exchanged and food sold. This is in stark contrast to newly developed city streets where every commute is done by car and where commercial streets are replaced by malls leading to sterile urban spaces. The urban village enclaves have conserved the human-scale considered essential to vibrant cities. Streets that cannot be accessed by cars results in a pedestrian-friendly environment. The absence of regulation allows for a certain amount of spontaneity that cannot be found in the planned modern city. The fact that residents have water connections and an electricity grid makes upgrading much easier than in slums that are not equipped with utilities. The ‘chengzhongcun’ have given an opportunity to all migrants who would otherwise be homeless. It is therefore thanks to their ‘informality’ that the people can have a decent life. 
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Street life in Nantou urban village. photo by BWPI

ORIGINAL VILLAGERS

Both the endemic villagers and rural migrants have experienced a relatively recent shift of condition from rural to urban. The villagers have become landlords however and sit atop the social pyramid of village life, having also potentially managed to receive significant sums from the sale of their agricultural land.  They live comfortably from the monthly rents they charge without the need for other work as well as having a share in the collective village assets.

Villagers are however responsible for providing infrastructure to the villages but are often reluctant to invest due to the uncertainty of the future. They don’t see long term improvements as a viable option which results in a lack of quality investment in infrastructure and facilities. As landlords, with higher aspirations, they rarely live within the villages themselves but rather function in a closed and separate environment which excludes outsiders, whether they are inhabitants of other parts of town or migrants.

New migrants in Nantou urban village. photo by BWPI

MIGRANTS

Typically migrants outnumber original villagers. As they don’t have a local “hukou” they are excluded from government benefits and are pushed into developing survival strategies such as self-organised employment, housing and education based on reciprocity and market exchange. Even when migrants do obtain a hukou, their roots always betray them. They are stigmatized as filthy, burglars, drug users or even murderers by people living outside the village boundaries.

Access to facilities such as a shower, kitchen and air conditioner are a factor of great satisfaction to migrants, often being an improvement on their previous rural conditions. However these facilities do not compensate for the loss of home community and sense of belonging.  Migrants are not considered as valuable members of the village community. 
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Traditional housing in Huanggang urban village, Shenzhen 2011 © John Joseph Burns

Handshake buildings in Huanggang urban village. photo by Flicker

DEVELOPMENT MODELS

​There have been numerous redevelopments of urban villages in the last decades. Typical examples have been the wholesale redevelopment of villages whereby the “stakeholders” are able to partner with government and / or developers and obtain property and ownership rights within the new development or Ownership Company. Different economic models have been applied however the motivations are always in terms of fully realising land values for both villagers and developers whilst government consider standardised and gentrifying redevelopment as a city improvement.

Some redevelopments, such as Huanggang in Shenzhen, which was one of the first to organise itself into an urban administrative structure, have capitalised incredibly from their positioning. In 1992, Shenzhen let its villages set up their own village joint-stock companies. In 1994, villages were moved from rural to urban land classification and therefore became administered by the government. The Huanggang joint-stock company, set up in 1992 with a fund of 200 million yuan is today worth over six billion yuan. [2] The village company owns two large hotels, a department store, office buildings, restaurants, rental properties. In 2009, the company erected its first skyscraper the ‘Huanggang Business Centre’: a sixty-two floor office building in the centre of Shenzhen.

Such gentrification sees the complete loss of large scale affordable migrant housing which has to move elsewhere and put pressure on other villages.  The biggest challenge emerging is the recogni­tion of migrants as stakeholders in the negotiations. They are still the main losers while villagers gain further.

It can be argued that redevelopment pro­jects for informal settlements around the world have been most successful when conducted by three categories of stakeholder - the state, the market and the public.[3] Migrants need to have a bigger role with those who have been living in ‘chengzhongcun’ for several years being allowed to take part in planning processes.

Dharavi, a large “slum” area in the centre of Mumbai, India, gives a parallel example of approaches to redevelopment. Under the government-led Dharavi Redevelopment Project, developers will provide the people living there who are able to prove residency since 2000, a new, 300 sq ft house for free. In return, authorities have allowed the builders to go higher (increasing the floor space index from 1.33 to 4), thereby concentrating residents into tower blocks and freeing up space for luxury high rises that will reap huge returns. The plan has created a storm of controversy.[4] The clash of opinions on Dharavi’s future triggered a decade-long stalemate culminating in last year in Mumbai’s Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI), an independent organisation advocating for more equitable development in its home city, launching an international competition to solicit the best ideas for this endless issue. “How would residents envision their future if they had their rights?” The rights being denied to them, argued the competition winners are “the right to entitlement”, “the right to participate” and “the right to livelihood”. Their first suggestion is to eliminate the one profiteering commodity that has skewed all visions of Dharavi’s future: the land itself.

Inspired by Gandhi’s notion of land as a community inheritance, the group proposed that current landowners in Dharavi – the biggest of which is the government – release all ownership rights to a Dharavi Community Land Trust. The idea shows promise: one of the major hindrances to redevelopment has been the complexities of land ownership. This trust would be a non-profit corporation, governed by former landowners, community members and neighbourhood associations. Its first task would be to understand the needs of each of the existing 156 neighbourhoods, before developing accordingly. The idea shows promise: one of the major hindrances to redevelopment has been the complexities of land ownership, from various government agencies to private owners. The trust might solve that problem in a stroke.

Shui Wei Village Shenzhen 2011 © John Joseph Burns

THE FUTURE

There still seems little doubt that an incremental approach to redevelopment can be a more sustainable solution in solving the challenges of urban villages, where properties and land reserved for development both inside and on the periphery needs to be developed gradually and provide better quality affordable housing. Affordable housing must be integrated to the centre of cities since the number of migrants is constantly increasing and will continue to do so under projected urbanisation goals. A lot of projects have shown that infrastructure and provision of facilities and services need to be improved rather than demolished and reconstructed when pos­sible. This is the most low-cost option and has been proven the most successful at every level worldwide; evolution rather than revolution. 

Quite simply, urban villages need to be considered as both an essential and  integral part of the city, with their own spatial and cultural characteristics and histo­ry and their environments gradually improved. Instead of drawing boundaries between villages and the rest of the city, connections should be developed, edges blurred. Indeed, a vision at the district level taking into consideration relationships between urban elements such as roads, traffic nodes, industrial and commercial corridors and the villages should be a basic task. Development interventions, increasing quality, density and diversity should be balanced with extractions, creating open space, fire access and light pockets.  If such spatial connections are implemented, ‘chengzhongcun’ would also na­turally be more connected to the city socially and economically. It is only that way that all inhabitants will be able to develop a feeling of belonging to their neighborhood and to the city as a whole.

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Why are Urban Villages Different?

Chengzhongcun exist because of the loophole found in the Chinese Land Administration Law (CLAL). Art. 8 which states firstly that:

“Land in the urban areas of city shall be owned by the State.”

(So called property ownership in a Chinese city essentially entails long-term leases of up to 70 years) and secondly that

“Land in rural and suburban areas shall be owned by peasants’ collectives, except for those portions which belong to the State as provided for by law; house sites and private crops of cropland and hilly land shall also be owned by peasants’ collectives.”[1]
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Agricultural land prepared for development. photo by BWPI

Expansion land in suburban village. photo by BWPI

New migrant housing encroaching to agricultural land. photo by BWPI

Villagers ‘illegally’ constructed in villages to respond to an ever growing demand from migrants for low-cost housing. Continuous migration brought pressure on the villages to densify to their maximum capacity. Originally, houses in agricultural villages would be of 1 to 3 floors tall but after densification they often reach 5 to 8 floors but without elevators are rarely higher. To maximise floor area, the upper levels are often cantilevered which results in buildings almost touching each other and covering the pathways that once were the  village’s streets. These constructions so close to each other are referred to as ‘handshake buildings’ (woshoulou) or ‘kissing buildings’ (louwenlou).
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Reference:

​[1] A Tale Of ‘Chengzhongcun’ In The Pearl River Delta. Marie Sagnières (ENAC-SAR). Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, 2014-2015


[2] Wang, Ya Ping, Yanglin Wang, and Jiansheng Wu. 2009. Urbanization and Informal Development in China: Urban Villages in Shenzhen. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,33(4):957–73.

[3] (UN-Ha­bitat 2003

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/18/best-ideas-redevelop-dharavi-slum-developers-india

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