Japanese cities in Chinese perspective: towards a contextual, regional approach to comparative urbanism

The paper uses an introduction to the comparative study of Japanese and Chinese cities to make a case for a regional approach to thinking about cities in East Asia. In so doing it argues for contextually sensitive comparative urbanism as a platform for a broader understanding of trends towards global convergence. It outlines three different types of comparative urbanism and sets out a basic framework for the study of urban change in the larger cities of China and Japan. Its central argument is that the close relationship between the state and capital in the two countries has conditioned the rapid and dynamic nature of urban change

Speaking gentrification in the languages of the Global East

This commentary sets out to make a claim for gentrification to be understood from the Global East. I argue that a regional approach to gentrification can nurture a contextually informed but theoretically connected comparative urbanism, contributing to the comparative urbanist project by providing an appropriate point of contact between local context and universalising theories. In the process, I attempt to partially destabilise the concept of gentrification and then re-centre it in the Global East. Any comparative exercise is not a straightforward process; on the contrary, it is fraught with epistemological, theoretical and methodological stumbling blocks – regions are slippery and often diverse; diversity can be hard to bottle and label along theoretical lines; methods work more smoothly in discrete settings. But it is an exercise worth undertaking; the regional is the middle stratum that allows the locally specific to speak to planetary trends, and planetary trends to find local purchase. In the pages that follow I map out a number of recognisable types of gentrification in East Asia. I then use these to transcend the region and cut across the Global North / Global South binary that bedevils so much theory-making. The aim, addressed specifically in the final section, is to use these claims for gentrification in the Global East to speak back to and, hopefully, enrich urban theory-making and contribute to discussion of what is becoming known as planetary gentrification (Lees et al., forthcoming)

Shifting land-based coalitions in Shanghai’s second hub

Hongqiao is one of China's largest ever urban development projects, and within Shanghai second only to Pudong. It is designed to kick-start growth in the western part of China's economic capital, just as Pudong did in the east. The project comprises a transport hub and a new central business district and involves the participation of an array of organizations, including government at various levels, specially created bodies, property developers and banks. The central argument of this paper is that these organizations formed what can best be conceived of as a government-led land-based urban growth coalition and that this coalition became the driving force behind the Hongqiao project. It further argues that, rather than being one monolithic coalition, this was a shifting constellation of corporate actors, forming informal subcoalitions with different but interlocking roles and functions. The paper concludes by arguing that land-based urban growth coalitions rely on participants benefitting from rising land and property values once land has been developed, but for this debt financing is required, and this comes with its own substantial problems. The concept of land-based urban growth coalition can be useful in helping to interpret urban change in China so long as the coalition is examined in some detail

When Neil Smith Met Pierre Bourdieu in Nanjing, China: Bringing Cultural Capital into Rent Gap Theory

In this paper, we expand rent-gap theory in conceptual and territorial terms. Hitherto, the theory has, as Neil Smith intended, been used in an economic sense; we argue here, borrowing ideas from Pierre Bourdieu, that in the competitive environment of Chinese education, a rent gap in cultural capital is created which can later be converted into economic capital. The process we identify is triggered by the purchase of an apartment in a catchment zone, crucial to obtaining entry into a prestigious ‘key’ school in most Chinese cities. This leads to apartments changing hands for high prices despite generally being old and dilapidated. The rent gap in cultural capital occurs when parents forego potential short-term gains to capitalize on the long-term benefits of a superior education. This is contrasted here with a somewhat more conventional scenario, where property developers exploit a rent gap on suburban apartments built in the catchment of branch ‘key’ schools

Jiaoyufication: When Gentrification Goes to School in the Chinese Inner City

Gentrification, or the class-based restructuring of cities, is a process that has accrued a considerable historical depth and a wide geographical compass. But despite the existence of what is otherwise an increasingly rich literature, little has been written about connections between schools and the middle class makeover of inner city districts. This paper addresses that lacuna. It does so in the specific context of the search by well-off middle class parents for places for their children in leading state schools in the inner city of Nanjing, one of China’s largest urban centres, and it examines a process that we call here jiaoyufication. Jiaoyufication involves the purchase of an apartment in the catchment zone of a leading elementary school at an inflated price. Gentrifying parents generally spend nine years (covering the period of elementary and junior middle schooling) in their apartment before selling it on to a new gentrifying family at a virtually guaranteed good price without even any need for refurbishment. Jiaoyufication is made possible as a result of the commodification of housing alongside the increasingly strict application of a catchment zone policy for school enrolment. We show in this paper how jiaoyufication has led to the displacement of an earlier generation of mainly working class residents. We argue that the result has been a shift from an education system based on hierarchy and connections to one based on territory and wealth, but at the same time a strangely atypical sclerosis in the physical structure of inner city neighbourhoods. We see this as a variant form of gentrification