Gentrification in Chinese Cities

This bookprovides an institutional interpretation of state-facilitated gentrification inChengdu,anemerging central city of China.Itgeneralizes the three aspects of institutional changes in the cultural, economic and social spheres that have thus far directed the operation of gentrification inthe transitional economy: the creative destruction of consumption spaces, the spatial production of excess, and the unequal redistribution of spatial resources to low-income residents.Theinteractions of state and society,are examined innavigating theinstitutional changesand formingthe Chinese distinctions ofgentrification. The author argues that these three aspects of institutional changes characterize gentrification in Chengdu as a transformative forceof developmentled by the state and capitalists andchampionedby middle-class consumers. This gentrification modeperiodicallycatalyzes newspaces andcollective cultures,which then necessitate the stimulation ofnew consumption behaviors andthe formation ofnew consumer classes,at the expense of the spatial demands for the even larger number of low-income residents. However, in the context of China's unique state-society relations, some low-income groups may alsoride the waveofsocial transformation.The author suggests thatthistype of gentrification integrates into not the essence of uneven geographical development in a capitalist society, but China's unique model of urbanization and development, which is often state-driven, innovative and even involuted so as to sustain continuousgrowth. Though the research is focused on urban China, this book also contributes to methodological issues on gentrification research on a global scale.Itis skeptical both of the structural explanation and of therevelation of unsorted differences; instead, it aims togenerate midrange regularities of gentrification in Chinese cities.Institutionalchange is treatedas anintermediarythat,on the one hand,responds to theglobaltrends and,on the other hand,adapts tolocal preconditions.Mixed methods, including statistical and spatial analysis, institutional analysis, and an extensive ethnographic study, are used to investigate gentrification from a structural perspective, a historical perspective, and as a grounded process within the locality.