Where ‘City’ Meets ‘Village’: Contesting Public Spaces during Shenzhen’s Urban Renewal

Abstract

The urban villages of China exist as exceptional enclaves of property rights within sprawling Chinese cities. This chapter argues that the success of Shenzhen relies on contrasting rules of government and zoning within the urban villages that provided housing and other services for the massive floating population to fuel its economy. The author argues that Shenzhen, examined as China’s accidental invention toward a radical hybrid urban structure, could serve as a conceptual model for sustainable urban development in the Greater Pearl River Delta region. At the same time, demonizing urban villages and not recognizing Shenzhen’s history would lead to a missed opportunity to learn from such a sweeping, although unplanned, urban experimentation at a massive scale.