"Processes of Residential Sorting by Education, Occupation and Migrant Status: The Beijing Case"--John Logan (Brown University) and Limei LI (East China Normal University)

Abstract
 
The spatial structure of metropolitan areas of China is being reorganized as a result of economic expansion and market reform. This study uses 2000 census data from Beijing to identify the main patterns and processes. It will include analysis of GIS maps at the neighborhood level showing the zones of concentration of residents by education, occupation, and migrant status. In addition, models will be estimated at the individual level to begin to examine the role of personal characteristics such as human capital, age, gender, and family composition, and migration in leading people to different kinds of neighborhoods (jiedao). The paper will demonstrate a novel method of estimating OLS regression models in this case despite the lack of geographic identifiers in the publicly available census microdata. The general approach is to create a composite correlation matrix to input into the regression program. Correlations among individual-level predictors are taken from the microdata. Correlations between these predictors and characteristics of neighborhoods (the dependent variables) are calculated from grouped data at the neighborhood level (the publicly available "township" data file). It is argued that in addition to the size and quality of housing that people live in, characteristics of their surrounding community are also essential elements in evaluating the operation of the housing market.

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"Understanding China's Urban Land Development"--George C. S. Lin

Abstract
 
China’s massive and sometimes wasteful land development has been widely attributed to the lack of a clear definition and effective protection of property rights as it gives no incentive for the efficient use of the land and instead leads to competition for and over-exploitation of the land under open-access.  This paper critically interrogates the conventional theory of neo-liberal economics against the actual practices of land property rights and land development in transitional China.  Contrary to the normal theoretical expectation, land property rights in both urban and rural China have seldom been pre-given from top down and have rather been initiated, negotiated, and produced from bottom up.  Land property rights have operated not so much as “a bundle of rights” with standardized and uniform legal assignments but more as a diverse set of local practices adaptable to various regional conditions. Chinese municipal and township governments have claimed and produced their land property rights politically and administratively in response to changes in the political economy. Chinese farmers have shown an “unexpected” preference over an equal access to land as the main source of subsistence rather than tenure security. The perceived cause-effect relationship between secured land tenure, efficient land use, and rational investment behavior has turned out to be more complicated than what is widely assumed. Land property rights and land development are better seen as social constructions that can never function in isolation of the political, cultural, and social conditions on which they are produced and practiced. The relationship between property rights definition and land development remains contingent upon the political, cultural, and social relations that characterize the economy and society at a particular time and space.

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"Housing stratification in China’s urban villages"--Shenjing He(Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Sun Yat-sen University)

Abstract
 
Possessing different land rights and distinct landscapes, and separated from the rest of the city by invisible institutional boundaries, China’s urban villages are peculiar enclaves for landless farmers, rural migrants and other urban residents in a period of rapid urbanisation. Although urban villages are well-known for their disorder and unruliness, they provide temporary livelihood for indigenous villagers and un-expensive shelters for migrants and other urban residents. Urban villages are predominantly perceived as typical homogeneous low-income neighbourhoods characterised by low quality and high density housing. In fact, housing differentiation starts to emerge among residents of urban villages who possess different quality and quantity of capital, rights/entitlements, skills and so on. This paper aims to understand housing differentiation and its dynamics in urban villages, based on a large scale household survey in 11 urban villages in six Chinese cities. Empirical data show evidences of housing differentiation within urban villages: indigenous villagers become a petty rentier class, rural migrants pay the highest rent while suffering from lowest housing conditions, and housing conditions of other urban residents are between the two groups. Linear regression results show that urban villages share similar dynamics of housing differentiation in wider urban spaces, i.e. a combination of institutional and market factors leads to the stratification of housing conditions. Meanwhile, the inflows and outflows of population within urban villages also result in the transfer and spread of housing differentiation into wider urban spaces, and form an important part of the process of urban
socio-spatial restructuring.

 
Key words: Land economics, land property rights, political economy, land use, social theory, China