The urban-rural relationship in China is key to a sustainable global future. This book is particularly interested in peri-urbanization in China, the process by which fringe areas of cities develop. Recent institutional change has helped clarify property rights over collective land, facilitating peri-urban area development. Chapters in this book explore how rural industrialization has changed the landscape and rules about land use in peri-urban areas. It looks at the role of rural industrialization and provides a detailed exploration of peri-urbanization theory, policy, and its evolution in China. Leading discussions find out how fragmented bottom-up industrialization, urbanization, and lax governance have led to a series of social and environmental problems. The progress in redevelopment of peri-urban areas was initially slow due to the spatial lock-in effect. This book offers practical solutions to environmental issues and explains how policymakers have the potential to redevelop a future collaborative, inclusive, and sustainable approach to peri-urban areas. This in-depth approach to urbanization will be useful to academics in urban planning and governmental organizations. It will also be advantageous to NGOs and professionals involved in urban planning, public administration, as well as land-use work in China and other developing countries.

The urban-rural relationship in China is key to a sustainable global future. This book is particularly interested in peri-urbanization in China, the process by which fringe areas of cities develop. Recent institutional change has helped clarify property rights over collective land, facilitating peri-urban area development. Chapters in this book explore how rural industrialization has changed the landscape and rules about land use in peri-urban areas. It looks at the role of rural industrialization and provides a detailed exploration of peri-urbanization theory, policy, and its evolution in China. Leading discussions find out how fragmented bottom-up industrialization, urbanization, and lax governance have led to a series of social and environmental problems. The progress in redevelopment of peri-urban areas was initially slow due to the spatial lock-in effect. This book offers practical solutions to environmental issues and explains how policymakers have the potential to redevelop a future collaborative, inclusive, and sustainable approach to peri-urban areas. This in-depth approach to urbanization will be useful to academics in urban planning and governmental organizations. It will also be advantageous to NGOs and professionals involved in urban planning, public administration, as well as land-use work in China and other developing countries.

The trajectory and logic of urban development in post-Mao China have been shaped and defined by the contention between domestic and global capital, central and local state and social actors of different class status and endowment. This urban transformation process of historic proportion entails new rules for distribution and negotiation, novel perceptions of citizenship, as well as room for unprecedented spontaneity and creativity. Based on original research by leading experts, this book offers an updated and nuanced analysis of the new logic of urban governance and its implications.

China’s urbanization is one of the great earth-changing phenomena of recent times. The way in which China continues to urbanize will have a critical impact on the world economy, global climate change, international relations and a host of other critical issues. Understanding and responding to China’s urbanization is of paramount importance to everyone. This book represents a unique exploration of the demographic, spatial, economic and social aspects of China’s urban transformation. Based on years of fieldwork and data analysis from different types of cities and towns in every region of China, the authors present a detailed description of how China has urbanized since 1978 and an original theory about the way in which top-down and bottom-up policies have impacted urbanization. They describe China’s on-going urbanization process as a ‘double-dual’ transformation from a planned economy to a more market-oriented one and from a concern with the quantity to the quality of urbanization. In doing so, the authors provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date book on Chinese urbanization to date. This scholarly study will appeal to academics and practitioners, including professors and postgraduate students of urban studies, planning, geography, Asian studies, and other social science disciplines and professional fields concerned with cities and urban development. Professionals involved in international development, particularly in China and elsewhere in Asia, will be particularly interested in the book.

How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has vastly expanded its urbanization processes in an effort to reduce the inequalities between urban and rural areas. Centered on the mountainous region of Chongqing, which serves as an experimental site for the country’s new urban development policies, The End of the Village analyzes the radical expansion of urbanization and its consequences for China’s villagers. It reveals a fundamental rewriting of the nation’s social contract, as villages that once organized rural life and guaranteed rural livelihoods are replaced by an increasingly urbanized landscape dominated by state institutions. Throughout this comprehensive study of China’s “urban–rural coordination” policy, Nick R. Smith traces the diminishing autonomy of the country’s rural populations and their subordination to larger urban networks and shared administrative structures. Outside Chongqing’s urban centers, competing forces are at work in reshaping the social, political, and spatial organization of its villages. While municipal planners and policy makers seek to extend state power structures beyond the boundaries of the city, village leaders and inhabitants try to maintain control over their communities’ uncertain futures through strategies such as collectivization, shareholding, real estate development, and migration. As China seeks to rectify the development crises of previous decades through rapid urban growth, such drastic transformations threaten to displace existing ways of life for more than 600 million residents. Offering an unprecedented look at the country’s contentious shift in urban planning and policy, The End of the Village exposes the precarious future of rural life in China and suggests a critical reappraisal of how we think about urbanization.

•The focus of published narrative on the great Chinese urbanization wave was always going to sharpen _ away from the general fascination, assertions, theories and commentaries to specific issues and specific regions. Well here is a first class example

Peri-urban landscapes are some of the world’s most vulnerable areas. Although they are often thought of simply as land awaiting development, these landscapes retain important natural resources and make valuable contributions to agriculture, water use, biodiversity conservation, landscape preservation and human well-being. Billions of people use them and enjoy their natural values. Their continuing loss threatens to alter our relationships with nature and have a negative impact on the environment. The Future of the Fringe first explores the history of peri-urban areas, international peri-urban policy and practice, and related concepts. It analyses internationally relevant issues such as green belts and urban growth boundaries, regional policy, land supply and price, and the concepts of liveability, attractiveness, well-being and rural amenity. It then examines a range of Australian peri-urban issues, as an extended case study. The book argues for a precautionary approach so that we retain the greatest number of options to adapt during rapid and unprecedented change.