Objectives

1
Chinas Urban Housing and Land Use Introduction
 

• Objectives
• Provide an introductory account of the rapidly
  changing housing provision and consumption scenes
  in urban China and
• Discuss the associated patterns of residential
  differentiation and urban land use in Chinese
  cities since the launching of the reforms.

2
Organization of Lectures

• Any understanding of Chinas urban housing and
  land use today has to be built upon an
  understanding of how these patterns evolved over
  time.
• 1. The work unit system and housing provision in
  urban China in the pre-reform and early reform
  period

3

• 2. Elements of China housing reforms
• Comprehensive Development and Housing
  Commodification at the Production Level
• Re-Commodification of Urban Land and the Urban
  Land Development Process
• Selling of public sector housing and
  homeownership
• Conferment of Full Ownership Right and New Waves
  of Urban Restructuring

4
Work Units as Part of the Chinese State

• Work unit as an identity Most urban dwellers
  belonged to a work unit
• The work unit performed important social control
  functions, and
• Carry out a wide range of redistributive tasks
• Health care, children education, social security
  and retirement benefits. Housing one of the most
  important item for redistribution
• Locate jobs for the offspring of the workers
  Hereditary assignment of jobs not uncommon.

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• Work Unit as a Spatial Entity
• Production workshops, workers quarters, wet and
  dry markets selling daily necessities, canteens,
  kindergartens, schools, clinics, and, in a few
  cases, even a hospital, all enclosed within a
  wall
• Little spatial differentiation in land use
  between work unit compounds
• Minimal residential differentiation even within a
  given compound high-rank cadres and ordinary
  workers living close to each other

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• Little need for commuting traffic bicycle an
  adequate means of transport
• Most social interactions took place within the
  compound
• Compartmentalized cities in China both socially
  and spatially

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• Urban Spatial Form in Pre-Reform China
• An inner core of pre-1949 vintage
• Most buildings (housing included) built before
  1949
• Many shops and most former commercial buildings
  were converted to residence and production
  workshops
• But a recognizable downtown still present
• Buildings generally under-maintained
• Dull and dilapidated landscape

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• A ring of work unit compounds
• Rectangular blocks of three to four storey
  apartments
• Little variations in style
• Again generally under-maintained
• Dilapidated outlook even though stock was of more
  recent vintage
• Self-contained communities with little
  interactions among each other and with the former
  urban core

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Housing Provision in Work Units

• Substantial variations between work units
• Housing resource available to work unit a
  function of the kind of economic activities
  engaged
• High priority areas such as capital goods
  production (iron and steel, petrochemicals, etc.)
  received much more adequate resource, including
  resource channeled to housing production

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• Shortage of housing perennial, in light of
  priority given to production
• Per capita housing consumption 1952 4.5 m2
• Per capita housing consumption 1978 3.6 m2

12
Provision of work unit housing

• Public housing in the Chinese context, as work
  units are state organs and state enterprises
• Rent set by the State, often at level below
  maintenance cost
• Construction of work unit housing often a
  by-product of capital investment projects
• Funds for housing construction often squeezed to
  give way to investment in production expansion

13
Provision Variations

• Inter-work unit difference in housing provision
• Kind of economic activities engaged
• Priority development industries (capital goods)
  Vs low priority industries (consumption items)
• Position of the work unit in the administration
  hierarchy Central ministries Vs Local government
  bureaus

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Allocation criteria within a work unit

• Occupational Rank
• most important factor (despite presence of
  apparent equality in housing allocation, and
  cadres and workers residing in the same compound)
• Seniority in the work place
• considered important by most authors
• a recent study by Li fails to reveal a
  relationship
• Party Membership
• shown to be directly related to housing
  consumption (in addition to its effects on
  occupational rank

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• Housing needs as perceived by the management of
  the work unit
• Life-cycle factors
• Marriage
• Birth of children
• Presence of old age and retired persons in family
• Housing hardship
• Household Income generally of minor importance

16
The Municipal Housing Bureau

• Responsible for providing housing to those not
  taken care of by the work units
• Majority of buildings in inner city areas came
  under its jurisdiction in the 1950s
• During the Cultural Revolution all private rental
  housing was turned over to the State
• The housing bureau also built limited amount of
  public housing, but funds available was highly
  limited
• Rents again set at very low levels, unable to
  cover maintenance cost

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Housing allocation in the housing bureau sector

• Lis (2000) study on Beijing and Guangzhou
  reveals
• Occupational Rank and Work Unit characteristics
  apparently not important in the allocation of HB
  Housing
• Life Cycle also not significant, but in the
  Guangzhou sample regression coefficients indicate
  With Children gt 18 gt Without Children gt
  Unmarried

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Tenure Split in the Early Reform Period

• 1985 housing census
• 78 of the housing stock in cities in the
  jurisdiction of the work units
• 11 under control of municipal housing bureaux
• The balance, slightly more than 10, largely
  under owner occupation, a legacy of the
  pre-socialist era (Li, 1995, p. 332)