Social Exclusion Perspective Of Urban Renewal And Vulnerable Groups

Urban renewal, which can be divided into two parts: dismantling old houses and resettling residents, is one of the most principal development means in modern Chinese urban regions. But it also results in many problems, which bring tremendous influence to vulnerable groups, while changing landscapes of the cities. This is the origin of this study. This study conducts a detailed analysis on the practice of urban renewal in China, using the theory of social exclusion, which is popular in the field of social policy. The results of this research are useful for both urban renewal and the theory of social exclusion and policy study.The research questions of this study include: what are the influence to the vulnerable groups caused by the urban renewal? what are the micro and macro performances of these influence? what are the mechanisms of the behaviors of multi actors involving in the process, such as government, market and vulnerable groups themselves? How to evaluate the relationship between urban renewal and social exclusion from the eyes of policy science? The main content and results of this study are as follows:(1) Shanghai's urban renewal can be divided into three stages respectively: stage before the liberation, stage between 1950 and 1978, and stage after 1978. The different stages of urban renewal have different characteristics, depending on the prevailing institutions and socio-economic development.(2) This study analyzes the existing compensation policy and finds that there are five flaws in this policy. The first one is that public and commercial demolitions have been not clearly defined. The second one is the lack of institutionalized mechanism for public participation. The third one is the way of resettlement. The fourth one is unreasonable policy of mandatory demolition. And the last one is the lack of remedy policy.(3) This study takes JQ resettlement as an example, and finds that residents there are mainly elderly and much of them are laid-off workers. It also shows that they confront multi-dimensional social exclusion, such as labor market exclusion, lack of basic public services and mobility exclusion, and exclusion of social capital.(4)This study also focuses on the influence of urban renewal on the whole city. It concludes that there will be the danger of social spatial polarization by introducing the concept of social space. The poor are going to be resettled in a concentrated region, and then result in spatial mismatch.(5) This study explores the operating mechanism of multiple actors such as the urbangovernment, the local government, market forces and vulnerable groups themselves.It gets the specific reasons why vulnerable groups suffer social exclusionThe theory of social exclusion now is become the mainstream analysis paradigm inthe discipline of social policy because of its multi-dimensional, dynamic analysisadvantages. It's very useful to understand the complicated processes and then dig upthe mechanism of urban renewal.Using the perspective of social exclusion, we find that as a very important means offast development for Chinese urban regions, urban renewal has its own legitimacy andrationality, but it also results in some serious problems, especial for vulnerablegroups .The government should pay more attention to more equitable developmentpolicies, and try to enhance the capacity of disadvantaged groups and welfare, takinghousing conversion as an opportunity, and thus build a more harmonious society.