Urban Regeneration And Socio-spatial Transformation

As one of the basic pattern of transformation of contemporary urban social structure,urban regeneration has become the common practice of cities worldwide and the important power force in shaping Chinese urban socio-space.However,as Chinese urban regeneration is launched in the complex context of social and economic transformation and the highly "compressed" spatio-temporal background,it involves mass changes and reconstruction of urban physical space and adjustment of urban social relations,as well as redistribution of urban spatial rights.Therefore,it has triggered a lot of social problems,constituting the focal point of social contradictions and spatial conflicts during the period of rapid urbanization in China.On the perspective of "socio-space",this study takes the urban regeneration process of the core area of "Southern Old City" in Nanjing as an typical case,putting the vibrant urban regeneration process under the analyzing category of "production of space",in order to discover the mechanism of urban socio-spatial transformation and analyze issues of "spatial injustice".Thereby,this study focus on the production of space during urban regeneration nowadays so as to capture the structural framework of Chinese urban socio-spatial transformation and achieve the localization of urban sociology.This study points out that the urban regeneration of the core area of "Southern Old City" in Nanjing involves not only the socio-spatial transformation of inner city,but also the reconstruction of living space of resettled residents.For the former,this study indicates that the traditional socio-spatial feature of the core area of "Southern Old City" is "inner-city neighborhood communities",while it has become the"culture consumption space" geared to the needs of tourists and consumers with transformation of subjects in the space,site culture,spatial function and form.For the latter,this study shows that during the process of urban regeneration,a large number of residents living in the core area of "Southern Old City" are forced to resettle of "centrality" to "marginality" with the policy of removal and relocation.However,the new living space is a marginal one because of marginal location,disadvantaged community,poor residents,generating difficulties for resettled residents in life reconstruction.Besides,a systematic examination of urban regeneration in Nanjing is carried out in this study in order to putting the urban regeneration of the core area of "Southern Old City" in the concrete social,political,economic,cultural context so as to better understand the features of the socio-spatial transformation.Based on analysis above,this study regards the the urban regeneration of the core area of "Southern Old City" as a field of production of space,existing among which the deep interaction of social and spatial process.Therefore,this study discovers the socio-spatial transformation through the strategy and mechanism of production of space.For the former,this study states that local culture has become a strategy in this urban regeneration process and culturalize and consumerize the inner-city space through "consumption of space" and "consumption in the space",resulting in reproduction of social relations in the space.For the latter,this study regard local government,developer,local residents,local cultural elites as the interest groups in the field of production of space,discussing mainly the interactions between different groups in the production of space and pointing there has been both bottom-up and top-down approaches in the production of space.The production of space is the result caused by diverse forces while the "Urban Growth Coalition" co-structured by local government and developers plays the dominant role.This study tries to understand the socio-spatial transformation during the urban regeneration featured by replacement of spatial function and local residents through the perspective of "socio-space" and reflect on the "right to the city" of urban residents,the role of culture in urban historic areas under regeneration,the spatial rights of resettled residents and so on.Therefore,the paper argues that every urban citizen should have right to the production of space and spatial justice should be an internal subject of urbanization,which is not only the obligation of urban managers,but also the responsibility of urban researchers.