Mechanisms Of Public Interest Representation In Guangzhou’s Neighborhood Regeneration Planning:Interaction Between Inherited Structures And Active Agencies

Multiple rounds of experimentation have focused on how to capture,represent,and materialize the public interest in urban planning,crystallizing various regulatory planning regimes in different historical and political-economic contexts.However,how to define the "public" and capture the public interest in urban planning remains problematic in both planning practice and democratic theory.In China,the growing awareness of a heterogeneous society has,again,foregrounded the issue with the ever-proliferating insurgent activities of the settler community,the participatory of the industries,and the knowledge bodies,on top of the(semi-)vertical decentralization of the land-and-planning sector itself.This study is supported by two central pillars-Dewey’s public interest theory and Giddens’s structuration theory.These two pillars are not separate pieces of material but rather the weft and the warp woven by institutional structures and community actions in collaborating to make decisions.Five core concepts are involved.The first major pillar of the framework draws insights into the public from the literature on democratic development and its application to planning.John Dewey’s philosophical reflection on "public" and its relations with the origins of the state provided a new way of thinking about the study of state-society relations.The "public interest",in this sense,is considered to be a community-based value shared among members of the public at various scales.Drawing upon Dewey’ s definition of the "public" as "spontaneous groups of citizens who share the indirect effects of a political action",this study further incorporates the concept of intersubjectivity into the more recent communicative turn of urban planning,which has benefited from neo-Marxist theorists ranging from Habermas and David Harvey to Patsy Healey.The second major pillar of the framework provides insights into the politics of scale through the lens of Giddens’s structuration theory.This study develops a theoretical framework to revisit how the mechanisms of public interest representation evolve through inherited structures and active agencies.Structuration refers to the process by which active agencies of renovated communities drive changes in inherited governance structures or regeneration policies and stimulate the reinstitutionalization of informal rules or local needs.On the one hand,the "inherited structure" is reflected in the institutionalization of the public interest,which will be examined in this study in terms of the evolution of the scales,norms,and regulatory systems of urban planning.On the other hand,"active agencies" is embodied in the collective actions of renovated communities.Combining these pillars with an in-depth empirical investigation of Guangzhou neighborhood regeneration practices,this study reveals the interactions between inherited structure and active agency by analyzing the changing relationships among key actors in different planning configurations,their perceptions of inherited notions of public interest,and their physical initiatives to participate in or resist specific urban regeneration projects.While John Dewey’s theory of representative democracy provides the fundamental philosophy for this study,Giddens’s structuration theory inspires the methodological framework for understanding scalar politics in the evolution of urban planning systems.Paradoxically,although Dewey envisions democratization by capturing the public’s genuine interest,he does not indicate a path to that goal.Similarly,while Giddens proposes a basic framework for analyzing structure-agency interaction,he does not suggest specific analytical methods.Moreover,Giddens’s praxis-centric perspective overemphasizes cognitive actors and quietly devalues the critical role of material practices in human society,which is crucial in the Chinese context.Therefore,this study applies Dewey’s theory to illustrate the composition and systemic evolution of the public interest in China and then uses a modified version of Giddens’s framework to empirically examine the driving forces and trajectories of change in the mechanisms of public interest representation that have evolved through interaction between institutional structures and community actions.Grounded in the context of China’s ongoing rapid transformation from property-led urban redevelopment to small-scale community-oriented regeneration,this study reexamines the changing role of urban planning between the market and the government in the context of this new communicative era and its different configurations in terms of conceptualizing,representing,and materializing the public interest.Regarding methodology,this study uses both quantitative methods,such as statistical analysis and structural equation modeling,and qualitative methods,such as participatory action research and in-depth interviews.The empirical research consists of three parts:1)panel data analysis,including policies of 32 provinces in China and 776 community renovation projects in Guangzhou;2)580 structured questionnaire surveys in 9 renovated communities in Guangzhou;and 3)in-depth comparative case studies of 3 typical cases in Guangzhou.The findings are threefold:First,the institutionalization of the public interest in China since 1949 is characterized by four features:pluralization of participatory subjects,communalization of scalar governance,networking of collective action,and routinization of informal rules.Theoretically,this study finds two scalar transformations embodied in representation mechanisms of the "public" in planning and two devolution processes of urban regeneration policymaking.In practice,this study finds three levels of representation of the public interest in China’s planning regime:the People’s Congresses system at the national scale,the planning committee system at the local scale,and the community planners system at the community scale.The results show that the trajectories of institutionalizing the public interest in planning share different origins,as in Western countries and the Chinese context.Second,the conceptualization of the public interest can be understood in four dimensions:spatial performance,economic efficiency,public participation,and collective consciousness.Three models of materializing the public interest in urban regeneration can be identified from the perspective of policymakers:a)physical upgrading led by local governments;b)collective benefits oriented toward market participation;and c)knowledge sharing based on the coordination of community and society.Empirically,the data derived from the structural equation analysis of 580 questionnaires provide a detailed picture of residents’ different perceptions of the public interest and the mechanisms that influence them.The conclusions corroborate the assumption of this study that people are more likely to be motivated by endogenous reflexive factors,such as the level of trust in the community,satisfaction with the renovation,and personal structural background.Third,based on the comparative analysis of three typical cases in Guangzhou,this study identifies three trajectories of community action when affected members of the public take action against planning interventions:a)insurgent activities through network coalition,b)rightful resistance through community mobilization,and c)community inspiration through a partnership of commons creation.In the first case(Enninglu,collective benefiting),local residents collaborate with third-party actors(local media,radicalism experts,etc.)to form a counterdiscourse coalition and facilitate discourse transformation through insurgent activities.In the second case(Dongcheng,physical upgrading),residents affected by a renovation project and the demolition of illegal construction are motivated and band together to participate in political negotiations as a whole.In the third case(Pantang,knowledge sharing),the community planner plays a more critical role in creating the commons to develop a collective consciousness among residents.This enhances residents’ neighborhood identity and their capability to participate in the planning process and other community public affairs.In summary,this study aims to uncover the evolutionary mechanisms of the public interest in urban regeneration policymaking and revisit the representative democratization process in China’s planning regime.The critical question is the role of coalitions of third-party actors(community planners,NGOs,and other social groups)and insurgent participants in changing the balance of power relations at the heart of inherited participatory or communicative forms of planning.On the one hand,this study takes an institutional perspective to examine how democratization is practiced in community-based regeneration through various planning configurations in China.On the other hand,it takes an action-centric view to examine people’s perceptions and actions in relation to different planning interventions.It investigates how the public affected by urban regeneration can facilitate collective self-emancipation through insurgent practices,community mobilization,and creating the commons to escape market and state constraints.Theoretically,this study complements Dewey’s public interest theory and Giddens’s structuration theory by combining these theories with field investigations in Guangzhou,China.In doing so,it attempts to provide an empirical analysis of Dewey’s vision of democratization.Practically,this study contributes to policy suggestions for developing more adaptive urban regeneration plans in the emerging era of collaboration by critically assessing contentious participatory practices in Guangzhou,China.