SOCIALIZING SPACE: INTERLINKING INTERNAL MIGRATION, URBAN SPACE, AND URBAN PLANNING IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA Thesis submitted for the degree of “Doctor of Philosophy” by Dror Kochan Submitted to the Senate of the Hebrew University September/2013 SOCIALIZING SPACE: INTERLINKING INTERNAL MIGRATION, URBAN SPACE, AND URBAN PLANNING IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA Thesis submitted for the degree of “Doctor of Philosophy” by Dror Kochan Submitted to the Senate of the Hebrew University September/2013 This work was carried out under the supervision of Prof. Tovi Fenster Prof. Gideon Shelach SOCIALIZING SPACE: INTERLINKING INTERNAL MIGRATION, URBAN SPACE, AND URBAN PLANNING IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA "חיברות" המרחב: הגירה, מרחב עירוני, ותכנון עירוני בסין העכשווית PhD Thesis submitted by Dror Kochan Under the supervision of Prof. Tovi Fenster Prof. Gideon Shelach My dissertation addresses the ongoing transformation of Chinese society through a look at the processes linking migrant workers, urban space, and urban planning. I explore urban spaces that are associated with migration in China, such as urban villages and employer-supplied housing (ESH), and trace their roles in the creation of the urban narratives of migrants. Thus I am able to describe the construction of a new form of identity, which I term ‘spatial identity’. I contend that spatial identity plays a pivotal role in questions of social integration and urbanization, and requires more comprehensive study. For this reason, I opted to explore this type of identity, utilizing a multi-method research design, based not only on formal interviews, but also on walking interviews, cognitive maps drawings of different scales and photographic “re-narration” of migrants’ “own city”. The ensuing narratives highlight migrants’ everyday spatial practices and the urban conceptualizations through which they accept, contest, and/or resist socio-spatial policies and designs, as well as the exclusionist social power structure. While important in its own right, migrants’ spatial identity has to be explored in the context of local spatial development, planning, and urban policies. Therefore, in the final chapters of my work, I look at different discursive approaches, urban projects, and social policies that consider the spatial “existence” of migrants within the urban environment. I reflect on the relation between these different perspectives and core factors of migrants’ spatial identity and my own reading of the spatial environment. In this way, I aim to enrich the discussion of urban and social change in contemporary China with a better understanding of migrants’ urban (re)structuring, as it builds upon issues of mobility, multi-scaled urban views, and spatial everydayness. This approach can prove instrumental in re-orienting the boundaries of ongoing research, as it includes social and spatial interactions that have so far been marginalized. While my work bears on many crucial aspects of current Chinese society, it is also of theoretical importance. Urban space is recognized today as the corner stone of many public and professional debates that cover local as well as global phenomena. Restructuring urban space entails a wide range of disciplinary evolution, from architecture and urban planning, to sociology, economics, and political science. Since urbanization rates in China are estimated to grow from the current 50% to around 70% in the next 20 years, to a significant extent as the result of internal migration, it is imperative to better examine the urban prospects of migrants, which will play a crucial part in determining the future trajectories of urban development and policy. The study of these processes in China, where they occur on a large scale, can contribute to the in-depth exploration of their causes and consequences. My research thus has implications for some ongoing key debates about the future course and influence of migration on the changing nature of social policy and the ongoing urbanization process. For that reason, I examine in my dissertation the government’s role in implementing social policy and the conflict of social advocates of change (such as urban planners) with the prevalent neo-liberal, market- forces-based approach and current power structure. Tracing urban planners’ search for more socially meaningful urban planning, I examine how they are reevaluating their social intermediary role and their potential use of migrants’ spatial identity characteristics to adjust the current modernist system of urban planning in China. In this way, the interlinking of migrants, urban planning, and spatial change makes it possible to move beyond the existing studies of power structures, development coalitions, and politics of exclusion, towards a trans-disciplinary approach that is well-suited to conceptualizing the multiple layers of power, knowledge, belonging, citizenship, participation, and identity that make out the new urban form and space in contemporary China. The questions I address in this work are of importance to migrants, policy makers, urban planners, and scholars alike, and are becoming pertinent to a wide range of issues that make out the vanguard of research on urbanization processes in contemporary China. The need to socialize space therefore features in the study of local city policy and its outward projection as reflected in its spatial design, major urban projects, and social housing policies. It is also crucial to consider within the larger general frame of analysis regarding future prospects of informal urban settlements, social gaps and gentrification, central-local relations or the effects of different urban development patterns (i.e. the development of few mega-urban centers versus a larger number of smaller cities). TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 3 CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH FRAMEWORK .................................................................. 17 THE FOUNDATIONS: EPISTEMOLOGY, RESEARCH POPULATION, SELF-POSITIONING, AND CHOICE OF METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................................................................... 17 The Everyday ....................................................................................................................................... 20 Narrative Exploration .......................................................................................................................... 21 Agency-Structure Balancing ................................................................................................................ 22 Research Population ........................................................................................................................... 23 Self Positioning .................................................................................................................................... 25 QUALITATIVE METHODOLOGY AND MULTI-METHOD RESEARCH ............................................................................. 26 Cognitive Mapping .............................................................................................................................. 29 Semi-structured Interviews and ‘Walking Interviews’ ........................................................................ 36 City ‘Photo Tour’ ................................................................................................................................. 39 METHODOLOGY – SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ............................................................................................. 44 CHAPTER 2: INTERNAL MIGRATION AND URBAN SPACE: A SPATIAL CONCEPTUALIZATION ................... 46 URBAN VILLAGES .......................................................................................................................................... 51 Urban Village as Everyday Space ........................................................................................................ 59 Urban Villages’ Public Spaces .......................................................................................................................... 60 Urban Village’s Streets .................................................................................................................................... 64 Urban Village as Liminal Space............................................................................................................ 73 Urban Village as Enclave, Neighborhood or a Non-gated Gated Community .................................... 83 The Urban Village as a Non-Place ....................................................................................................... 92 EMPLOYER SUPPLIED HOUSING (ESH) ............................................................................................................... 97 Traditional Work-Unit (danwei) Spatial Features ............................................................................... 98 The Spatial Analysis of Contemporary ESH ....................................................................................... 100 POST SCRIPT: SPATIAL FORMULATIONS OF MIGRATION ...................................................................................... 106 CHAPTER 3: MIGRANTS’ URBAN NARRATIVES AND ‘SPATIAL IDENTITY’ .............................................. 110 THE QUESTION OF SCALE: INTEGRATING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE NARRATIVES OF MIGRATION