The dynamics of peri-urbanization in the Pearl River Delta: Emerging land use patterns, urban villages and their linkages to global mechanisms
Final Report Abstract
Our investigations support the hypothesis that urban villages play an important role in the urbanization process of the Pearl River Delta. All the villages screened so far are an integral part of an urbanized economy, albeit on different levels. While some are involved in food production for 'urban' areas, others derive their revenues from real estate. The basic factor for the transformation of villages is collectively-owned land and land allocated to individual families. This is the most important asset in the hands of the villagers for catering to the demands of a) migrants and b) developers and investors. While the former are in need of cheap and well-located accommodation, the latter are looking for space for production. Urban villages in the Pearl River Delta play a unique role for development by bringing capital (from investors), land (their own asset) and cheap labor (millions of migrants) physically together. With great variation, all villages seem to play this role and financially benefit from it. Urban villages form a unique intermediary between the global (capital from Hong Kong) visa- vis the local (migrant workers, markets, infrastructure); the formal (land use planning, government control) with the informal (housing for migrants, social and information networks). There seem to be two basic variables underlying the process: the dynamics of changes are subject to a) spatial location and b) time. The location of villages in relation to major transportation infrastructure and urban centers determines the pressure on land use changes (through industrial uses). Time defines the degree to which urban villages have undergone the transformation process. This process leads to a differentiation (winners and losers) of spatial and social patterns in the Pearl River Delta. The systems observed seem to be in a permanent flux and subject to rapid changes. Important triggers of change are institutional (enforcement of formal land use planning, regulations and standards for production) or physical (such as the construction of large-scale infrastructure such as highways and airports). Urbanization processes in the Pearl River Delta through urban villages produce a unique , type of megacity region, wherein international capital serves as the engine and local assets (collective land villagers and migrants) serve as catalysts in a largely informal negotiation process. The result is a rapidly changing urban landscape defined by connectivity (space of flows) and location-related changes (space of place).
