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Urban villages have role in development

By Fan Gang (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-22 11:39

For many years urban villages have been a controversial issue in the development of our cities. Some people, usually city managers, regard the existence of these collections of shabby and old houses among higher and modern buildings as a stain on the appearance of a modern city, and have called for their removal.

One reason they cite to support their argument is that these areas are usually inhabited by migrant workers and lower-income people, which they believe results in chaotic management and insecure conditions.

Is that true? Absolutely not. Why not take more care of these urban villages before they deteriorate to such bad situations as some people claim? Why haven't city management departments provided these villages with the necessary facilities and public services as they do to other administrative districts? Urbanization is essentially the process of farmers and lower-income people flowing into cities. The problem is that, in this process, many of our city authorities only provide communities of "native dwellers" with decent public services, while paying less attention to those inhabited by migrants or lower-income people.

Over the next few decades, large numbers of lower-income people are expected to enter a number of large cities and live in rundown urban villages or government-built low-rent housing. This will pose a huge challenge to city authorities in terms of how to ensure the orderly management of these ever-growing new settlements. But one thing is certain, difficulties that may arise in their management cannot be used as an excuse not to manage them.

It seems that we should lay down a set of standards for local officials on the management of this thorny issue, and their performance in this regard ought to be the most important factor when considering their promotion.

Because of the involvement of a series of issues such as laws, regulations and city management, urban villages should be dealt with in a creative manner. In doing this, coupled with system reforms and innovation, we can realize the multi-dimensional development of cities.

For instance, we should reform the current land system and put farmers' land under a unified city management model, if this land is to be included into the overall development program of a city.

Another reason for urban villages to be disliked by some people is their alleged ugly appearance, which is believed to be a stain on the modern urban landscape. But is this really the case?

These critics should take a look at some old residential communities in a number of modern European cities.

Similar to our urban villages, many of these areas usually have narrow streets lined with four or five-story buildings. But the difference is that thanks to careful preservation and reconstruction, many of these areas in European cities have now become popular tourist destinations.

Why can't we, given the similar mentality, preserve some of these urban villages as historic relics and develop them into places people want to visit by renovating key facilities such as sanitation, security and firefighting? There are good reasons to believe such renovated old houses can stand alongside modern urban buildings in harmony.

In fact, some old communities in developed countries once faced even worse situations than our urban villages. Even today we can still see some poorly equipped slums in cities in developed countries.

Urban villages can provide lower-income people, who account for a majority of the population in some cities, with more affordable housing. In Shenzhen, for instance, there are around 5 million people living in urban villages, half of the city's total population. Without this large army of lost-cost labor accommodated in low-cost housing, there would not be the sufficient manpower to drive the rapid development of the labor-intensive manufacturing and service industries in this booming southern city.

It is impractical for the government to offer sufficient accommodation to the hundreds of millions of migrant workers. Upon their arrival in a strange city, the first thing migrant workers seek is affordable housing. Poorly equipped but low-cost homes, usually in urban villages, are their most obvious choice. This is also the case with young graduates.

The good quality and cheap services many urban residents enjoy could not exist without the presence of large numbers of migrant workers in our cities. We should also let them take advantage of them.

Any rush to eliminate urban villages or old communities would surely slow down our urbanization process, in turn causing unemployment to rise.

Our cities remain in the early stages of urbanization and have a long way to go to reach the standards achieved in developed countries. As we press on with urban development, we should consider the large army of low-income migrant workers as an important component of our big urban family, and not regard them as aliens.

The author Fan Gang is director of the National Economic Research Institute, China Reform Foundation.