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| THE PROGRESS OF URBAN GENTRIFICATION STUDY AND ITS FUTURE |
| WU Qi-yan1,2, YIN Zu-xing1 |
1. School of Urban Construction and Management, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China;
2. School of Community & Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada |
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Abstract In western studies, gentrification is a social-spatial phenomenon accompanied with urban renewal in physical environment and social movement in social stratum de-synchronically. In Neil's perspective, it went further "as part of a much large shift in the political economy and culture of the late twentieth century" However, it is not just a simply mixing or aggregating process of social fluxion and (urban) place changes, meanwhile, gentrification reshapes the places from the immediate local landscape to community political economy structure.
Firstly, After comparing the diversity of gentrification in China and North America, the authors summarize the essential dynamic characteristics of gentrification.The characteristic of interweaving between time and space belonging to one traditional domain of Human Geography will facilitate our geographical peers to take an unassailable role in the future study.
Secondly,through reviewing literatures of gentrification both in North America and China from the perspective of the classical economics,urban culture and globalization approaches,the authors analyze the main hypothesis or approaches of gentrification and draw a conclusion that the key research areas of Chinese gentrification include:1)Recognition,dynamic mechanism, process and effect of gentrification;2) The function of the government in the dynamic mechanism;3) The future of the gentrification in China.
In this paper,the authors hypothesize that the Chinese urban gentrification, comparing with western literatures, has two new characteristics at least; a)Most of middle or big size cities have experienced countrywide first wave of gentrification based on bombast movement of beautiful-led, housing-led or many sloganlish motivation-led in public as their shell to sidestep public from the kernel of property-led, rent-gap-lead or a excess profits-led (Wu and Leaf's new draft) inner cities regeneration. However, the later second-wave of gentrification in China may occur in some metropolitans only. b) Gentrification in China also shows that the tradition phenomenon of social movement, the mass self-identification of bourgeois staggered the building environment booming transformation mixing with centralization of bourgeois, namely de-synchronization gentrification process would except Chinese synchronization gentrification genre, which we believe caused by the Maoist property socialization movement in 1950' and Post-Maoist reform policy since later 1970's.
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Received: 06 September 2007
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2008, Vol. 23 
