Gentrification and social sustainable development: a case study of Tianzifang in Shanghai

Abstract

The scale of urbanization in China during the past three decades has been unprecedent in human history. This huge urbanization process started after the Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms in 1978, turning point because China moved from a central-planned system to a market-oriented system. Although this market-oriented system had opened China’s doors to the world and brought huge foreign investment and consequently a great increase of the gross domestic profit, this rapid urbanization had led to many problems in environmental, economic and social matters. In particularly in social matters, this urban process has led to phenomenon called “gentrification”, namely the aggregation of urban and socio-cultural improvements of a certain area, before inhabited by low-income people and then acquired by high-income people, with the displacement of the formers. Gentrification in China mainly consist in housing redevelopment and mixed-use consumption landscape accompanying it, and the government, particularly the local governments have a central role in these urban redevelopment projects. But although displacement of formers residents, destruction of social capital, social networks, community and sense place usually occurred in gentrification process, a singular and isolated case study showed that had been possible to obtain a rehabilitation of a historic district without gentrification: the case study of Tianzifang in China.