Building stock provides favorable material and welfare support to the urbanization process, but also triggers significant resource extraction and carbon emissions. Spatial explicit stock studies have ...focused mainly on developed areas and mature cities, with less attention paid to peri-urban areas. In terms of carbon emission, inconsistent system boundary selection and lack of building life cycle analysis limit the accuracy and comparability of results. Moreover, the absence of spatial distribution of emissions undermines support to regional carbon reduction initiatives. In this study, the Yangtze River Delta Integration Demonstration Area (YRDA), which is considered as a typical peri-urban area in China, was selected to study the spatiotemporal pattern of material flows and stocks at the residential community scale since the reform of the housing system in 1998, and to analyze spatiotemporal dynamics of carbon emissions over the life cycle of buildings. The results show that material inputs in peri-urban areas have experienced a fluctuating increase, with a gradual decline after 2016 as housing policies were tightened, and have a lower residential stock intensity than city centers. Residential carbon emissions also fluctuate while trending upwards, with operation accounting for the highest share of emissions, followed by building material production, with demolition now causing a rapid growth in emissions. Material stocks and residential carbon emissions display significant spatial heterogeneity, and a new concentration area has formed at the intersection of the three administrative districts that of YRDA. The study underscores the influence of economic growth and housing policy on the spatiotemporal pattern of building stocks, flows and carbon emissions, offering insights for cross-boundary ecosystem governance and regional circular economy development.
•Building stock and flow are influenced by both economic growth and housing policy.•Building stock intensity is lower in peri-urban area than that in downtown area.•Carbon emission from material production is second only to that in operation phase.•Carbon emission in demolition increases quickly.•Building flow, stock and carbon emission display significant spatial heterogeneity.
Chinese cities have changed from an egalitarian work unit based residential system toward a diversified housing estate-based neighborhood system under market-oriented reform and housing ...commercialization. It is important to understand the dynamics of residential mobility and the emerging pattern of the diversified new urban residential neighborhoods in Chinese cities. In this study, we examined the heterogeneity of intra-city residential mobility that resulted from diversity in households' demographics and variety in housing and neighborhood features after China's urban housing reform. The analysis and discussion are based on data from a face-to-face household questionnaire survey conducted in Tianjin. Using the K-Prototype clustering method we identify eight interesting patterns of residential mobility, which vary in households' social demographics, change of housing size and value, residential location choice, etc. The heterogeneity of residential mobility reveals the process of residential diversification and education induced gentrification. Economic status is an important factor in explaining residential diversification, and variation of public and commercial resources attached to places or housing is a key subjective driver for relocation. Heterogeneous intra-city residential mobility is changing urban residential neighborhoods.
•We address the questions: who have moved to where for what reasons.•Residential mobility becomes heterogeneous after 20 years of housing reform.•Eight types of residential mobility were identified using survey data.•Children's better schooling is emerging as a driver of young parents' relocation.•Heterogeneous residential mobility may result in residential segregation.
Although China has witnessed remarkable increase in housing wealth and total household wealth in recent decades in both urban and rural areas, the housing inequality has grown significantly and ...urban-rural disparity remains substantial. While previous research has studied urban and rural housing separately, the overall pattern of housing inequality in China remains unexplored. Furthermore, it remains unclear how urban–rural housing inequality contributes to the widening urban–rural wealth gap. With the process of urbanization and new reforms in rural land policy, the housing markets of urban and rural areas are increasingly integrated. Therefore, a holistic understanding of housing inequality is needed. Analyzing data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this study first finds that urban–rural inequality is a non-negligible component of the overall housing wealth inequality and that the housing wealth inequality in rural China is higher than that in urban China. Secondly, the relatively higher marketization of housing in urban China helps urban households accelerate their wealth accumulation through higher capital gains, thus widening the household wealth gap between urban and rural areas. These findings have important policy implications for further housing reforms as well as for urban–rural integration.
•This study explores the urban–rural housing inequality in China.•Urban–rural housing inequality affects overall housing inequality.•Rural housing inequality is greater than urban and affects household wealth gap.•Housing capital gains accelerate urban wealth accumulation and widen this gap.•Rural housing property registration system and appropriate trading rules are needed.
This empirical study examines the impact of the jobs-housing balance on individual commuting time in Beijing in the period of transformation of the Chinese economy and society. The results of the ...analysis show that the jobs-housing balance has a statistically significant association with a worker’s commuting time when the factors of transport accessibility, population density and worker’s socioeconomic characteristics are controlled. The higher the jobs-housing balance, the shorter the worker’s commuting time. The finding suggests that the jobs-housing balance still has significant implications for commuting time, although the recent market-oriented reforms in housing are changing the jobs-housing balance in the
danwei system that prevailed in the socialist era. As the housing markets are imperfect, with strong government intervention in Beijing, the finding implies that the co-location hypothesis – which believes development management would create ‘barriers’ to a jobs-housing balance and increase commuting time – needs to be rethought before it can be generalized and applied to China’s cities. The results of the analysis also show that the workers living in
danwei housing still have shorter commuting time. The finding indicates that the housing marketization is likely to induce a local jobs-housing imbalance and thereby increase commuting time. In this sense, a deterioration in the jobs-housing imbalance and increased commuting time in Beijing may owe much to the adoption of market-based housing supply.
Due to spatial heterogeneity worldwide, results from studies examining the effect of residential self-selection on travel behavior vary substantially. As a result of housing reform, the unique ...housing allocation system in China is a prime example of a context where the self-selection effect may conflict with international knowledge. Using a sample of 3836 residents, whom are living in Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) and non-TOD neighborhoods in Shanghai, this study untangles the effects that the built environment and residential self-selection have on travel behavior, in the context of diversified housing types in urban China. Specifically, this paper employs propensity score matching (PSM) to quantitate the relative importance of the built environment itself, verses residential self-selection, in influencing travel behavior for each of the housing types. The results show that the residential self-selection effect in the four types of housing (work-unit, commodity, public, and replacement) accounts for 15.2%, 30.7%, 18.5%, and 5.9% of the total impact on vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT), respectively. These findings expand the international database of point estimates in the relative contribution of self-selection toward the impact on travel behavior across global contexts, providing a comprehensive framework for similar studies on self-selection in other parts of the world.
•Different types of housing in urban China hold different magnitudes of the residential self-selection effect.•Self-selection effect in the four housing accounts for 15.2%, 30.7%, 18.5%, and 5.9% of the total impact, respectively.•Policies on land-use should respond accordingly to the differences in self-selection effect across the housing types.
The welfare equalization effect of China's housing reform is examined in this study using data from the China Urban Household Survey (CUHS) between 2002 and 2009. Low-income households who had access ...to housing reform homes (HRH) profited from the reform more than other low-income households, even though public housing was privatized at a reduced price due to quality restrictions and reselling constraints. We set up a model to demonstrate the mechanism, estimate household housing consumption, and analyze the impact of policy on that consumption. We find that the housing reform significantly increased the rate of homeownership in urban China, that the distribution of public housing and the privatization premium was comparatively equal, and that purchasing HRH significantly increased housing consumption. However, this effect also significantly decreased as household income increased. We refer to this welfare effect as bounded equalization. Additional housing policies should be developed to comprehensively offer low-income families affordable housing that meets their needs.
Within three decades, the urban housing reform in China has changed access to housing from a system of socialist administrative allocation to that of more market-dominated housing development and ...consumption. Researchers have studied the socioeconomic and spatial consequences of these profound transformations. This review focuses on China’s housing inequality literature in relation to the changing origins, spatial patterns, and recent policy responses. The article reveals the unique features of China’s transitional economy along with massive urbanization, in which housing inequalities are rooted in socialism and strengthened by institutional changes of a state-led market economy.
The 1994–1998 housing reform in China allowed state employees to buy their rented public houses at considerably subsidized prices. By exploiting housing reform as an exogenous change in homeownership ...and employing a differences-in-differences framework, this paper examines the effect of housing reform on labor market participation. Using the data from China Health and Nutrition Survey, we find that individuals who are affected by the housing reform are 15.1 percentage points less likely to participate in labor market after controlling for observables. We further find that married women are 18.9 percentage points more likely to drop out of labor market after the housing reform, while their male counterparts are only 10.0 percentage points less likely to participate in labor market after the reform. We also explore mechanisms through which the housing reform may affect married women more greatly. Family division of labor hypothesis suggests that, in an efficient family husband should act as the “breadwinners” and wife be a caregiver and responsible for raising the family. We test this hypothesis and find strong evidence that married women in fact spend more time in family chores after the housing reform. Our findings are robust to alternative estimations and functional misspecifications.
Housing reform in socialist China has incurred considerable restructuring and transformation of urban space and society. Yet its specific socio-spatial outcomes have not been fully investigated from ...the perspective of housing type at the meso- and micro-levels. This study attempts to fill the gap by examining the nature and magnitude of the consequences of housing reform and the corresponding effects on mobility. Specifically, based on census data and a mobility survey, this paper combines statistical breakdowns and structural equation modeling to capture the socio-spatial differentiation of urban structure resulting from housing reform and its influences on individual vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and transportation walking. The results reveal that: (1) different types of housing tend to feature internally homogeneous populations in terms of socio-economic composition and socio-psychological condition, with pronounced social stratification; (2) residents in different types of housing display dramatically different travel styles, with substantial mobility inequities; (3) social differentiation appears to have spatial determinants; in particular spatial segregation contributes to increasing social exclusion; (4) the effects of spatial and social characteristics on mobility are led by housing type; and (5) individual mobility patterns are shaped by the joint influences of spatial and social dimensions of housing differentiation. The findings contribute to further understanding of socio-spatial differentiation in countries with a transitional housing market, suggesting that the design of land-use policies should recognize their social effects and that urban mobility planning practices should deliver sustainability that serves a diverse population, including in particular disadvantaged groups in public and replacement housing. This study serves as a mirror to observe the urban transition compared to other political economies and adds additional richness and diversity to the theoretical debates on the issue of socio-spatial differentiation and empirical evidence on residential and mobility inequities across global contexts.
•Housing types feature pronounced stratification in socio-economic composition and socio-psychological condition.•Housing types display conspicuous spatial segregation and social exclusion.•Residents in different housing types suffer substantial mobility inequities.•Spatial segregation significantly contributes to increasing social exclusion.•Individual mobility patterns are shaped by joint effects of socio-spatial configuration determined by housing type.
In the early 1900s, Washington, D.C. contained many alleys in the interior of blocks inhabited by impoverished Black residents. Elite reformers engaged in an aggressive campaign to eliminate alleys, ...on the grounds of their purported unsanitary environment and high disease prevalence. In this paper, I combine quantitative, qualitative, and spatial sources to explore new perspectives on segregation, public health, and the racialized efforts of housing reformers during this period. I find that reformers overstated the horrors of conditions in alleys and their effects on residents’ health: poorer health among alley residents was in large part due to Black residents’ marginalization wherever they might live. Alleys’ status as racialized space, coupled with progressive paternalistic racism, facilitated the discursive construction of alleys as pathological “breeding grounds of disease.” Further, my findings shed new light on micro-configurations of segregation within racially mixed neighborhoods, as well as the social experience and meaning of such configurations. Far from indicating harmonious coexistence, the proximity of such alleys to white homes and institutions spurred elite Washingtonians’ self-interested fear of disease spreading beyond the alleys. Thus, this pattern of segregation helps explain the zeal of the campaign to eradicate alleys: as a means of achieving separation from undesired Black neighbors whom white reformers associated with contagion.
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