Towards sustainable urban transition: A critical review of strategies and policies of urban village renewal in Shenzhen, China

Urban villages are typical informal settlements in Chinese cities where rural villages were gradually surrounded by urban built environments during urbanisation. In the era of urban renewal, these “urban enclaves” have been systematically demolished due to their “chaotic” building layouts and “backward” appearance. Existing policies related to the redevelopment of urban villages mainly follow a “demolish-rebuild” orientation, while lacking sufficient consideration of the mechanisms behind their environmental aspects and performances. In the long run, such a direction of urban redevelopment will hinder the achievement of sustainable development goals. This paper reviews the major municipal-level policies that relate to urban villages and urban renewal in Shenzhen through the adoption of systematic literature survey and content analysis. An analytical framework of “Three Contents and Six Instruments” is established to examine the highlighted and overlooked aspects of these policies. Results reveal that Shenzhen’s implemented policies aim to formulise, modernise, and consequently homogenise urban villages into “urban-like modern communities” through the following upgrades: urban infrastructure development, improvement of sanitation conditions, and building façade beautification. However, these approaches for “environmental enhancement” were not primarily based on identifying and understanding the real causes of the exhibiting “environmental problems.” Meanwhile, the inspiration and inheritance of informal rules, especially the involvement and participation of residents for the rehabilitation of urban villages have been entirely overlooked. These two overlooked crucial aspects should be introduced in policy-making and integrated with existing adopted strategies to match local contexts and resolve specific issues. The paper advocates to extend the connotation of the concept of environment from an infrastructural consideration to a mechanism-based and performance-orientation thinking during the making of urban renewal policies. It suggests that environment could be utilised as an inclusive medium to efficiently frame and link multiple aspects in the policies.