Variegated urban entrepreneurialism and its contested results in the boom of neighborhood center complexes in Chengdu, China

Despite China's high-profile community development agenda, how to provide neighborhood services, a key social infrastructure in community development, remains a challenge for many local governments facing fiscal austerity. This study addresses this lacuna by interrogating the boom of neighborhood center complexes (NCCs), i.e., building complexes accommodating multiple community services, in Chengdu, which has over 350 NCCs in operation or under construction. Drawing upon a six-year study and synthesis of mixed materials, we identified three salient modes of urban entrepreneurship strategies in developing NCCs: community elites' entrepreneurship, state-owned enterprises, and public-private partnerships. Each mode represents a particular configuration of state power, market forces, and neighborhood participation distinguished from the conventional government-financed mode. These three modes are not merely different urban entrepreneurship strategies but results of systematic reproductions of urban governance practices across different community contexts, featuring variegated urban entrepreneurship at the neighborhood level. Although temporally solving fiscal austerity in community service delivery, these urban entrepreneurship practices problematize community-oriented development regarding equality, effectiveness, and efficiency in service delivery and require further policy innovation. This study enriches the debates around urban entrepreneurialism by emphasizing a variegated perspective and suggests cautions when embracing market power in community development.