On Urban Poverty In Spatial Perspective

The research on urban poverty has a spatial analysis tradition since the era of the classical sociology. Alone with entering into post-industrial society, spatial changes in urban has been aggravated. Represented by H. Lefebvre and E. Soja, researchers believe that there is a coexisting relationship between spatial structure and social structure, and also production of space means not only mode of production of capital running and growth, but also social relationship, including production and reproduction of relationship different classes. Enlightened by the opinions above, also with studies on social history of urban spatial changes in China from reform and opening-up, the dissertation believes that by researching on structures and characters of social space of urban poverty and anglicizing on mechanism of its spatial production and reproduction, the approach of social space can provide a brand-new analyzing frame for studies on mechanism of urban poverty in social transition in China.Taking Baoding city as an example, through empirical studies on spatial changes since the foundation of foundation of the People's Republic of China and the present urban poverty, the dissertation gives both descriptions and analysis on effects and action mechanism from power of government, market and social stratification to space of urban poverty, and also the structure and characteristics of spaces of urban poverty under these power. To complete the analyzing frame, the dissertation also provides studies of its reaction to spatial changes outside and construction behaviors and procession of its social space of urban poor. The main idea and opinions as follows:The first part is introduction, which includes four aspects:origin and importance of urban poverty studies, review of corresponding researches at home and abroad, re-organization and operationalization of spatial perspective through multi-properties of conception of space, and also questions ought to be take care of and answered applying the spatial perspective in researching on urban poverty.The second part focuses on the research frame and design. Based on the first part, the second chapter begins with social history of Baoding's urban spatial changes since the foundation of the People's Republic of China and provides the elements, ideas and frame of space research. Studies on Baoding's social history show that there are three powers in putting forward the urban space changes: political and economical reform led by governments, real estate development run by markets and social stratification. So this dissertation regards that there are three steps in urban poverty space research:the first step is to define the subjective elements; the second step is continuous empirical study on urban social space's structure and properties from macro to micro, which reveals mechanism of government, market and social stratification in urban poverty's production of space; the third step is to analyse the urban poor's acknowledge and behavior of space in daily life through spatial perspective in order to study urban poor's reaction and behaviors to outside spatial power and construction of their own social space. According to those above, this dissertation stratifies research objectives and arranges three methods:document study, field study and depth-interviewing.The third part is the result of empirical studies on social space of urban poverty. In the third chapter of this dissertation, there is a macro research focuses on description of urban poverty distribution in inner city and affection of community and other strata. First of all, studies show that urban poverty concentrates in two areas; one is inner-city centering on the railway station, the other is villages within the city surrounding. This is the result of four powers which can be concluded into economical reform and urban planning led by government and estate development led by market. Second, community's affection to urban poverty's space mainly concentrates on atmosphere of concentration of urban poor and subsistence allowance, and other stratums bring about exclusion and isolation in some degree.The fourth chapter is a micro study in community level on description of structure and properties of urban poverty's space. First, in living space, different community has different characteristics: dispersion in highly homogeneous communities and concentration in heterogeneous ones; simultaneously, in background of economical reform, restructuring of enterprise makes part of workers lose their jobs and leaving their apartments, showing a condition of "deportation". Second, in daily life space, economical behaviors, entertainments and shopping behaviors appear some "marginal" character; the third, from the study on space of organization and social interaction, the urban poor lost their identity in organization and their communicational space becomes smaller.By way of a even more micro studies of daily life world from subjective perspective, the fourth part,mainly describes and analyzes urban poor's spatial acknowledge, identity and resistance, which intends to analyze urban poor's reactions to spatial powers outside and construction behaviors of their own space in order to show production and reproduction of social space. The fifth chapter reveals that there is a marginal tendency in urban poor's feeling of existing, identity, construction of space and themselves, and their acknowledges and identity can be classified into two kinds:natural and tactical. Spatial resistance also can be divided into two aspects:wishes and behaviors, some of which depend on their offspring.The last part is the conclusion of the dissertation,as well as the discussions and outlook of the problems in urban poverty in social space perspective. In the sixth chapter, the author organizes the conclusion of this dissertation and regards that hypothesis brought out in chapter two has been confirmed, in other words, the production and reproduction of urban poverty's social space is the result of composite function of government, market and social stratification and self construction of urban poor. The process is characterized by spatial derivation and indicates that distribution of power between government, market, other stratums and urban poor is unequal. According to this conclusion, and also taking researches of Harvy. David as references, this dissertation provides a discussion about the possibility and approaches to apply spatial justice from perspective of social policy.