Welfare Changes And Its Determinants Of Former Residents In Urban Renewal

The city is constantly developing along with renewal according to the metabolic law.When the urban old areas cannot meet the residents’ living needs and social development goals,the local government often activates their development potential by adjusting the industrial structure,land use structure and social structure.Urban renewal is of great significance for improving the residents’ housing conditions,supporting enterprises to adjust their industrial structure,and promoting economic development.Therefore,many cities in China are actively promoting the implementation of urban renewal.The residents who settled there for a long time have to move to the resettlement housing,affected by the urban renewal planning.The “space replacement”of people who benefit from the urban renewal changed.The changed life status of the residents brought many social hidden dangers,which have become an important factor restricting the the economic and social harmony and stability.Studying on the life conditions of former residents in urban renewal is of great significance for solving the problems such as “gentrification” and social isolation brought by urban renewal.In urban renewal,the change of former residents’ life conditions is mainly affected by the group space reorganization and social reconstruction caused by the migration.This paper takes former residents in urban renewal as the research group,and explores the gains and losses of the former residents in urban renewal based on the following three questions: 1)whether urban renewal improves the former residents’ welfare? 2)What are the determinants of welfare changes in former residents? 3)How do these determinants affect the welfare changes in former residents?Based on Sen’s Capability Approach,this paper constructs a multi-dimensional and multi-level welfare system for former residents in the context of urban renewal.It consists of a welfare measurement system,an internal driving system and an external incentive system that affects welfare changes.On the basis of this welfare system,further case study is conducted.Using a two-wave survey of former residents who moved their homes from Hualongqiao area,Yuzhong District,Chongqing,to four resettlement housing in renewal.This paper investigates the patterns of change in the former residents’ residence,employment,health,social and wealth conditions and analysis the former residents’ welfare changes before and after renewal in multi-dimensional and multi-level using Fuzzy Welfare Measurement Model.Then this paper explores the relations of determinants and welfare change using Grey Relational Analysis,Fuzzy Interpretative Structural Modeling Method and Critical Path Method.Based on the above analysis,appropriate policy recommendations are proposed to ensure the balanced improvement of the former residents’ welfare.This paper gets the following main conclusions:Except a certain decline in employment conditions,other dimensions(residence,health,social and wealth)have different levels of welfare improvement after a period of recovery that the former residents migrated to the resettlement housing.The former residents’ existing economic conditions has improved;while their employment conditions has declined,indicating that their economic conditions could show a downward trend in the long run.Because the former residents’ social status re-establishes a better social network by breaking the original solidified social structure,it would show an increase in welfare levels.It should be emphasized that the welfare improvement at the development level is not obvious,indicating that the potential for improvement of the life conditions is insufficient.If not actively guided,there may be an inflection point of welfare changes of the former residents in the future.The former residents’ endowment and their living external environment as internal drivers and external incentives respectively affect their welfare level,resulting in the welfare differentiation according to the classified categories of them.The reason is that,on the one hand,the former residents with specific endowments show a different recovery in their social capital after the migration,resulting in different aspects and degrees of change in capability;on the other hand,the former residents acquire different resources and opportunities after moving to new urban spaces,and their capability is also affected to varying degrees.The combination of internal drivers and external incentives creates differentiations between former residents’ categories and spaces.After urban renewal,the former residents did not show a complete improvement of life conditions.Therefore,the municipal government should adopt relevant plans and policies to optimize the compensation and resettlement mode,moderately implement the resettlement housing mixed construction system,and balance the allocation of public resources from the compensation and resettlement stage.These measures determine the quality of external incentives for former residents’ welfare levels from migration freedom,residential integration,and fairness in resource allocation.By maintaining the order of community operation,constructing a platform for community communication,and strengthening the construction of community spirit,the community’s multi-governance bodies guide a healthy life concept while improving the material conditions of the former residents.This paper uses Capability Approach to extend the former residents’ welfare research from the functional state of appearance to capability level,and strengthen the subject initiative of former residents in the process of obtaining welfare.The welfare measurement research is expanded from absolute one-dimensional or several-dimensional measurement to multi-dimensional and multi-level measurement and differentiation analysis,and the welfare state of former residents is systematically presented.Optimizing policy recommendations from group universality to a response system that matches the corresponding levels and timings according to group types can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of policy implementation.