What they talk about when they talk about urban regeneration: Understanding the concept 'urban regeneration' in PRD, China

Urban regeneration is both a global phenomenon and a local challenge-driven activity embedded in local politics and institutional contexts, thus characterized by complexities in terms of its interpretation and theorization. This study investigates the knowledge structure and key features of urban regeneration activities in PRD, China based on local urban policies collected from the nine cities of the region and through summative content analysis. By discussing the connections of these features with local institutions and practices in other countries, it is concluded that policy-makers are keen to incorporate multifaceted aims in local urban regeneration practices to show that extensive lessons and experience are learned from the international context, but the transformation of these aims into feasible strategies is affected by rifts between policy-makers, obligations and entitlement granted to local bodies who dominate urban regeneration policy-making, and whether a consensus about relations between multiple aims and their priorities is reached, which shape the actual integrativeness of local urban regeneration. Meanwhile, popular approaches in the international context are consulted to enrich the toolkit for local governance. Their application to the resolution of locally rooted challenges shapes a new mode of urban regeneration on the one hand, and the underlying ideology works to divert local practices to a part of the global trends of urban regeneration, on the other hand.

Automated summary

Urban regeneration is a global phenomenon and a local challenge-driven activity embedded in local politics and institutional contexts. This study investigates the knowledge structure and key features of urban regeneration activities in the PRD region of China, highlighting the efforts of policy-makers to incorporate multifaceted aims in local practices and the challenges faced in translating these aims into feasible strategies.