Abstract
The use of commercial residential land to construct policy housing to assure housing for people on low and middle incomes, also known as policy-backed mixed residential communities (PMRCs), has gradually become a common form of urban settlement with the strengthening of the local government’s public housing policy in China. Conflicts over the use of public space in policy mixed communities are also common. This study conducted a preliminary survey on 116 housing projects in Guangzhou. Based on theoretical sampling principles, combining local media reports and relevant website evaluations, three representative policy-backed mixed communities with low, medium, and strong conflict in the use of public space was selected as case studies. A combination of field observations, on-site interviews and questionnaires were also used to collect data. Semantic analysis is first used to preliminarily identify conflicts in the use of public space, then the social integration measure is used to quantitatively examine the degree of community integration. Finally, the conflict dimensions and conflict factors were determined using the importance-satisfaction IPA analysis. The study shows that there are significant differences between the three cases in terms of community integration, while community governance is the most important factor influencing conflicts over the use of public space. As one of the global empirical researches on conflict in PMRCs, this study has both theoretical and practical implications for the construction of sustainable community governance. Therefore, community governance, as the final link of policy-backed mixed communities, needs to be further improved and optimized in community planning.
Introduction
Policy-backed mixed residential community (PMRC) is a mode of housing construction explored by Chinese governments in some cities since 2007 to solve the housing problems of low-income families, meaning that local governments use planning and policy to require new commercial housing communities to build a certain number of subsidized housing units as a pre-condition for a land grant. And the original purpose of establishing PMRCs was to alleviate the problems of tight land resources in large cities, difficulties in land acquisition and demolition, lack of protected housing, and the marginalization of centralized construction of protected housing (Cao & Zhang, 2019).
However, while resetting social resources, the PMRC has also given rise to various conflicts, such as ownership rights and community disputes. In the actual implementation of PMRCs, community conflicts often arise due to issues such as the right to use public space and uneven distribution of property resources, which affect community harmony and quality of life. Behind the conflict are different cultural patterns, habits, and world views (Bellah et al., 2007; Cadge & Howard Ecklund, 2007; Swidler, 1986). Conflict is inevitable due to differences in religious, ethnic or other social identities between two groups in the same community. Worse still, community tensions can create stronger internal solidarity as each group expresses its divisions, conflicts and hostility toward the out-group (Herzog & Vaidyanathan, 2015). A mixed environment may lead to a low profile and inter-group trust may be affected (R. D. Putnam, 2007). Often, the future of community conflict management will need to benefit from an emphasis on affirmative language practices, a transformative theorizing approach and an emphasis on the role of situational judgment in communicative practice (Barge, 2001). Otherwise, a certain degree of conflict and exclusion of different people might become a necessary by-product of mixed communities (Evans, 2003; C. Smith & Emerson, 1998). In short, the highly mixing of PMRCs may cause community conflict and management problems more likely, thus it is important to further study the utility of the mixed community as a settlement pattern and the premises that lead to it.
The concept of the PMRC in China is similar to that of “mixed communities” abroad, and both originated from in housing policy reform and practice, but the practice in China is relatively recent, and the multiple local factors, such as institutional and cognitive culture, that play a role in “mixed living” have led to contradictions. As early as the 1940s, the practice of housing policy for mixed communities had already begun abroad. The development of new towns in Britain sought to mix different housing tenures and social classes in the same community, and since then social mixing has been a fundamental principle of British town planning, providing the material basis for improving life in urban communities (Foley, 1960). Since the 1970s, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has used mixed-income housing as its fundamental development strategy, integrating low-income housing into the middle- and upper-income neighborhoods through land use controls and tax exemptions (A. Smith, 2002). In China, with the reform of the housing market and the government’s emphasis on housing security and other people’s livelihoods, allotted housing has become an important innovative public policy practice since the 1990s. However, in recent years, incidents of violent demolition of walls and piles in PMRCs in several cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Fuzhou, Guangzhou and Qingdao have been frequently reported in the press, and conflicts between residents of commercial and allotted housing due to the unequal distribution of public space and inequitable right have frequently erupted and are increasingly escalating (Cao & Zhang, 2019). Considering that China is in a stage of social development transition, a large number of population movements in the process of urbanization, coupled with the restrictions of China’s original urban-rural dual system and the deep-rooted perception of urban-rural differences, lead to the identity differences between different groups of people in the current cities. At the same time, along with the reform of the market economy system and the development of housing policies, commercial housing has become the mainstream mode of living in China’s urban settlements, and the homogeneity or diversity of people’s occupations and the class status behind them has played a role in the stratification of living space (Li & Wang, 2020). In this localized context, mixed housing, along with other elements, has given impetus to community development, while at the same time generating a range of problems arising from differences that act on communities and cities. A study of PMRC conflict will therefore help to reflect on current deviations in the field of housing policy in China, add to the empirical research on PMRC’s conflict globally, and make a marginal theoretical contribution to deepening the understanding of the changing state-society relationship in the transition period.
The international definition of a mixed residential community differs from the national one, and the definition varies slightly from city to city in China. Across China, local governments are actively exploring and using the allotment model to provide subsidized housing, with cities such as Beijing, Qingdao and Zhengzhou having introduced corresponding policies (Wang, 2018). According to the 2021 Measures for the Administration of Policy Housing Allocated to Commercial Residential Land for Public Sale in Guangzhou, policy housing includes public rental housing, resettlement housing, shared ownership housing and talent housing. After a comparative analysis, the above four types of mixed housing and commercial housing communities are defined as “policy mixed communities” (see Table 1), meaning that under the policy of housing allocation by developers, different groups of people are passively mixed into communities, with different groups of people, different layouts, and different modes of construction, implementation, and governance. There are differences in the population, layout, construction, implementation, and governance patterns among the communities, and this study follows this conceptual definition to examine three policy mixed communities in Guangzhou.
Definition of the Concept of the Research Subjects.
In most cases, competition for public resources within communities has made public space a major site for hosting community conflict. Conflict over the use of public space has been a major issue in the governance of mixed communities since the birth of the PMRC. As an organization focused exclusively on enabling people to interact with each other, public space is a key place to study the nature of community (Dudley, 2002). The 2021 Measures for the Administration of Policy Housing Allocated to Commercial Residential Land for Public Sale stipulate the principles and proportion of policy housing to be allocated to commercial residential buildings, and determine the specific proportion either by directly setting the initial allocation proportion or by “limiting the land price and competing for allocation.” This approach emphasizes the balance between the market benefits of development and the social objectives of non-profit through market forces. Under this policy condition, low-income groups enjoying preferential policies and access mechanisms achieve mixed housing with higher income groups, sharing common spaces such as greenery in the neighborhood. However, the intervention of market makes policy housing different from a purely public good. Multiple actors compete for resources within the community in order to maximize their own interests. Therefore, the conflict over the use of public space in PMRCs is a reflection of both the implementation of housing policy and the complexity of the current local governance context. This study aims to provide competing spatial explanations for the causes of community conflict and to apply the results to future mixed housing construction and governance strategies.
Literature Review
Conflict Theory and Community Conflicts
As a common concept in the social sciences, social conflict has been widely studied and analyzed. Relevant research has developed a mature theoretical framework around the causes, normalization, and social impacts that lead to conflict. Social conflict theory originated from Karl Marx, and later extended to include functionalist approaches to conflict theory, Dahrendorf conflict theory, functional, and conflict theories of educational stratification, etc. (Collins, 1971b; Coser, 1998; Dahrendorf, 1958). These theories generally suppose that social conflict occurs because groups have incompatible goals, including contested resources, incompatible roles, and incompatible values. Specifically, these disputed resources may be wealth, involving tangible assets such as money or land (Weber, 1978). Wells, 1979 suggested that structural power distribution and resource inequalities exist in all societies, leading to conflicts of group interests. Coser (1998) focuses on the function of social conflict and its relationship to changes in social systems (institutional rigidity, technological progress, and changes in productivity), arguing that social conflict is a struggle over values, beliefs and the distribution of scarce status, rights and resources, which is inevitable and a constant in the functioning of society. Marx (2000) believed that society was in a state of perpetual conflict due to competition for limited resources. As can be seen, social conflicts can be triggered by a variety of factors and/or events, usually involving important issues such as moral and identity differences, competition for resources, and power struggles. At the same time, social conflicts can escalate and become more complex, even across multiple levels of the social system, as the number of issues and parties increases (P. T. Coleman, 2003; Kriesberg, 1993; Peterson, 2003; L. L. Putnam et al., 2003). In short, the process of social change and development is often accompanied by social conflict, and the unequal distribution of power, status, and resources, as well as differences in values, can be the basis for the social conflict (Hughes et al., 2011).
Conflict theory attempts to explain a wide range of social phenomena, and the topics of concern have gradually shifted from macro propositions such as war, change, and discrimination to micro things such as community governance and domestic violence, then the community conflict theory has been developed based on the social conflict theory. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, related research expanded conflict theory beyond the strict economic class set by Marx (2000), focusing extensively on topics including gender inequality (Collins, 1971a), ethnic conflict (Hughes et al., 2011), and peace and war (Bartos & Wehr, 2002). With the community building movement, communities have become a relatively concentrated field where social conflicts occur, and attracted sociology to empirically conceptualize the potential causes or consequences of the community conflicts. J. S. Coleman (1957) analyzes the causes of conflict in a sample of communities from three perspectives: economic, political, and values, and thus develops a model to explain the entire conflict process. McCall (1969) developed a general theory of social rights based on community and environmental issues, and in a comparative study of 18 communities found that communities that experienced conflict were less integrated than non-conflict communities. From the focus on class struggle and economic systems to the high incidence and frequency of conflict in urban communities, some researchers have gradually shifted from traditional social conflict studies to community conflict studies to reveal the relationship between conflict and community structure (Gamson, 1966; Gricar & Brown, 1981; R. D. Putnam, 2007). These research on community conflict further confirms that conflict is centered on the concepts of social inequality, resource distribution, and different socioeconomic classes, and also illustrates the relationship between conflict and community structure in that conditions within communities trigger the creation of community conflict, and that conflict processes often lead to certain changes in community structure.
Research on community conflict is dominated by empirical case studies, and mostly from a sociological dimension, covering a wide range of topics such as group action, decision-making, and governance. While community conflict can destabilize order, it can also integrate intergroup relations and enhance the adaptive capacity of a particular social relationship or group, thus leading to community governance (Coser, 1998; Dukes, 1996; McAlister, 2010). Gricar and Brown (1981) found that the organizations composed of conflicting groups could develop novel mechanisms to regulate information exchange and handle disagreements, thereby reducing conflict. In addition, individual personality differences among community may have incompatible values that have an impact on conflict resolution, such that participants with higher levels of individualism tend to support rational approaches to decision making, while participants with higher levels of collectivism tend to value loyalty to in-group interests (LeFebvre & Franke, 2013). In general, there have been abundant empirical case studies and conflict theoretical findings at the community domain level, but most of the existing studies focus on explaining conflict conditions, conflict impacts, and relationships with populations from the sociological dimension. However, fewer studies have explored the causes of conflict by combining the spatial dimension and community form. Therefore, this study explores conflict impacts from the perspective of urban and rural planning disciplines, linking the material-spatial level with the social level in an interdisciplinary manner, which will effectively complement the existing research gap in community conflict research.
Mixed Communities and Conflicts
Mixed communities originated from government housing policy reform, thus governance practice always precedes theoretical research, which has focused on how to achieve a reasonable mix and the impact of that mix. At a practical level, current housing and community policies reflect a consensus that communities should include a wider range of housing types and residents. Many countries have adopted policies to promote mixed housing for different income groups in an attempt to change the social structure and human environment of poor communities, thereby addressing many of the social problems associated with the clustering of poor groups (Chaskin & Joseph, 2015). At the theoretical level, research included the definition of mixed communities, the evaluation of mixed housing policies, the effectiveness of mixed housing, and strategies for mixed housing (Tunstall & Fenton, 2006), and has extended to topics such as neighborhood coexistence and social isolation (Camina & Wood, 2009), and educational policy research (Lupton & Tunstall, 2008). These studies typically define mixed communities along two dimensions: housing characteristics, including building form, designation, housing tenure, market value or rent levels, and the social characteristics of residents, and income, employment, age, household type, race, gender (Tunstall & Fenton, 2006). Therefore, in the field of sociology, the terms mixed tenure, mixed income, and mixed community are often used interchangeably (Manzi & Bowers, 2003; A. Smith, 2002; Tunstall, 2003). Moreover, research on mixed communities is often coupled with housing policies, as they help to create inclusive, cohesive, and sustainable urban areas, which are further supported by theoretical research.
Many researchers have studied the effectiveness of mixed communities in relation to the sustainable goals of mixed housing policies. At present, the effectiveness of mixed communities has not been fully proven, and some studies have questioned and criticized the model of mixed communities. As a key component of current government housing and community policy, the main aim of mixed communities is to eliminate neighborhoods of concentrated poverty and combat residential segregation (Joseph et al., 2007). Governments usually argue that improving communities by changing the housing stock to attract new, better-off residents can lead to a wider range of resources and more beneficial social networks for low-income residents. However, relevant studies hold two different views on this. One view is that there is limited interaction between mixed groups with different housing tenures and regional incomes, and that mixing brings about a certain amount of conflict. Factors such as the size of mixed communities (Jupp et al., 1999; Silverman et al., 2006) and the lifestyles and habits of residents (Jupp et al., 1999; A. Smith, 2002) contribute to the highly mixed nature of mixed communities and negatively affect community cohesion. Legewie and Schaeffer (2016) argue that neighborhood conflict is more likely to occur at fuzzy boundaries defined as interstitial or transitional areas sandwiched between two homogeneous communities, further raising issues of community governance. In addition, mixed communities can lead to lower levels of trust in one group toward other groups, and research has found that the closer Whites live to Blacks, the more interracial conflict Whites perceive in the community and the more negative their response to a diverse workplace (Brief et al., 2005). Furthermore, mixedness can also have a negative impact on in-group trust, making people more likely to avoid social life, less likely to participate in civic organizations and more likely to feel helpless (Hughes et al., 2011; R. D. Putnam, 2007). On the contrary, another view is that the impact of housing policy mixing on communities may be overstated (Meen et al., 2005). In an empirical study of mixed communities, Allen et al. (2005) found that mixed tenure and mixed income were “non-issues” for residents, and that most people saw their neighbors as “normal people” and considered their neighbors to be civil and polite. It can be seen that factors such as tenant balance, service levels, quality of the natural environment and community development input are all important components in making these mixed tenure estates successful (Camina & Wood, 2009). Where mixed tenure is only one factor affecting community conflict or community satisfaction, research on community conflict also needs to focus on the physical environment of the community and community services. In conclusion, the impact of mixed tenure on community conflict has not been fully explained (Lupton & Tunstall, 2008). The study of the relationship between mixing and conflict has both theoretical and practical implications for improving the concept of community conflict and guiding the construction of sustainable community governance.
Compared to foreign countries, theoretical research on mixed communities in China started late and is mainly based on Chinese specific conditions and actual development, with relatively little research on the interaction between policy-based mixed housing and conflict. In recent years, the government has proposed a new market-based housing model of “commercial-insured integration,” with the aim of integrating different income groups and populations in order to achieve a social integration of housing patterns. In the Chinese context, different ownership housing in mixed communities have different access mechanisms and involve different actors, and the competition between different actors for public resources constitutes a major cause of community conflict, posing certain challenges for community governance. Based on the study of foreign theories, Shan (2001) considers the practical basis for the implementation of mixed living in China. Li and Wang (2020) argues that identity characteristics such as mobility, ethnicity, and class status create boundaries and circles of interaction within “mixed living,” which ultimately restrict the function and meaning of “mixed living” in urban communities. Previous studies on community conflict have focused more on the conflict of interests between residents and other social organizations (such as property owners’ committees, developers, property companies, etc.), and more often come from the empirical observation of single-ownership communities (mostly commercial housing estates; Yang, 2010; Zhu, 2016). However, less attention has been paid to the conflicts between different groups of residents in the new urban settlement form of “mixed ownership communities.” Therefore, this study adds to the global empirical research on conflict in policy mixed communities with local characteristics in China, and has some practical implications for building inclusive urban governance.
Questions and Methodology
Based on existing studies, this article focuses on the causes of conflict in PMRCs, and adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods (see Figure 1). Firstly, desktop research was conducted to sort out the regulations and policies related to PMRCs and the list of protected housing projects in Guangzhou; secondly, in-depth interviews were carried out to sort out the process of conflict events and stakeholders; finally, sample questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were applied to collect relevant data from the sample communities and quantitative studies such as semantic analysis, social integration measures and IPA were used to verify the analysis results. This study aims to answer these three questions:
Are there social integration conflicts in PMRCs?
Why do conflicts over the use of public space arise?
How can the abstract “conflict” be quantified and its underlying influencing factors analyzed?
Research Instrument and Data Collection
In this study, a combination of field observations, on-site interviews and questionnaires were used to evaluate the satisfaction of households in three communities. The data used for the study were collected by the research team from September to December 2021 from the selected representative PMRCs in Guangzhou. After the field survey, the interviewees were kept in touch with through online interviews and web questionnaires to supplement any material that may have been missed during the field research. In addition, the study was supplemented by collecting conflict news, property reviews, and other relevant online materials from the three communities as secondary data.
The questionnaire survey was conducted using random sampling and stratified sampling methods. Questionnaires were distributed randomly in each community and stratified according to different housing tenure to ensure that the sample was sufficiently representative of the perceptions of different groups. During the scale design process, a pre-research questionnaire was distributed in September 2021 to ensure applicability and accuracy, and then a revision was made to correct ambiguous items and add new items. The final questionnaire used the 5-point Likert scale to classify the satisfaction into five scales (“less satisfied,”“average,”“more satisfied,” and “very satisfied”), with each indicator assigned a score of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively (Luo & Huang, 2021). Besides, a typical sample size for behavioral research should be between 200 and 500 (Ali et al., 2020). And a sample size of 200 to 400 is sufficient in factor analysis (MacCallum et al., 1999). Therefore, a total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to community households on the use of public space, surrounding facilities and satisfaction with the level of governance. After eliminating invalid questionnaires by SPSS, there were totally 316 valid questionnaires were collected, with an effective rate of 79%.
In addition, the interviewees were selected using stratified sampling and snowball sampling methods to greatly increase the likelihood of interviewing the core character involved in community conflict events, while stratified sampling according to different identities helped to avoid the limit of similar views from one group. This study investigated the basic information, neighborhood interactions, perceptions of conflict, and willingness to participate in community governance of different stakeholders through interviews, which included commercial housing residents, policy housing residents, property managers, neighborhood committee, and social workers. There were totally 24 interviewees and each time ranged from 30 min to 2 hr. At the same time, in order to improve the reliability and validity of the study, the author used a triangulation method in the interview to record the community conflict from three perspectives: residents, property managers, neighborhood committees and other social organizations, which means asking different people to give analysis and evaluation of the conflict phenomenon. Finally, 10 structured interviews and 14 semi-structured interviews were completed, while a field notes of about 60,000 words were completed.
Research framework.
Research Methods and Data Processing
The specific research analysis routes are as follows:
1. Preliminary identification of the public space use conflicts using semantic analysis.
Semantic analysis is a human psychometric method that measures differences in subjects’ psychological feelings through the form of linguistic expressions, and is now widely used to measure users’ post-use evaluation and satisfaction analysis of spaces. In linguistics, semantic analysis is the process of relating syntactic structures, from the level of phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs to the level of the writing as a whole, to their language-independent meanings. It also involves the removal of features specific to particular linguistic and cultural contexts (Goddard, 2011). In this study, after conducting structured and semi-structured interviews with residents, conflict focal points and property managers in the case community, the respondents’ responses were converted into text, and the entire text of the interviews was cleaned using ROSTCM6 and then analyzed for word frequency and emotional color, to collate the residents’ evaluations and high-frequency word lists about the policy mixed community, which helps to understand the use conflict event process and the major conflict points.
2. Accurate identification of conflicts factors by the social integration measurement model.
As Mitchell and Shillington (2002) put it “social integration is an integrated and challenging concept that has more than one dimension or meaning.” Social integration reflects the strength of conflict within a community; the higher the level of integration, the lower the community conflict. The data analysis is based on the questionnaire data and mainly uses factor analysis and other econometric methods. Factor analysis has strong persuasive power in the study of social integration (Zhang & Lei, 2008). Specifically, factor analysis was conducted to find out the essential structure among the 29 multivariate observed variables of PMRCs, which then were processed for dimensionality reduction. The factor loading coefficients were obtained by SPSS using the Varimax method. The absolute value of factor loading coefficient >0.4 indicates that the variables are strongly correlated with each other and can be combined into one dimension. Finally, five dimensions were divided, namely living services, transportation services, public services, community governance, and community culture.
The regression method used in the factor analysis gives the score values for each factor, reflecting the different aspects of community integration. The composite degree of social integration is then calculated as the weight of the corresponding variance contribution of each factor and converted to a corresponding value between 0 and 100, the expression of which is:
Where F is the composite degree of social integration, F1 − F n is the degree of community integration of each factor, K is the variance, and n represents the number of dimensions, n = 5.
In summary, the factor analysis based on 29 variables were conducted to measure the social integration of communities, which enabled the quantification of abstract conflicts. Thus, further identification of conflict factors could be achieved by comparing the five dimensions of social integration in three communities.
3. Verify the conflicts factors by the interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).
IPA is a context-focused approach to sociological research, which means that it aims to provide insights into how particular phenomena are understood by particular people in particular contexts. Often, these phenomena are associated with experiences that have some personal significance, such as significant life events or the development of important relationships. Its theoretical origins lie in phenomenology and hermeneutics, with key ideas by Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty often cited. The method is applicable to behavioral research and phenomenological interpretation (Brocki & Wearden, 2006). The basic idea of IPA is to analyze the perceived differences between expectations and actuals by comparing the importance of measurement factors with actual satisfaction, which help to prioritize service improvements. Specifically, after analyzing the integration of PMRCs, this study focused on the dimensions where social disintegration was most prominent, and placed the satisfaction and importance data of the 29 sub-items of the questionnaire in quadrants, with the X-axis representing residents’ assessment of the importance of the indicators and the Y-axis representing residents’ assessment of the satisfaction of the indicators. Using the mean values of importance and satisfaction as the origin, the satisfaction-implied importance model was constructed by SPSS. And the IPA matrix was divided into four parts: Maintenance zone (low importance-high satisfaction), Strength zone (high importance-high satisfaction), Opportunity zone (low importance-low satisfaction), and Repair zone (high importance-low satisfaction; Luo & Huang, 2021). Quadrant I Strength zone can be interpreted as focused and effective, and the corresponding countermeasure is to continue to work hard; Quadrant II Maintenance zone can be interpreted as low importance but significant results, and the corresponding suggestion is not to deliberately pursue it, but to let it go; Quadrant III Opportunity zone can be interpreted as poor performance but low importance, and it is suggested to be included in the “low priority” matters; Quadrant IV Repair zone can be interpreted as high importance but poor performance, and the countermeasure suggests focusing on improvement in the next step. The study highlighted the community dimensions with higher disintegration, and defined the factors in the Repair zone as important influencing factors generating conflict over the use of public space, in order to identify the influencing factors of conflicts in PMRCs.
Case Selection
In recent years, Guangzhou has continued to implement the policy of housing allocation, which contains 8 chapters and 36 measures, including: access and exit mechanism, file maintenance, residential use (contract, usage guidelines, transfer, and inheritance), operation and management (service supervisor system, ancillary facilities, maintenance and repair, occupancy requirements, inspection, and inspection), property management, supervision and assessment, and legal responsibility, covering a wide range of issues. The policies cover a wide range of issues (Cao & Zhang, 2019).
This study has collated the number of housing projects under construction/planned for construction from 2015 to 2021 through official documents of the Guangzhou Municipal Government and the official website of the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (see Figure 2 and Table 2), with a total of 116 samples and a total of 189,731 units. Of these, over 90 samples clearly belong to developers on behalf of construction, the number of policy mixed housing communities is not to be underestimated and this number will continue to increase in the future.
Location of Guangzhou Province and the distribution and number of PMRCs in Guangzhou, 2015 to 2021.
The Number of PMRCs in Every Districts in Guangzhou, 2015 to 2021.
In order to analyse the issue of conflicting public space use in PMRCs in a more comprehensive and in-depth manner, this study adopts a multi-case comparative research method to select cases (Hughes et al., 2011). The selection of cases was based on theoretical sampling principles, combining local media reports, Anjuke’s website and posts from Weibo users to select typical community cases.
The selection criteria were based on the full coverage of housing types (including public rental housing, shared ownership housing, affordable housing, talent flats, and resettlement housing), differences in community demographics, community grouping patterns, differences in facilities, whether the community is divided into hard and soft partitions, and differences in the use of public space. Three PMRCs in Guangzhou were selected for field research and data analysis, namely Rongyue Huayuan (with low-conflict use of public space), Zhujiang Jiayuan (with moderate-conflict use of public space), and Jinrongjie Rongsui Huafu (with high-conflict use of public space), and based on the desktop research data and pre-study, the conflict status and community integration of each community was investigated. Based on the desktop research data and the pre-study, a preliminary qualitative judgment was made on the current situation of conflict and community integration in each community, in order to select the appropriate research method and analysis model for the subsequent study (Table 3).
Community Case Basic Information.
Cases Information
Rongyue Huayuan: Highly Integrated Community and Low Conflict of Use of Public Space
Located in Huangpu District, Guangzhou, Rongyue Huayuan is the first communal ownership housing in Guangzhou. The location of the community is relatively remote compared to the other two communities, and the surrounding facilities are still incomplete, the quality of the housing varies and the population varies greatly.
In terms of community management, the community committee of Rongyue Huayuan has set up an assistance center to provide assistance, emotional care and quality education to low-income people, so that they can feel the warmth of the community and promote mutual help among their neighbors. In terms of spatial design (Figure 3), Rongyue Huayuan provides a flexible partition between public housing and commercial housing through public green spaces and group green spaces, allowing community residents to choose between the more private and independent group green spaces for rest and the centralized and open public spaces for conversation.
Floor plan and community view of Rongyue Huayuan.
Zhujiang Jiayuan: Moderate Community Integration, With Some Public Space Use Conflicts
Zhujiang Jiayuan is located in the Tianhe District of Guangzhou, and is a typical mixed community in the city. The community is well located and has a variety of people, including public rental housing tenants, affordable housing tenants, talent flat tenants and commercial housing tenants; housing types and quality vary to a certain extent, and the diversity of people and imperfect community management have led to a certain amount of conflict in the use of space within the community.
After in-depth research, it was found that, in terms of community management, although the community has a complete set of relevant institutions and community organizations, there is a problem of differentiated management in the community construction, which only ensures the quality of commercial housing, and public resources are tilted toward commercial housing. In terms of spatial design (see Figure 4), the community is separated from the talent flat and commercial housing tenants by a large street, which is interchangeable, but this dividing line of ownership has inadvertently become a psychological barrier for the tenants, making the commercial housing, and talent flat tenants believe that they should enjoy more At the same time, residents of public housing and affordable housing also refuse to communicate with the so-called high-profile people, while residents of allotment housing will communicate and integrate with each other, there is little interaction between residents of allotment housing and residents of commercial housing. to an active psychological separation.
Floor plan and community view of Zhujiang Jiayuan.
Rongsui Huafu: Low Community Integration and Large Conflicts in the Use of Public Space
In 2020, Guangzhou released the “Measures for the Supervision of the Use of Guaranteed Housing in Guangzhou (Draft for Public Opinion),” in which Article 22 of the draft opinion specifies that “construction units and property service units shall not set up fences, greenery, water systems and other physical separation between guaranteed housing and commercial housing belonging to the same property management area for differentiated treatment.”
Built against the backdrop of this policy, Rongsui Huafu still built a physical separation fence, and as a result, a great deal of community conflict erupted, making it one of the few high conflict mixed communities in Guangzhou. The location of Rongsui Huafu is relatively good, located in the Guanggang New Town area of Liwan District, Guangzhou, with relatively good surrounding facilities and good quality housing. Among them, the resettlement houses are the demolished households and some demolished factory workers’ families in Guangzhou’s Baiwantan area, with higher overall income and quality, which is not much different from the population of commercial housing tenants, but the conflicts in this neighborhood have become more and more intense at the first sign of trouble.
In July 2021, a large-scale owner conflict broke out in this neighborhood over the separation gate between the relocation houses and the commercial houses, resulting in a fierce confrontation between the two sides and the failure of the police to mediate the issue. When the research team visited the community again in April 2022, the conflict had still not been resolved, and the residents of the commercial and resettlement houses were still at a standstill, refusing to budge from each other, and the original separation fence had not been removed due to complaints from the residents of the resettlement houses (Figure 5).
Floor plan and community view of Rongsui Huafu.
After an in-depth investigation, it was found that there were multiple problems with the construction management of the community of Rong Sui Hua House: firstly, the illegal construction behavior of the developer. As reflected by the residents, in order to successfully conceal the construction plan review, the initial planning drawings of the community did not divide the fence, nor did they clearly divide the resettlement housing groups, and the developer built the separation fence privately after passing the planning review to meet the interest demand of preserving the value of commercial properties. The second is the developer’s “concealment of both sides.” According to the tenants, during the sale of the houses, the developer promised to segregate the rehousing tenants, and the fence segregation was an important consideration for the commercial tenants when they purchased the houses; however, when the rehousing tenants signed the contract, there was no indication that the fence would be used to segregate the common space in the future. The third is the differential management of the property company and the inaction of the neighborhood committee. At the beginning of the community management, although the two sides were separated, the rehousing tenants could still access the commercial housing clusters and enjoy the community common space through their owner’s cards. However, after the properties received feedback from some of the commercial housing tenants, the owner’s cards were deactivated and the rehousing tenants could only stay in their own small gardens, failing to fully enjoy their right to use the community common space resources.
Research Findings
Preliminary Identification of Public Space Use Conflicts
After textual collation and semantic analysis of the interviewees’ original words, a list of community household buzzwords was obtained. This study distills and summarizes the information in the interview texts by grouping several categories based on community buzzwords.
The analysis of the data revealed that there are significant differences in the concerns of households in different PMRCs, and that conflicts over the use of public space may be influenced by a variety of influencing factors. As shown in Table 4, “segregation” and “arguments” were frequently mentioned by respondents in high conflict communities, with a frequency of 54 and 26 times, and spatial segregation and conflicts arising from segregation have seriously affected the lives of community residents. At the same time, the word “sharing” was mentioned 20 times, showing that the residents of allotments in high conflict communities are eager to share the communal space and enjoy the rights that are rightfully theirs. The interview buzzwords were similar in the Minor Conflict and Medium Conflict communities, with most households mentioning the word “difference,” 24 times in the Minor Conflict community and 18 times in the Medium Conflict community, due to differences in demographics, construction differences and management resources depending on the type of housing. The term “property management (PM)” is mentioned with some frequency in all three types of communities.
Interview Buzzword Lists of Three PMRCs.
Accurate Identification of Conflicts Factors
In this study, a total of 29 sub-categories of PMRCs were surveyed for satisfaction in the three case communities. 316 valid questionnaires were collected, with an effective rate of 79%, of which 104 were from Rongsui Huafu, 104 from Rongyue Huayuan and 108 from Zhujiang Jiayuan, with a balanced number of respondents in each community and a balanced proportion of men and women and age. The reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.862, indicating that the questionnaire has a high reliability and the sample is universal.
“Social integration is a multidimensional concept, and the dimensions of social integration vary widely across disciplines and research subjects.” In this study, the social integration model (Chen & Li, 2015) is applied to the measurement of integration in PMRCs, which is defined as the degree of community integration. The factor analysis method is used to measure the degree of community integration in three PMRCs, to explore the different dimensions of social integration in mixed communities and transform them into estimable values. The abstract degree of community conflict is quantified, and the social integration measurement model is constructed in terms of dimensions. The higher the degree of community integration means that the households in the community get along more harmoniously and there is less conflict in the community.
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was first applied to find out the essential structure between the multivariate observed variables set by the questionnaire and processed for dimensionality reduction. Finally, five dimensions were divided, namely living services, transportation services, public services, community governance, and community culture, which corresponded well to the variables. Community services include the facilities around the community, such as refuse collection points and vegetable markets; transportation services include various travel stops and parking systems; public services include various common facilities, like activity venues and public facilities; community governance covers multiple subjects and aspects of governance, including developer operations, property management, and community care; and the community culture dimension reflects the community atmosphere and neighborhood relations. The corresponding questionnaire sub-sections can be found in Table 6.
On the model test, the KMO value was 0.653 > 0.6, the model analysis was good with p < .001 and the applicability test of factor analysis passed. The cumulative variance explained value was 78.088%, indicating that the five factors extracted could extract 78.088% of the information content out of a total of 29 items.
The integrated degree of integration of the three communities is calculated according to Equation 1. The results of the calculation are shown in Table 5, which shows that the three communities differ significantly in terms of community integration. Rongyue Huayuan has the highest level of community integration, followed by Zhujiang Jiayuan, both of which are relatively harmonious, while Jinrongjie Rongsui Huafu has the lowest level and the highest level of conflict, which is consistent with the qualitative analysis described in the previous section. Among the community dimensions, “living services” has the highest value (93.81), while “community governance” (51.11) has the lowest value; meanwhile, the variance of public services, community governance and community culture is high, indicating that there are significant differences in the evaluation of these three aspects by households in different communities. This further indicates that, although the public services and municipal facilities in the area where the community is located are different and have an impact on the lives of the community’s residents to a certain extent, with the continuous improvement of the community’s living area, the differences in the physical aspects of the community are not significant, but rather the differences in governance and culture of the community are significant and In particular, this has an impact on households’ assessment of their overall satisfaction with life in the community.
Analysis of the Social Integration Situation in Three Communities.
Based on these analysis, this paper tentatively concludes that the “community governance” dimension is the major factor influencing social integration. The subsequent data results and corresponding causes are further analyzed by IPA.
Verify the Conflicts Factors
Based on the five dimensions delineated in the previous section on community research, this study used SPSS to statistically analyse the satisfaction and importance ratings of community households for each indicator, and the 29 questionnaire sub-items were grouped into broad categories through factor analysis. In order to control for consistency in the importance variables of the 29 sub-items, the importance scores in the study were the overall mean of the three PMRCs, which were then analyzed by IPA with the mean satisfaction scores of each community separately, and the specific sub-items and questionnaire results are shown in Table 6.
Questionnaire Sub-Table and Results.
In terms of overall importance ratings, community households give high importance ratings to all dimensions of the community, with the highest mean value of importance being 4.72 for “community culture,” followed by 4.66 for “community governance,” indicating that in modern communities where various types of The highest mean value of importance was 4.72 for “community culture,” followed by 4.66 for “community governance.” In terms of the overall satisfaction rating, the mean value of 4.13 for Rongyue Huayuan with minor conflicts is higher than that of Zhujiang Jiayuan with medium conflicts (3.46) and Rongsui Huafu with high conflicts (3.31), which is in line with the previous ranking of the social integration measure, reflecting that social integration greatly determines the satisfaction rating of community residents.
Meanwhile, unlike the other dimensions, there is a significant difference in the satisfaction ratings of the three communities in terms of “community governance,” where the mean value of satisfaction with community governance is 4.08 for Rongyue Huayuan, 2.96 for Zhujiang Jiayuan, and 2.35 for Rongsui Huafu. The very low scores in the community governance dimension of Rongsui Huafu (1.65) and the regular survey on household satisfaction (1.73), and the community governance dimension of Zhujiang Jiayuan (1.70), which is much lower than the 3.77 of the small conflict Rongyue Huayuan.
Thus, the community governance dimension is the major factor influencing household satisfaction could be verified and its corresponding 10 sub-items are highlighted in the importance-satisfaction IPA analysis chart for the three communities.
The importance-satisfaction IPA analysis chart (Figure 6) of Rongyue Huayuan shows that the 10 items related to community governance are more concentrated in the dominant areas, with only public space accessibility distributed in the repair areas, which are better in terms of public space resource allocation, developer’s operation mode, housing quality, property management, and community security, basically matching the results of field research and interviews. Although there are some residents of the allotments who report that the quality of their housing has deteriorated due to long review procedures, all types of maintenance reports receive timely feedback from the property companies, and therefore do not affect the satisfaction with housing quality.
Importance—satisfaction IPA analysis of Rongyue Huayuan.
The importance-satisfaction IPA analysis chart of Zhujiang Jiayuan (Figure 7) shows that the 10 items related to community governance are more scattered and more concentrated in the opportunity and repair areas. The community is relatively well developed in terms of housing review procedures and community policing, but there is still much room for repair in terms of space for allocation of public space resources, public space accessibility, developer’s mode of operation, housing quality, and property management.
Importance—satisfaction IPA analysis of Zhujiang Jiayuan.
The importance-satisfaction IPA of Rongsui Huafu (Figure 8) shows that the 10 items related to community governance are concentrated in the opportunity and repair areas, with only housing quality in the dominant area, which indicates that the community has significant deficiencies in the allocation of public space resources, public space accessibility, developer’s operation mode, property management and community security, which is also in line with the field research results.
Importance—satisfaction IPA analysis of Rongsui Huafu.
Comparing the importance-satisfaction IPA results of the three communities, we can see that the four sub-categories of public space allocation, public space accessibility, developer’s operation mode and property management differ significantly among the three communities with different levels of conflict, and these sub-categories have a much higher rating than the other two communities in the satisfaction evaluation of Rongyue Huayuan. In particular, the difference in “property management” was as high as 1.79. This study therefore concludes that the dimension of “community governance” is an important factor influencing conflicts over the use of public space, with the quality of property management being the most important factor.
Mechanism Analysis
In China, allocation policies are mainly implemented at the local government level, with the central government not being the producer of goods and services, but playing the role of regulator of agents (Wang, 2018). Based on the previous research and analysis, the paper concludes with a detailed summary and sorting out of the three sample cases from a total of six steps: land grant, planning and construction, housing allocation, market operation, and community governance, as well as from a total of six perspectives: government, developers, residents, properties, neighborhood committees, and community organizations (see Figure 9).
Analysis of the relationship between the various stakeholders in the three communities and the key points of problem creation.
The main problems of the small conflict community, Rongyue Huayuan, arose in the planning and design stage and the allocation of housing. The equal sharing of public resources has also resulted in fewer conflicts between different groups of people.
The medium-conflict community Zhujiang Jiayuan, like the small-conflict community Rongyue Huayuan, also suffers from housing quality problems, but due to the differential management of the property and the tilting of resources toward commercial properties, negative sentiments have been generated on both sides of the residents, so there are still occasional conflicts over the use of space in the community.
In the high-conflict community of Rongsui Huafu, a series of conflicts over the use of public space in the community were triggered by the brutal developer’s reckless disregard for law and order and false sales practices. From the developer’s perspective, the developer will be biased toward profit-seeking behavioral choices. In order to maintain a minimum profit margin, developers have a strong incentive to tamper with the design of the relevant elements of the allotment. The profit-seeking behavior of the developer will lead to a tendency to “arbitrage” between the allocated housing and the commercial housing, mainly in two forms: firstly, the developer raises the nominal cost through false reporting, thereby increasing the actual profit amount while limiting the profit. The second is that in order to increase the overall profit margin of a project, developers may lower the plot ratio of the commercial housing component or use a fence to separate the commercial housing from the allocated housing to increase the sales price of the commercial housing while improving the living comfort of the commercial housing (Wang, 2018). When it came to resolving the conflicts, the property management greatly tilted resources toward commercial properties, adopting differential management measures and even constantly reinforcing the separation fence to meet the requirements of commercial housing residents, which seriously fostered the discontent of the community residents and made the conflicts escalate.
Comparing the three cases, the phenomenon of conflict over the use of public space in PMRCs presents a picture of the interaction between the urban government, the market players and the relevant players in the community in the process of housing policy reform and community governance. It must be acknowledged that, compared to traditional neighborhoods, PMRCs generate more uncertainty in the planning and development process and in the use of public space; and if this uncertainty is not eliminated in time at all stages, eventually all the pressure will be transmitted to the end of community governance at the grassroots level. Alfitri et al. (2014) and Indrawan (2020) have both explored how community governance has been used as an effort to reconcile conflict, suggesting that local wisdom helps to promote regular development of society and a culture of peace in the community. Therefore, a sound community governance system and good property management play an important role in resolving conflicts over the use of public space.
Discussion
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Conflict in Mixed Communities
The PMRCs inevitably change the spatial structure and social relations of traditionally homogeneous communities, and bring about a variety of social integration outcomes. The three examples of mixed communities described above show that people with different housing tenures in mixed communities can exhibit both integration and disintegration. Good mixing depends on healthy social interactions between different income and tenure groups (Galster, 2007). In mixed communities, systematic differences in housing tenure limit social interaction due to language, household composition, local facility use patterns and community participation (Kleit, 2005). The findings of the high conflict community of Rong Sui Hua House confirm these findings. On the one hand, the existence of the “wall of separation” makes the positive interaction between the two sides almost non-existent due to the small intersection of interaction paths caused by the living habits and occupations of the groups. On the other hand, the irregular living habits exhibited by many residents of the resettlement houses have to some extent disturbed the management of the mixed community, leading to the discontent of the commercial residents toward the resettle residents. In addition, the failed management of the community exacerbates the social segregation of the two groups. The opposite is the case in the Rongyue Huayuan community of the minor conflict, where the role of standardized community management and a well-established community service model is positive in improving the management of the mixed community. Integration is not the inevitable, let alone the only, outcome of mixed settlement patterns, and the absence of integration does not negate the role of mixed settlement patterns themselves (Jiang & Gu, 2013). This study makes a theoretical contribution by validating community conflict theory and further explaining the impact of mixing on conflict.
Moreover, but the configuration of physical space in mixed communities has an equally important impact on conflicts over the use of public space, and access to public space within a community can contribute significantly to community interaction. Some studies have provided insights into the impact of spatial configurations on resident perceptions and interactions. For example, Jupp et al. (1999) concluded that communities with different tenures were often located on different streets, resulting in relatively low interaction between residents of different housing tenures by studying ten estates. Silverman et al. (2006) found that most residents had indifferent or positive attitudes toward tenure mix and negative views were more prevalent where tenures were not spatially integrated. These findings were verified through a comparison of high conflict and low conflict communities. The nature of the physical separation in high conflict neighborhoods is one of conflict due to the grabbing of public resources, a wall that not only restricts the interaction of residents on both sides, but also deepens the perceived differences between them, which in turn affects the substantive functioning of “mixed living.” Residents living in spatially integrated communities are generally the most active, while those living in segregated communities are the least active (Kearns et al., 2013). The differences in satisfaction levels between high conflict and low conflict communities along the dimensions of “community governance” and “community culture” also support this view. Based on this, this study provides competing explanations for the spatial dimension of conflict in mixed communities by integrating the perspectives of the urban and rural planning disciplines.
A Guidance of Sustainable Community Governance
The factors that influence conflict over the use of public space in mixed communities are diverse and complex, with “community governance” being one of the most important influences on the resolution of conflict and the sustainable development of mixed communities. Conflict is by its nature a competition for limited resources and a perpetual state of social conflict (Marx, 2000). On the one hand, complex and competing interests have been formed among the relevant stakeholders in mixed communities. On the other hand, residents are increasingly aware that they are the subjects of community management and that their demands for public goods and services are increasingly diverse, while the current demand for public goods and services is relatively inefficient. Good interaction between subjects, good community participation and the supply of public goods and services all point to the proposition of community governance. The lagging grassroots management system is likely to trigger and intensify community conflicts (Wu et al., 2015). In the case of the high conflict Rong Sui Hua House community, government policy provision in resolving conflicts over the use of public space in mixed communities lags behind, with the resident committee taking a passive and peaceful approach when conflicts are triggered, focusing on resolving direct violence, but considering "out of remit" for built partitions. The quality of decision making increases when the diversity of stakeholder interests is expressed through conflicting mandates (Curşeu & Schruijer, 2017) . In contrast, in the small and medium conflict communities, residents with different housing tenure participate in community management through interaction and feedback with resident committees, social organizations and properties, and eventually conflict gives way to negotiation. It can be seen that PMRCs only provide a spatial arena for different groups to interact with each other, but to achieve effective integration of the two groups, external support in terms of policies and institutions, organizational structures and community services and management is needed. From this perspective, this study is relevant to guide the construction of sustainable community governance.
Research Limitations and Perspectives
Social transformation is the structural cause of conflicts over the use of public space in mixed communities. At present, China is in a period of accelerated social transformation and social change, with social differentiation and mobility accelerating, while the social integration mechanism is not yet sound, and urban communities are prone to become a major arena for the outbreak of various conflicts and contradictions. The large number of population movements, old urban villages and the restrictions of China’s previous urban-rural household registration system have created identity differences and hidden boundaries among different people in the city, and these differences affect the perceptions and behaviors of different individuals (Li & Wang, 2020). During the on-site research and interviews, we found that residents of different housing tenures have different perceptions of each other and the actual situation, and that different people may have incompatible values due to individual personality differences. While the impact of group differences and individual characteristics on conflicts over the use of public space has not yet been quantified and analyzed. Therefore, in the future, the differences in the perceptions of different groups, as well as the relationship between individual factors and community conflicts, could be studied in more depth.
On the other hand, the price of housing (rent) in a given area represents different housing tenure and constrains people’s choice of housing, and the PMRCs to some extent exposes the advantaged groups in society to the risk of loss of benefits. The different quality of living offered by the price of commercial housing itself, in addition to the different income, consumption and class of people limited by different family backgrounds, education levels, occupations, etc., lead to different housing choices for different classes based on subjective wishes. It has been shown that advantaged groups in socially mixed environments may be at risk of reduced future employment prospects or income (Musterd et al., 2003; Musterd & Andersson, 2006), and that neighborhood satisfaction among previously advantaged groups may decline after mixed living (Baum et al., 2010). Landlords receive less benefit than social renters and therefore renters have more positive attitudes toward mixed neighborhoods than landlords (Kearns et al., 2013). In this study, the high conflict neighborhoods have the highest house prices and the highest values, with residents competing for more access to public space out of a desire to maximize their interests, and their conflicts are the most intense of the three neighborhoods. It can be seen that the price of housing (rent) in a particular area may also be an important factor in the conflict over the use of public space in mixed communities. While in this study, the price of housing is only seen as a reflection of different housing tenures, and there is still a lack of in-depth analysis and quantitative research on the price of housing. Therefore, future study could also include the price of housing as an influencing factor in the model, and explore the impact of location and price on conflict in mixed communities in more detail.
Conclusion
This study conducted a comparative analysis of three mixed policy-backed residential communities in Guangzhou—Rongyue Huayuan (with low-conflict use of public space), Zhujiang Jiayuan (with moderate-conflict use of public space), and Jinrongjie Rongsui Huafu (with high-conflict use of public space). The influence factors of the conflicts in the abstract use of public space in the three communities were defined through preliminary identification, measurement of social integration, and factor analysis. The results showed that the social integration and satisfaction evaluation of the three communities greatly vary, mainly due to the four items under “community governance,” namely the allocation of public space resources, public space accessibility, the operation mode of the developer, and property management, among which the quality of property management is the most important factor and can be regarded as community governance, and insufficient property management significantly leads to conflicts in the use of public space. This study provided a qualitative and quantitative analysis of public space use conflicts in PMRCs, which complemented the empirical research on global Policy-backed mixed residential community and has both theoretical and practical implications for improving the concept of community conflicts and guiding the construction of sustainable community governance. At the same time, the study also explored the relationship between social transformation and community conflicts in China, which had a theoretical marginal contribution to deepen the understanding of the changing relationship between the state and society during the transition period.
In summary, establishing and improving a social governance system featuring multi-governance is a trend in the new era. Community governance, at the end of policy-backed housing, is not only the window into how the projects work but also an important guarantee of harmonious and secure living after the completion of construction, which is also the top priority of research and governance. The government and neighborhood committees should be more proactive in exploring better allocation models for commercial housing and government-subsidized housing while improving various aspects related to community governance such as planning and acceptance, developer assessment, and property supervision. Only by working together can various parties promote the harmonious and comprehensive development of policy-backed mixed residential communities.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The paper is sponsored by the Guangdong Provence Innovation Project (S20221056123).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability Statement
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.