Education-driven rent-gap in jiaoyufication areas: the case of Nanjing, China
| Dates: | 18 August 2015 |
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| Times: | 11:00 - 12:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Manchester Urban Institute |
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| Who is it for: | Current University students, University staff |
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| Speaker: | Dr. Xiaoling Zhang |
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Gentrification, or the class-based restructuring of cities, is a process that has accrued a considerable historical depth and a wide geographical compass. But despite the existence of what is otherwise an increasingly rich literature, little has been written about connections between schools and the middle-class make-over of inner city districts. This paper addresses that lacuna. It does so in the specific context of the search by well-off middle class parents for places for their children in leading state schools in the inner city of Nanjing, one of China’s largest urban centres, and it examines a process that we call here jiaoyufication. Jiaoyufication involves the purchase of an apartment in the catchment zone of a leading elementary school at an inflated price. Gentrifying parents generally spend nine years (covering the period of elementary and junior middle schooling) in their apartment before selling it on to a new gentrifying family at a virtually guaranteed good price without even any need for refurbishment. Jiaoyufication is made possible as a result of the commodification of housing alongside the increasingly strict application of a catchment zone policy of school enrolment. We show in this paper how jiaoyufication has led to the displacement of an earlier generation of mainly working class residents. We argue that the result has been a shift from an education system based on hierarchy and connections to one based on territory and wealth, but at the same time a strangely atypical sclerosis in the physical structure of inner city neighbourhoods. We see this as a variant form of gentrification.
Dr. Xiaoling Zhang joined City University of Hong Kong in the winter of 2012. Prior academic roles have been at the University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She has written widely on sustainable urbanization and urban redevelopment in China, speculative real estate developers, land use planning/policy and gentrification. She has also engaged in environmental studies, particularly in micro-level management in real estate enterprises, competitiveness for real estate developers/home builders, their behavior/ actions in contributing to social responsibility/sustainable development, energy policy and renewable & sustainable energy use in built environment. She won the Outstanding Paper Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2011.
Speaker
Dr. Xiaoling Zhang
Organisation: City University of Hong Kong
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