Liang Sisi 梁思思 (Tsinghua University)

Urban renewal in China is increasingly becoming the main front of community governance. I analyze old downtown areas in Wenzhou, where small towns developed from an original village-style layout towards high-density urban districts. In these towns, the residents spontaneously coordinated to build multi-story rowhouse dwellings, a unique urban morphology. Tracing the evolution of self-built housing and the bottom-up renewal of the self-built housing stock, I highlight the collaborative embedding between the community as a self-organizing force and government administration, noting how this unique urban morphology impacted community cohesion. Bottom-up community organization has played an important role, determining the plan and process of housing construction, conducting consultation to solve conflicts, and forming a mutual trust group to carry out relatively effective community governance. The study also discusses the adaptability and potential failure of community self-organization.