The challenge of opening up gated communities in Shanghai

ABSTRACT

The Chinese government has recently issued a directive that calls for an end to gated communities. The aim is to halt the construction of new gated communities, and gradually open existing gated communities to the public. This paper examines the challenges of implementing the new directive in Shanghai, where more than 80% of residential communities are gated. The study reveals five types of challenges: (1) site redesign; (2) urban governance; (3) social frictions; (4) legal status; and (5) financial burden. While redesign is a more straightforward, albeit onerous, task, smoothing governance, social, legal, and financial tensions is a greater challenge.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all the interviewees who provided information for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the interest of brevity, this overview does not venture beyond the context of Chinese cities. However, gated communities in other parts of the world have been discussed at length by other papers in the last three decades, and readers are invited to consult Aron (2002), Frantz (2000), Atkinson and Flint (2004), Blakely and Snyder (1997), Coy (2006), Low in Low and Smith (2006), Webster (2001), Goix and Webster (2008), and Renaud and Elena (2015) for additional background information.

2. By contrast, positivist approaches are based on a priori themes, and the collected data is used to show how the theory applies to, or deviates from, the phenomenon under study. But an existing framework was not available in this case because, as noted, no country to date has attempted to open up gated communities.