- Zhongguancun Cottage Redevelopment: Prospects for Low-Middle Income Housing   425 kb by    Zhou, Jinnan & White, Tamara | pippig@163.com    Short Outline This paper explores potential low-middle income housing solutions, proposed for trial application in the dynamic and rapidly developing Haidian District, Beijing. Proposed solutions include forms of development regulation and public-private partnership that are new to the Chinese planning context, as well as leveraging existing programs and funds. Abstract This paper explores potential low-middle income housing solutions, proposed for trial application in the Chunguancun redevelopment area of Haidian District, Beijing. Chunguancun is a dynamic and strategically important growth area, with steep competition for land uses and redevelopment funds. The proposed low-middle income housing solutions meet these challenges by incorporating new forms of development regulation and public-private partnership, as well as leveraging existing programs and funds. Beijing is a rapidly growing city, with an average annual population growth rate around 3.8 percent. While initial growth meant outward expansion, there is now a major focus on infill and redevelopment, with an emphasis on facilitating and spatially accommodating economic development activities, and improving quality of life. Some areas of the city, including parts of Chunguancun, are already overbuilt and include sites on environmentally sensitive lands. In these areas, the city government wishes to insert parks, public services and amenities, and improve connectivity and emergency vehicle access through road development. Ambitious low-middle income housing goals have also been set at the city-wide level (Beijing Municipal Commission). Within Beijing’s tight land market, low-middle income housing is in high demand and low supply. The city’s housing prices have skyrocketed, despite ample government attempts to curb speculation and cap rising prices. Several government programs address low-middle income housing (both rental and ownership models), however results are minimal when compared with levels of demand. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has called upon local authorities to innovate new ways of financing and expanding low-middle income housing, in line with the country’s history of “gradualist and experimental” housing reforms, based in “trial and error” (Deng et al, 2011). Chinese housing policy has reached a critical stage in which free market mechanisms must be balanced with growing public needs. Furthermore, long-standing policies on collectively owned lands must be revised to reflect their current role in city housing markets. As mentioned, a number of low-middle income housing solutions applicable to the Chunguancun Area will be presented and discussed. These recommendations were developed through a review of applicable area plans, including proposed area redevelopment plans; a review of literature on China’s low-middle income housing programs and funds; a review of related international good practices in affordable housing; semi-structured interviews with experts in Chinese low-middle income housing development and development finance; discussions with sub-district leaders, and; site visits. While tailored to the complexities of the Chunguancun Area and the particularities of the Chinese development context, the proposed strategies are more broadly relevant to any growing city that seeks to improve its affordable housing stock within a predominantly market-driven paradigm. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper