1. Introduction
Since the market-oriented reform that commenced in 1978, China has undergone rapid industrialization and urbanization. Concurrently, China’s urban society has experienced drastic changes [
1]. Describing social changes in urban China has been undertaken by academics from both China and the Western world. Within such studies, civic engagement has been adapted as the terminology for observing urban social changes, including social cohesion, social capital, and civic participation, within a context of the state’s openness to citizens’ civic actions [
2,
3,
4]. Academically, civic engagement is highly connected to urban civic development at the urban neighborhood scale, and is commonly defined as citizens’ collective awareness and participation in achieving common goods [
2,
3,
4,
5]. In seeking to achieve common goods for local communities, civic engagement is distinguished from other social actions [
2].
Some empirical studies have suggested the growth of citizens’ civic engagements in urban China, with the state’s openness to citizen participation [
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14]. In the last three decades, hierarchical state authorities have established specialized petition systems (
Xinfang), various public hearing practices, and even village-level direct elections, as responses to citizens’ empowerment and civic engagement [
12,
13,
14]. These systems and practices have proved effective in addressing citizens’ non-political civic engagements, such as collective disputes with other stakeholders, collective claims of public goods, and civic environmental issues [
14,
15,
16]. However, those political civic engagements, which primarily desired democratic reform, were mostly forbidden and even classified as illegal actions, as they represented ideological threats to China’s one-party political system and its urban social stability [
15,
16,
17].
Significantly, the emergence of citizens’ awareness, with regard to protecting citizenship and legalized rights, has been widely acknowledged as the driving force for increased civic engagements at the urban neighborhood scale [
9,
11,
12]. In addition to the existence of a range of studies that have been developed at the urban neighborhood scale, others have been developed at the city scale, and these have sought to illustrate aspects of civic development in China’s cities [
5,
13,
14,
15,
16]. None of these studies has illustrated the detailed civic developments amongst different Chinese cities, or the similarities and differences that exist. Numerous western studies have stated the different civic developments that have occurred among urban neighborhoods and cities within different socioeconomic contexts; many have had an especial focus on the differentiated levels of citizens’ civic awareness and behavior [
16,
17,
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23]. In order to explore China’s urban civic development, it is rational to develop such studies to include both city and urban neighborhood scales. This is for two reasons. First, within the period of market-oriented reform, the hierarchical structure of China’s urban administration (with strong sociologist ideology) has been transformed so that there now exists hierarchical differentiations amongst China’s cities [
24,
25,
26]. Officially and academically, those hierarchical differentiations among China’s cities are commonly classified as first-tier cities (mostly megacities, in geographic terms), second-tier cities (mostly large cities or big cities in geographic terms), third-tier cities (mostly medium-sized cities in geographic terms), and other lower-tier cities (including small cities and big towns). It is worth noticing that the different-tiers reflect the hierarchical differentiations of urban socioeconomic developments among cities; this suggests further different levels of civic development among different-tier cities [
24,
25,
26,
27,
28]. Second, the urban neighborhoods, as the typical units of analysis in studying urban civic developments, are highly affected by the differentiated urban civic developments that have occurred among different-tiers cities. This further impacts upon individual’s differentiated civic awareness and their behavior [
16,
17,
18,
29,
30,
31,
32,
33,
34].
Consequently, the general research aim of this paper is to explore the current urban civic developments within Chinese different-tier cities, through the perspective of collective civic petitions that have occurred in urban neighborhoods (as the targeted petitions in this paper). Within this research, three research questions are answered. The first research question is about how urban civic development was processed according to the changes of those targeted petitions among two cities. The second research question is about how neighborhood contexts and petition contexts were internally correlated to the existence of those targeted petitions. The third research question is about how those targeted petitions were spatially distributed within the cities.
6. Research Findings
Based on the typology of all the targeted petitions in the two cities, the series paralleling analysis presented several similarities and differences pertaining to civic engagements in the two cities’ respective urban neighborhoods. These similarities were qualified by reflecting upon citizens’ raised civic awareness and behavior with regard to advancing contemporary civic developments in urban China. The differences that were found through the analysis may well illustrate the existence of different levels of urban civic development between different-tier cities that possess socioeconomic differences.
6.1. Advancing Urban Civic Engagements
As indicated through the numerical analysis, targeted petitions were the most numerous type of petition in the two cities. At the city scale, the increased number and proportion of targeted petitions suggests that urban neighborhoods have been the main civic territories for raising civic engagements in both cities [
36,
53]. This is similar to the findings of some western empirical studies about civic development and socioeconomic changes with regard to urban neighborhoods’ size, and the effects of increasing residential density caused through rapid urbanization [
53]. At the individual urban neighborhood scale, the growing trend of appealing collective civic petitions witnessed a consistent decrease in ‘single’ and ‘non-civic’ petitions. However, the differences in the proportions of targeted petitions suggest that there has been greater advancement of citizens’ civic engagements in the second-tier city, Nanjing City, than the third-tier city, Huai’an City. Corresponding to this different level of civic development, the differences that emerged with regard to the comparisons between petition types also reflected a more advanced civic development in Nanjing city. These research findings indicate a general growing trend of citizens appealing collective civic petitions in urban China, and certain different levels of urban civic development between these two different-tier cities.
6.2. Internal Mechanisms within the Typology
The statistical analysis presented the existence of internal mechanisms about the correlations among petition types and the various contexts in individual targeted petitions. To the petition type as the dependent variable, the correlation models stated the similar correlations from two independent variables, including ages of individual urban neighborhoods and households involved in individual petitions. As the territorial context, the ages of individual urban neighborhoods reflected the social networks among neighbors within long-term acquaintances; and, as the petition context, the households involved reflected the citizens’ trust and reciprocities in making collective decisions [
3,
4]. Consequently, these internal mechanisms, among two independent variables and petition types, presented the strong application of social capital in citizens’ collective civic resistances [
2,
3,
4,
5]. Further, the logistic regression model suggested that the hybrid petitions had occurred less in the urban neighborhoods with ages over 20 years (pre-1998) or less than 10 years (after 2009). This correlation might indicate the different conditions of neighbors’ social capital within Chinese urban housing developments, with high heterogeneity in the renewed old neighborhoods (pre-1998) and new neighborhoods (after 2009). Besides that, there existed significant correlation among petition types and counterparties in the targeted petitions in Nanjing city, but no such correlation existed in Huai’an. This correlation further suggested the more advanced civic development in the second-tier city, as citizens had more oriented civic awareness and behaviors against certain counterparties.
6.3. Spatial Concentration and Agglomerations
As indicated in the spatial mapping, all targeted petitions tended to be located in the urban inner core areas and inner fringe areas of the two cities with similar urban spatial structure. In one aspect, these spatial concentrations can be related to Chinas’ urban housing developments within the similar urban renewal procedures in the radical forms from inner core area to inner fringe area. Moreover, by cross-tabulating petition types and petition counterparties, the mapping results suggest that certain spatial agglomerations exist in the urban inner core areas and the inner fringe areas of the two cities. These spatial agglomerations further suggest the existence of potential spillover effects among individual targeted petitions. However, with regard to the spatial agglomerations, there were differences in their number and composition between the two cities; there were significantly more in Nanjing City. In addition, there was only evidence of spatial agglomerations of claim petitions against state authorities in Nanjing City.
7. Conclusions
With typological analysis applied to those targeted petitions in years 2013 to 2015, this paper suggests several important research findings with regard to improving urban civic developments in two different-tier Chinese cities. The collective civic petitions had been increasingly and widely applied by citizens in resistance against imprints from other stakeholders, including state authorities, RDs, and PMCs. Urban neighborhoods had been the main civic territory in advancing urban civic developments. Some petition contexts presented significant correlations to the different petition types, and those correlations indicated the application of social capital in citizens’ civic engagements [
4,
5,
6]. Similar spatial agglomerations, with regard to targeted petitions, include protest petitions against state authorities and hybrid petitions against PMCs, which emerged in urban inner core areas and inner fringe areas. However, these identified differences reflected different levels of advancing civic development between two Chinese different-tier cities. These differences were also consistent with some empirical research findings about differences between civic engagements pertaining to different socioeconomic contexts [
6,
20,
35].
The research findings from this paper also raise some new research subjects and directions pertaining to contemporary China’s urban civic development. In one aspect, in subjects of urban studies, studying the efficacy of civic engagement could be enable observation of the social changes with highly socioeconomic homogeneity in individual urban neighborhoods [
19,
30,
34,
54]. Another aspect, in the subjects of urban political and social studies, is the increasing trends of applying collective civic petitions against state authorities which indicate more opportunities on observing the changes in citizens’ participation in urban China, as climbing the ladder of citizen participation, within the socialist states’ bounded administrations on civic engagements [
1,
17,
18,
55].