1. Introduction
In the ‘Anthropocene’, unprecedented urban expansion and regeneration have gradually taken over the planet with the proliferation of massive development projects [
1]. However, negative outcomes are criticized nowadays because of profit-oriented development that has implemented land acquisition and demolition on indigenous people, resulting in severe injuries upon housing and neighborhood conditions [
2,
3]. Residents, particularly those of rural communities on marginal land, have been forced to relocate [
4], and subsequent socio-spatial restructuring has taken place in the displacement of relocatees who are struggling in terms of land loss and rights deprivation in peripheral urban China [
5,
6]. Involuntary displacement, in this way, could cause severe emotional trauma [
7], and further social, economic and affective losses with stress and impoverishment [
8].
On the affective level, place attachment of residents is deeply challenged due to development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR). People are more or less attached to the places where they live, and when peculiar meaning is imbued in specific places, attachment develops immanently as a multifaceted affective manifestation [
9,
10]. When explored by differences in age, income, education,
hukou status, length of residence, etc. [
11,
12], place attachment has been tightly connected to daily human experience and perceptions of residents inside the neighborhoods and cities [
13,
14]. In the new era of market-oriented reforms, housing commodification and land financialization, modern China finds no way to dispense with intensified DIDR [
15], and therefore, placelessness or displacement driven by urban regeneration projects will not be rare in the future. This diminishes the intimate human-place relationship with which individuals manifest an affective and cognitive experienced bond to the settings of particular environment [
16,
17], or the ‘
genius loci’ widely identified from the ‘characteristic’ meanings of more than an abstract architecture/place connected with human beings [
18], especially injuring the social-psychological construction of attachment after resettlement.
Housing usually occupies the lives of residents in China deep down [
19], so when resettlement happens, the original living circumstance, neighborhood structure and social networks are damaged more or less to impact on their residential satisfaction [
4,
20]. Mostly focused on Western middle-class residential areas [
21], residential satisfaction is defined as the perceived differences between individuals’ real and desired housing situations, and to what extent their functional needs are satisfied [
22]. Recently, a substantial number of studies have shed light on the influences of housing types on residential satisfaction such as public housing [
19], affordable apartments [
23], gated communities [
24] and urban villages [
21]. With further studies focusing on social cohesion and security, more attention has been paid to psychological impacts of social attachment, affective belongingness and bonding on residential satisfaction [
25,
26]. Fleury-Bahi et al. [
27] interpreted that the sense of identification tended to influence certain aspects of satisfaction, while Chen et al. [
28] found a significant response of environmental satisfaction on attachment building. Furthermore, the physical separation and displacement after development-induced resettlement are usually instant and tough. However, this is more durable and profound in subsequent socio-spatial reconstruction and emotional fluctuation for residents [
29]. Thus, it is important to pay more attention to the social-psychological impacts of innermost attachment on residential satisfaction.
When we concentrate our insights upon less-discussed but highly intricate urban regeneration in peripheral urban China, resettlement and redevelopment complicate residents’ linkages to their living places, which may affect how satisfied they feel and how well they are contented with higher needs [
3,
30]. Most development-induced projects dominated by the Chinese government nowadays can be divided into two major patterns: in-situ resettlement where housing is often retained as urban villages on villagers’ plots of land (
zhaijidi), and relocated resettlement, which is compensated by public housing, property right conversion or temporary residence waiting for moving back [
31]. Given such pattern differences, it is necessary for scientific investigation to decode residents’ place attachment and residential satisfaction at the neighborhood level [
32], especially from the lens of innermost perception and neighboring regeneration in peripheral urban areas. Moreover, it is also an essential task under the scientific frontier of a prevailing transdisciplinary field as the Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development, to build more sustainable neighborhoods and a harmonious society after DIDR.
Therefore, this article aims to fill the aforementioned gaps by untangling the differentiation of development-induced resettlement on two different kinds of resettled neighborhoods in peripheral urban Guangzhou, China. It will be conducive, on the one hand, to take a step forward to unveil the social-psychological changes of place attachment and residential satisfaction during the process of resettlement under different patterns at the neighborhood level. On the other hand, it is also necessary to provide effective and sustainable implications for urban governance in the context of large-scale urban regeneration, especially in cities like Guangzhou, where frequent deconstruction and reconstruction of landscapes and even cultures prevail. Fifteen years after relocation, distinctive place (re)attachment and residential satisfaction of residences themselves within different neighborhoods have been established and stabilized to some extent. The two chosen neighborhoods, one being an urban village and the other being subsidized housing, are also the most resettled and debated types in urban China [
33]. Based on semi-structural surveys and in-depth interviews, attempts are made to answer the following questions: (a) What are the features of place attachment and residential satisfaction of residents after resettlement? (b) To what extent does place attachment of residents to the neighborhoods influence their residential satisfaction? (c) How different are the resettled neighborhoods considering the two different resettlement patterns above?
The remainder of this article is structured as follows. First, we review the relevant literature and progress in place attachment, residential satisfaction, DIDR and also their connections. Next, we briefly introduce the research design and the case. A measurable analysis combined with SPSS software is then conducted with statistics analysis to reveal the results of the two resettled neighborhoods. Finally, we conclude by examining the impacts of place attachment on residential satisfaction, followed by policy implications.
5. Conclusions
While urban expansion and regeneration have become predominant in contemporary China, development-induced displacement and resettlement are usually utilized as a governmental strategy for land expropriation and development in peripheral urban areas, which inevitably imposes direct impacts on indigenous people functionally, socially and psychologically. The perceptions and feelings of those resettled on their human-place relationships and life satisfactions deserve more explanation, especially considering resettlement pattern differences. Therefore, based on a case study of two neighborhoods resettled by the construction of HEMC in Guangzhou, this study focuses on the perceived place attachment and residential satisfaction of residents after resettlement, and the possible impacts of the former on the latter. With special attention paid to social-psychological aspects, it fills in the gaps of existing research by highlighting the performance of two different resettlement patterns including in-situ and relocated resettlement, through which some sustainable and effective applications could be developed.
It is found that residents in this case have built strong place attachment basically through values of utility and symbolic identification in both neighborhoods, but there is a lack of deeper affective bonds. For in-situ UVs in HEMC, the residents self-identify relatively strongly through intimate clan-kinship and stable reciprocity with migrants, which is greatly affected by the process of studentification. The intricate and uneven population composition of the UVs hinders the innermost attachment of residents to some extent. In contrast, in the relocated GWNV with more ‘isolated’ neighborhood environment, place attachment of residents is much higher based on the remaining ‘acquaintance society’ consisting of pre-resettled indigenous villagers. However, there is still a lack of intimate mutual assistance and affective cherishing. When it comes to residential satisfaction, nearly 70% of the sampling residents favor the construction of HEMC. Similarly, residents are more satisfied with their residences in GWNV through reasonable compensation and noticeable upgradation, with which they are able to make preferable adjustment for higher-level pursuits with pleasing residential conditions. However, those living in the UVs became less satisfied on the basis of the informalized and hasty in-situ urbanization, and thus they are thriving for status upgrades for a better life.
With the consideration of resettlement patterns by DIDR, significant differences between the two neighborhoods are found both in place attachment and residential satisfaction. Such differences lie in the better attachment and satisfaction of residents in GWNV than those in the UVs. The heterogeneity of population structure of the UVs results in the corresponding significant differences in terms of age, hukou status, income, length of residence, housing ownership and occupation on PA and RS within the neighborhood. Among them, elderly people with local hukou who have lived for more than 10 years in self-owned housing tend to express higher place attachment and residential satisfaction. Residents in GWNV mainly differ in hukou status and those indigenous people can rely on their original township network for reattachment and life satisfaction building, which sets obstacles for migrants who gradually get ‘marginalized’ by ‘dominant’ locals. However, at the same time, 45% of the researched residents still show strong relocation intention as they are discontented with the hasty-urbanized ‘enclave neighborhood’.
In this case, residential satisfaction of our residents is significantly affected by their place dependence, social bonding and place identification while no significance is shown in affective connection, indicating that the localized functional dependence and social interaction of residents become the most fundamental elements in impacting residential satisfaction. Moreover, monthly income is also found to be an important determinant of residential satisfaction. Compared to GWNV, the PA of the residents under in-situ resettlement (UVs) is found to exert much stronger impacts on their RS. Based on the hereditary land, the functional dependence has greatly contributed to self-regeneration, and residents being well-satisfied after resettlement. However, a rare exception is found in GWNV for social bonding, indicating that internal social-attached interactions have considerable impacts on better life satisfaction. As an ‘isolated enclave’ neighborhood in peripheral urban Guangzhou, the sociocultural network maintenance becomes essential for the (re)construction of residential satisfaction of the resettled people.
With special attention paid to resettlement pattern differences, this study may contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the attachment and satisfaction of resettled people against the booming DIDR during the process of urban regeneration in urban China. When analyzing the consequences of resettlement, especially those caused by those government-driven development projects, more attention should be paid to the perception of residents, their social-psychological experiences and the differences in resettlement patterns. This would provide a new but imperative lens for expanding the depth of the current study. In this study, we found that, although complaints and dissatisfaction are apparent in residents from resettled neighborhoods, the relatively high place attachment and residential satisfaction have been positively achieved in both neighborhoods after resettlement. Thus, it might be inappropriate to prejudge the outcomes of resettlement without long-enough observation and consideration of residents themselves. Moreover, place attachment and its impacts on residential satisfaction differ between different groups of people from neighborhoods of different resettlement patterns. Actually, the attachment of residents to their neighborhoods has gone far beyond physical places, even after DIDR. Instead, it has developed into their ‘genius loci’ embedded with place meanings on the basis of the material and social environment to build satisfaction, which differentiates between different resettled kinds of neighborhoods, especially those under on-going urban regeneration.
For the construction of a more sustainable and harmonious society, new pathways of urban governance should be applied to enable residents to make cautious decision making while taking resettlement pattern differences and their impacts into full account. Firstly, sociocultural and psychological (re)attachment like social bonding and affective connection deserves to be well developed and integrated, particularly in terms of caring for vulnerable groups inside plural, uneven neighborhoods, including rural migrants, temporary floating population and those unfamiliar with local dialect. Furthermore, effective resettlement assistances should be provided for the ‘outsiders’ without local hukou or housing property to help them develop stronger residential satisfaction in a self-regeneration way. Besides, multifaceted support of the promotion of rootedness, social status and sociocultural network are also indispensable. Last but not least, different but tailored strategies and policies are imperative in considering resettlement pattern differences for the corresponding neighborhoods. For example, there should be better management of the heterogeneity and informality with appropriate ‘benefits’ from surrounding projects towards deeper social integration for in-situ urbanized neighborhoods and a dispersal of physical and psychological isolation with all-round services and developing opportunities for relocated ‘enclaves’. The lessons we have learned from this case might become effective experiences for other resettlement transformations in cities going through urban regeneration and the upcoming intensified DIDR like Guangzhou.