Urbanizing villages are a common phenomenon among cities in southern China such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen. These villages have played an important role in China’s city development, offering migrant workers affordable housing and employment opportunities and making it possible for them to accumulate social and economic capital in the city. Nonetheless, the villages have become a unique settlement for temporary residents, contributing to challenges relative to public hygiene, public security, and image of the city. Many municipal governments, therefore, have demolished and upgraded urbanizing villages by means of urban renewal or urban redevelopment.

Given the population of nearly 174 million migrant workers in 2019, integration into the city of their residence will continue to be a challenge for many municipal governments. Based on the research on six urbanizing villages in Guangzhou’s Luogang District (now part of Huangpu District), authors of this article argue that the state-led strategy to redevelop urbanizing villages has created more challenges than those it intended to address with regard to community building and community government. First, migrant workers often find it harder to develop their sense of belonging in the highly formalized space as created by the redevelopment of urban villages, a space different from the former one that was permeated by a spirit of self-governance. Second, redevelopment has widened income disparity not just between migrant workers and indigenous villagers, but also among the villagers. Third, the development of self-governance has been restricted by the state-led community building, a challenge that has led to some very serious unintended consequences in many developing countries.

Authors of this article argue that it is high time government leaders changed their existing strategy to redevelop urbanizing villages. They need to emphasize ‘informal’ elements in the villages and leverage villagers’ self-governing capacities. They also need to rethink the function of the countryside. That is, the countryside functions not only as a safety valve for those returnee migrant workers, but more importantly, as a place where young people’s material, social and cultural needs can be met. If this is the case, there is no need for them to leave the countryside to make a living.