Over the past three decades, China has shocked the world by its unprecedented process of urbanization under which more than 400 million rural peasants have become urban residents. Coming along with this unprecedented process of urban transformation has been the massive and swift conversion of many rural villages into “new urban neighborhoods (cungaiju shequ)”. Within these new urban neighborhoods, those self-organized grassroots organizations, namely Villagers’ Committees and rural cooperatives, have been re-organized into Residents’ Committees and Shareholding Cooperatives respectively. All villagers legally become urban residents without having to move to cities as the local governments have changed their hukou from “agricultural” to “non-agricultural” status. However, these new urban residents are different from their counterparts in conventional urban neighborhoods, given their continual reliance on the traditional, collective institutions and village assets. In this context, how to ensure effective development of these new communities under rapid transition and to strengthen local capacity building are presenting formidable challenges to grassroots governance transformation in these new urban neighborhoods.

This workshop aims at seeking theoretical and methodological reflections on community research in urbanizing China. It will cover several main themes as follows:

• Property Rights Reforms and Shareholding Cooperatives
• Grassroots Elections and Democracy
• Village Revival and Redevelopment
• Institutional Capacity building for Community Governance

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