The Neighborhood in Three Chinese Cities: Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Taipei

Existing research highlights the importance of differences in age, gender, income and occupation. The role and meaning of neighborhood also vary over time and space, as well as culturally. Most of the recent and relevant research in this area comes from US or European sources where there are sharp contrasts with East Asian cities in terms of residential densities, the nature and history of the built form and in relation to ideas of community and kinship.

This project sets out to explore the extent to which the idea of neighborhood resonates with residents in three Chinese cities, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Taipei. There has been very little systematic research in this area and the larger scale studies which have addressed some of these issues are now considerably outdated. The project will therefore fill a gap in our understanding of contemporary Chinese society in three very different urban settings.

The core of the study is a social survey of individuals spread across three neighborhood types in Hong Kong, three neighborhood types in Guangzhou and three neighborhood types in Taipei. This work will be complimented by census data analyses and qualitative interviews in all three cities. The research is intended to make an important contribution to the wider academic literature on contemporary urban life and to policy debates in Chinese urban society about the quality of life, social belonging and social cohesion.