Urban Village

Urban villages have proliferated in almost every Chinese city as consequence of the urban sprawl commanded by local governments, sometimes with the purpose of financing their budgets. They expose the imperfections of the double property system, where the government has a monopoly of the primary land market. The term “urban village” (chengzhongcun - 城中村）refers to the situation where the city ends up encircling the village. Most of the farmland has been expropriated and urbanized, and only the ..