Chinese floating population: the reciprocal relationship between rural to urban migrant population and environmental concerns in Shenzhen, China

In the significant migration cities of China, such as Shenzhen, largenumbers of constantly in movement floating population of working settlersis said to have a severe impact on the ecological environment(Li, Zhang & Jiang et al., 2021). Called a ‘malign tumour’ by the populationand the local government, they settle in vastly overcrowded settlements- urban villages where poor standards force the group tomake poor environmental decisions. At the same time, due to theirdire economic situation as urban poor, they become the subject to vulnerabilityin the face of harmful effects of environmental degradation.Poor environmental hygiene of this social group has a connection withtheir alienation from society and lack of integration in decision-making.This social dichotomy between rural migrants and urban citizens is betterunderstood based on past policies such as the hukou household registrationsystem. Current design policies toward ecological situation improvementsupport the hypothesis of floating population exclusion from decision making.Based on the above finding, suggestions for improving the floating population’sposition in the society, hence strengthening their role in addressingenvironmental concerns, are formed. Firstly mixed-income housing as analternative to luxury redevelopments in place of urban villages can worktowards better integration of rural migrant and urban citizens. Additionally,the policies aiming to bring awareness to migrant groups about the environmentshould be implemented together with the integration strategies.AR2A011Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science