Abstract
Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has advocated the construction of affordable housing, with the aim of improving the living conditions and the quality of low-income people. Shanghai has built a large number of social housing communities in the suburbs of the city. The population of the central urban area was evacuated by 650,000 and the suburban population increased by nearly 3 million. These communities are also called "large scale communities" because of their large area and the large population. Among the large scale communities in Shanghai, Gucun is one of the first large scale community planning projects. There are four main types of housing: commercial housing, affordable housing, civic relocation housing and peasant relocation housing. Due to the urgent construction time, neglecting the design of public space and the configuration of facilities in the community, the low quality of the space have become unavoidable issues, and it is necessary to gradually renew the community after most residents move into the community. At the same time, this kind of large-scale government-led relocation project has completely changed the living conditions of the inner city residents or villagers. The social network of new residents has been broken, and their personal social capital has been reduced. Residents need to reconstruct social networks in new communities urgently. In the past 20 years, Gucun Daju has been updated from two aspects of policy management and space reconstruction, and it can be intuitively seen its impact on the improvement of residents' lives. However, both in the construction period and the renewal period, planners and community workers have not paid enough attention to the accumulation of personal social capital. At the same time, the construction of large scale communities in China is still continuing, and relevant experience needs to be summarized from completed community projects to guide the construction and renewal of future large scale communities. This study focuses on three questions: Is there a relationship between social capital and community renewal planning? What management factors and spatial factors can influence social capital? For different types of communities, how should we plan for future renew? This research hopes to evaluate the renewal effectiveness of the four communities within Gucun from the perspective of social capital accumulation, explore the relationship between management or space elements and the social capital of residents by constructing hierarchical linear models. The results of the model will be explained in conjunction with residents interviews. Finally, the research will come up with renewal strategies for different types of large scale communities.
