From Chicago to Shenzhen, via Birmingham

Abstract

The ownership of residential property has always been a focus for urban conflict and a key source of advantage and disadvantage-in terms of location and social status. Park`s Chicago was a city conceived of as having a hierarchy of housing situations with a distinct spatial pattern. Rex and Moore`s Birmingham of the 1960s developed these ideas through a Weberian conception of housing classes and greater attention to institutional gatekeepers. This chapter argues that their argument that the competition for housing contributes to a particular form of social stratification finds new resonance in the contemporary Chinese city. The narrative traverses over a century in considering the ways in which the competition for housing in cities of migrants involves common processes but also quite distinct experiences and outcomes. Over space and time, the meaning of home ownership has changed as has the nature and role of zones of transition for migrants and those on the social margins. The ownership of residential property has always been a focus for urban conflict and a key source of advantage and disadvantage-in terms of location and social status. Park`s Chicago was a city conceived of as having a hierarchy of housing situations with a distinct spatial pattern. Rex and Moore`s Birmingham of the 1960s developed these ideas through a Weberian conception of housing classes and greater attention to institutional gatekeepers. This chapter argues that their argument that the competition for housing contributes to a particular form of social stratification finds new resonance in the contemporary Chinese city. The narrative traverses over a century in considering the ways in which the competition for housing in cities of migrants involves common processes but also quite distinct experiences and outcomes. Over space and time, the meaning of home ownership has changed as has the nature and role of zones of transition for migrants and those on the social margins.