Article

Entrepreneurialism, commodification and creative destruction: a model of post-modern community development

Since the 1990 s, the restructuring of the global economic system has ushered in worldwide ‘post-productivist transitions’ (PPTs) and triggered development in rural areas and agricultural adjustments for meeting the requirements of urban populations to consume ‘rurality’. While adaptive development of rural areas has occurred in Western countries, it is hardly possible in China, where strict land conversion controls over rural land exist. In China, an increasing need for construction in rural areas results in the overexploitation of existing built-up land. Taking the fragmented rights of homestead land and collectively operated built-up land into consideration, the deterioration of natural and built environments becomes inevitable and damages the sustainability of PPTs. By investigating two PPT cases in China, this study argues that land conversion controls over collective-owned rural land have stimulated denser, at times illegal, development in villages. The study also contends that fragmented use rights hamper environment-friendly development, possibly ending PPTs, as happened in Xiaozhou Village in Guangzhou. Given the practices in Wanfu Village in Chengdu, policies that end land conversion controls and encourage assembly could partially solve the problem by allowing sustainable rural land development. Preparing space for urban populations in a sustainable way helps avoid the illegal redevelopment of villages and protects the area’s rurality, allowing PPTs to evolve. This study advocates for institutional adjustment when designing a path for developing PPTs.

This paper examines the commodification process initiated through a series of state-led programs and questions the sustainable public goods provision in rural China. We challenge the unilateral understanding of spontaneous commodification by the profit-seeking community, and argue that the influence exerted by the Chinese government cannot be ignored. It is found that a preliminary partnership among the state, private investors and villagers was formed to create a hot-spring village called Tangjiajia in suburban Nanjing. The reconstruction was the result of a state-led renovation of the built environment, but it also catalyzed villager entrepreneurship and boosted community consensus. Regarding the public goods provision, stakeholders in the village now enjoy high-quality facilities and services provided by the government for free but have failed to foster reciprocal cooperation to replenish the subtractability of the rural commons. We claim that state intervention is temporal but not a cure-all. A pricing mechanism for the sustainable delivery of public goods is urgently needed in the community. The state-led commodification has undermined the previous low-level equilibrium of rural governance. From the stance of rural sustainability, only self-organization of the rural community can solve the dilemma.

Peri-urban regions retain important natural resources and provide services essential to human well-being. Yet they are under unprecedented threat globally from development. Peri-urban regions collectively constitute a vital global natural and human resource yet no international agreement recognises their value. Their future is bound up with national, regional and local priorities resulting in their incremental loss. An understanding of peri-urban theory can contribute to a recognition by decision makers of their long-term value. Theory can underpin practice by providing a consistent framework to policy and decision-making. It can help resolve whether to protect or develop peri-urban regions by contributing to an understanding of the relationships between agriculture, biodiversity, water, landscapes and social and economic development. It can also explain the place of peri-urban spatial issues and the role of governance along with how techniques such as how urban growth boundaries and green belts relate to metropolitan growth and land supply.

How to deal with the transformation of place in the face of global capitalism is marked by many active debates. This paper dives into the transformation of the city of Solvang in California, from an agricultural village to a tourist destination. One way to analyse the process is to treat it as commodification, where values produced in places are being turned into exchangeable commodities. What results from such critical studies of capitalism too often result in apathy rather than positive action, it tends to deal less with ‘the real world’ than thought experiments about possible worlds. Another approach connects to the relational turn and the application of assemblage theory in studies of the dialectic process between economy and society. Critics question the ability of also assemblage theory to point us towards what should be done. We end up seeing assemblages everywhere, but then what? This paper makes the case for an alternative positive critical geography, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari (1972, 1987) and their conceptualization of desire as an active and positive force. Policies should depart from already existing subjectivities that have an interest in their social mileu and have a desire to make it even better. This is the appropriate ground for political engagement, the place to start if we want to contribute to a different future. An analytical scheme for a positive critical geography is presented and “tested out” in a case study of Solvang, where a “real” place continuously emerge.