Affordable Housing at Risk: Urban Villages of Shanghai

The Shanghai government has been ramping up efforts to provide affordable housing for migrant workers. In 2024, it pledged to house 30,000 migrant workers in complexes with monthly rents between 500 and 1000 RMB (China Daily). This is designed so that migrant workers would not spend more than 15% of their monthly income on rent (China Daily). Most apartments in this housing program are for groups of 4, a significant improvement from the dormitories for security guards Mr Ni described in his interview, which often pack over 8-10 in a room on bunk beds. Complete with subsidized services for haircuts and laundry, these residential communities may offer a new model for Chinese cities seeking to provide more quality affordable housing options for migrant workers.

Nonetheless, in their current form, this project does not address the most significant housing challenges facing the migrant community. In the questionnaire of over 200 migrant workers I conducted, 64% chose to spend less than 10% of their income on rent — even then, 58% of respondents still indicated “cost” as their major housing concern. This suggests that many migrant workers are still dissatisfied with the cost of housing despite spending only a small proportion of their income on rent. This raises questions over whether the government’s affordable housing program is affordable enough to be attractive to migrant workers.

Image: single-room flat available for rent (photo by author).

If not in government housing, where do migrant workers find affordable housing in Shanghai? During my interview with Ms Han, who works in the housekeeping industry, she wrote down the addresses of a few urban villages on the outskirts of Shanghai where migrant workers tend to live. The next day, I visited the urban village she lives in, Qianjing village. It is a sprawling (and curiously gated) community of self-built housing between occasional plots of agricultural land. Mr Fan, who works as a security guard in Zhangjiang, showed me the place he rented in Qianjing village with his wife — it was a single room attached to a larger house (which itself was divided between numerous families).

It was surprisingly quiet when I arrived at Qianjing in the late afternoon. Mr Fan warned me not to be fooled — within a few hours, when migrant workers begin returning home from work, the narrow one-way roads will become filled with electric scooters. Qianjing village appeared like a typical Chinese urban village — unregulated and unplanned; its spatial layout was at times random, with alleyways branching off in different directions. While most houses seemed to be falling into disrepair, there were notable improvements in the public environment with newly paved roads and even scenery-upgrade projects along the neighborhood river.

Image: passing through a serene Qianjing in the late afternoon (photo by author).

Crossing to the other side of Qianjing, I came across a large plot of vacant land that lay between the village and the main thoroughfare nearby. In one corner, a parking lot was being constructed; however, for the most part, the land had become overgrown. Then, I remembered that Ms Han had mentioned to me that the first three rows of housing beside the road in Qianjing village were demolished. She wondered whether this was because the government decided they were becoming an eyesore. The migrant workers residing in these houses had no choice but to move further away to regions like Qingpu, Chongming, and Nanhui. Seeing the remnants of a neighborhood that used to provide shelter to so many people made me frustrated — it seemed that the government would rather allow the land to become overgrown than maintain affordable housing options for the migrant community.  

Image: small alleys in Qianjing village. In China, buildings located so close together are often called "shaking hand doors" and pose a serious fire hazard (photo by author).

While the living conditions of urban villages are far from perfect, they are better thought of as being in a symbiotic relationship with cities (Lin et al.). Historically, they emerged as cities expanded and swallowed up agricultural land — due to the high demolition costs, the village settlements remained and gradually became embedded into the urban fabric. Qianjing village was a bit rough around the edges, but in a city where affordable housing is so elusive, it may be one of the only viable options for many migrant workers. Instead of eliminating these affordable residential communities, perhaps governments should seek to protect them instead, allowing them to become accessible and welcoming first steps for the thousands of migrants that come to Shanghai each year.

Sources

Chen, Ziyan. “Affordable Housing Increased for Migrant Workers.” China Daily, 12 Sep. 2024. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202409/12/WS66e2469ea3103711928a78c9.html.

Lin, Yanliu, De Meulder, Bruno, and Wang, Shifu. Rural Migrants in Urban China. Routledge, 2013.