By Niu Sanyuan & Shao Ting, Institute of Market Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.206, 2019 (Total 5706) 2019-11-22

Abstract: On June 19, 2019, the State Council held an executive meeting and it was proposed at the meeting that “according to the strong aspirations of the people, the government needs to speed up the renovation of old residential areas in both urban areas and rural towns and takes it as a major livelihood project and a development task”. The renovation of old residential areas in China is now making some pilot trials in some selected areas and then the renovation project will be carried out in more residential areas. On the basis of drawing on the experience of foreign countries in the renovation of their old residential areas, we conducted relevant field surveys on the renovation projects including the old community area in Jinsong community, Chaoyang district of Beijing. The survey findings show that there are still some institutional and mechanical problems to be addressed in the renovation of old residential areas. For example, the fund-raising channel is yet to be broadened, the access for social capital needs to be relaxed, the renovation projects are hard to make profits, the ownership structure is complex and the utilization of free spaces is difficult to be realized. The problems mentioned above hindered to a large extent the smooth promotion for the renovation project of old residential areas. The future work needs to concentrate on the institutional and mechanical innovations which include the exploration of targeted and classified policies, financing model innovation, the improvement of special fund management, the proper handling of interests between various parties and an enlarged coverage of the renovation areas. Besides, efforts are to be made to flesh out the relevant policy system, and sum up the experience from pilot practices relating to the renovation of old residential communities in urban areas, so as to move steadily forward the renovation projects of old residential communities in urban areas across the board.

Key words: renovation of old residential communities in urban areas, multiple measures, pilot trials