Who Cashed the Rent Gap? An Alternative Narration of a Shantytown Renovation Project in Nanjing, China

Abstract

Despite research on shantytown redevelopment highlighting socio‐spatial exclusion, the viewpoint frequently disseminated through social media depicts it as a massive wealth‐creation movement in China. This paper intends to provide evidence that evicted residents of a shantytown in Nanjing, China, share a common identity with the encroaching gentrifiers – the housing class. By shaping the housing class, an increasing number of urban residents become micro‐agents of housing financialization, allowing the rent gap to be frequently opened even without producing a ‘higher and better’ space. This enables capital to circulate and accumulate within a broader temporal and spatial scope. However, both the class imagination of the housing class and the financial speculation in the housing market are based on the expectation of continuous price growth. This is unsustainable and leaves the real housing needs out of the housing market, which is detrimental to housing equity.