Examining the long-term social legacy of mega urban projects - A comparison of Shanghai and Dujiangyan City

Defined as costly large scale urban development schemes with substantive impacts on the economy, society and environment (Fainstein, 2008), mega projects have become a significant form of urban expansion and renewal globally. Current research on mega projects mostly focuses on the immediate effects of displacement and loss of community. This analytical framework fails to capture the long-term social problems of mega projects that emerge after the development's completion such as residents' access to public amenities after being resettled.

Current research also forecloses the possibility of positive outcomes, such as the ability of residents to rebuild their community. This project thus seeks to examine the long-term and variegated social impacts of mega projects and how they can be improved through the collective efforts from state, private and public stakeholders.

The study will focus on two population groups affected by mega projects:

1) Residents who were resettled by the mega projects. In China, due to strict resettlement policies, residents living in areas designated for development are all resettled (including forced evictions) and moved to dedicated relocation settlements. However, little is known about their livelihood after resettlement.

2) Left-behind residents (Wang, 2020) who live inside or nearby the mega project but have not been resettled and instead suffer from in-situ marginalisation. Little is known about the livelihood of left-behind residents and what forms of marginalisation they suffer from.

The project adopts a mixed methods approach combining quantitative (household survey) and qualitative research methods (semi-structured and go along interviews, ethnographic research) to examine:

i) the material livelihood (income, well-being, access to social services) and sense of community (place attachment; collective identity, neighbourly relations, community participation) of both resident groups;

ii) how the mega projects' urban governance and planning strategies influenced the long-term social outcomes of the developments (e.g. provision of public amenities);

iii) the strategies residents and local governments employed to rebuild residents' material livelihood and sense of community.

Theoretically, the project will develop a post-displacement framework to study the variegated and long-term social outcomes and experiences of mega projects which cannot be captured by the displacement concept. Studying the sense of community of affected residents will also advance the conceptual understanding of how place-based relations and practices can help rebuild communities and stimulate the genesis of new communities.

The project will compare the 2010 Expo in Shanghai and the 'First Boulevard District' (Yijie Qu) mega project in Dujiangyan city, Sichuan province. Shanghai, as a global city, is economically advanced and attracts political support and global investments. Dujiangyan is a third tier city in Sichuan province representing 'ordinary cities' (Robinson, 2013) that struggle economically and enjoy much less political and scholarly attention.

The comparison of Shanghai and Dujiangyan helps illuminate how two mega projects situated in starkly different socio-economic contexts have attempted to balance economic and political objectives with social responsibilities. Tracing the lives of displaced residents is notoriously difficult (Easton et al., 2020) and the case of China, where resettled residents are all moved to resettlement neighbourhoods, offers a rare opportunity to study the post-displacement livelihood of residents.

The project's impact-related activities and academic and non-academic outputs will focus on raising awareness of the long-term social legacy of mega projects (IO1) amongst the public, policy-makers and academics, and will provide practical tools for policy-makers and planning practitioners to assess the long-term social outcomes of planned mega urban projects (IO2).