Local Cultures – Global Spaces

Abstract

Cities as machines for producing wealth often provide many career opportunities, attracting many immigrants. These immigrants often can not afford high-priced houses in many regions. Therefore, they often choose urban villages as residences, where the living prices tend to be cheaper. The living conditions in urban villages are often poor. Hence, urban villages often are treated as slums to be replaced by new houses, which may increase house prices, triggering immigrants who hard to access cities to play their role in urban development and pursue their self-development. Therefore, identifying urban village value is the foundation for regenerating such villages, which would not cause gentrification and can improve the living conditions. The research explores how to establish the evaluation framework for urban villages. First, the research found that urban villages are medium of cultural exchanges between aboriginal people and immigrants, which can decrease social conflict and contain social value; urban villages are the ladder for immigrants to increase income and contain economic value; effectively utlising urban villages can save resources and contain the ecological value. Then, this research mainly proposed the elements, which can evaluate the urban village value in social, economic, and ecological aspects. Finally, this research analyses the possibility of using Structural Equation Modeling to explore the rationality of the hierarchies of the framework and grant the weights of the elements. Significantly, in order to achieve justice evaluation, the research analysed how to synthesise stakeholders’ values to establish the framework. It can meet public needs, and promote social justice.