3.3 Challenges for Xi’an

Inner city revitalization is being defined widely to include economic, social and physical development and aims to promote cultural aspects and historic preservation\cite{2002}. The speculative property investment and its detrimental impact on historic city centers have been recognized and are being addressed. A number of charters like the European Charter of the Architectural Heritage 1975, UNESCO Charter 1976, and ICOMOS Washington Charter 1987 specifically highlight the need to protect and conserve the built and social composition in urban areas against threat posed by neglect, deliberate demolition and incongruous new construction\cite{2000}. which are inherent in the revitalization strategies. The emphasis is not only on visual management\cite{Pendlebury_1999} but on the need for coherent economic and social development policies at the urban and regional levels through partnership initiatives\cite{Forsberg_1999} , good governance and the proactive role of the state\cite{Schuster1997Preserving} and the community \cite{Davidoff_1973}” in\cite{Reade_1973}. Since the early 1990s, the expansion of the real estate sector as well as the entrepreneurial re-orientation of urban governance in Chinese cities has led to the prevalence of property-led urban redevelopment\cite{He_2009}.This large scale regeneration implies major physical, social and economic changes often at the cost of the traditional culture and local inhabitants’ living environment.

Economic

As we mentioned before, A large scale regeneration is easier to operate from the authority point of view, which tends to benefit the local government and the developers. This is why the local authorities have not given much attention to alternative proposals suggested by prominent planners and academics in the city. Proposals include small scale organic renewal or in situ up gradation projects, which means less cost to the overall heritage of the city and also less relocation costs.\cite{Acharya_2005} Very often, the deteriorating environmental condition of the traditional neighborhood is cited as the reason for large scale redevelopment despite the fact that there has been no effort to improve the environment or for that matter to ascertain the cause of deterioration. Is the urban regeneration on dilapidated courtyard houses enabled local state to a facilitate revalorization and bring the bigger economical benefits than the large scale of redevelopment? It can be. For example, efforts are usually conducted on a small scale and often focus on the most profitable projects, such as those portions of historic areas with tourist potential\cite{Steinberg2015Revitalization}. Mostly inner city regeneration process has led to the relocation of a large number of people most of whom are from the low socio economic groups. They consist of elderly people as well as low income, low skill and less educated families working in small enterprises of local governments, there is a urgent needs financing and creating jobs for these people . How to seek way to combine the cultural and economical development together, how to be the sum of various developments whereby the area is (re-)appropriated by groups that are economically more advantaged than their prior residents or users. In this process, manage to connect the social and economical networks among the housing areas, is very challenging.

Social

The first challenge on social point of view, is property rights and compensations. The Chinese policy on resettlement is set out in national, provincial and municipal laws and the government has evolved a system to pay compensation to the families which are relocated by the urban regeneration projects. Compensation varies, “ranging from more than 6 million Yuan ($75,000) for a high ranking official’s home, to $ 10,000 to $ 50,000 for some affected families, to $ 0 if the residents do not cooperate with the developer in the relocation process”. \cite{Zhang_2004} In Xi’an Old and Dilapidated Housing Redevelopment (ODHR) program, the policy for the local residents is “get what you had” (chai yi huan yi), which means that government will compensate the same amount of the living space before the renewed projects or you can cash it with money according the current real estate market price. Most of the residents would rather take the renewed apartments in a collective compounds since the relocated sites are normally where they lived before. Some will have to leave because of the high value land inside the wall, if they want to stay at same place before redevelopment, market pricing of the relocated space is unaffordable for the original residents. (According to the Hong Kong based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, residents in Xi’an mounted hundreds of demonstrations against relocation practices during the five years following that city’s initiation of old neighborhood redevelopment in 1993, including one involving more than 200 protesters in the week before U.S. President Bill Clinton’s June 1998 visit. See S. Liu, “Xi’an Shimin Zhunbei zai Kelindun Fangwen Qijian Da Guimo Shiwei [Citizens of Xi’an Prepare Large-Scale Demonstration for Clinton’s Visit],” Wire Report, Taiwan Central News Agency, 1998 (cited Monday, June 22, 1998).) This process is actually a destroy of the social connections which was built by the tradition residential spaces, and the internal and external linkage in the neighborhoods will also has to be reestablished. In the 1990s, land ownership is still not allowed to be traded [1313[] China State Council, 1990, Ordnance for State-owned]. However, during renovation of old neighborhoods, the land use rights of many private proprietors has not been recognized and duly compensated. This has led to a gap between the actual market value of the houses to be dismantled and the compensation to their owners. In many instances, real estate developers cheat the people by following the old rule which does not compensate for the land use right of private houses but when selling, they follow the new rule of market value by including the land use right. Compensation is very often for the built up area and not the plot area, which considerably undervalues the property[1414[] Li J. 2004. “Constitution Helps Man Fight for Home.” China Daily, April 6, 2004, p.3.]. The problem gets worse because the current property evaluating institutes are part of the government departments closely related to government and real estate developers. The number of such institutes is also limited, leaving people with few alternative property evaluation opportunities.(Acharya 2005) 
The second one, is the involvement of participation from stakeholders. Normally, the principal actors involved in redevelopment are the following: (1) government departments at different levels; (2) property owners; (3) renters; and (4) the developers. Municipal and District governments are important actors. Despite large scale demolition and relocation, the involvement of the civil society institution is very margina. In China’s urban contexts, the limits of residents’ participation in planning and decision-making processes make it difficult for residents to ‘voice out’ collectively. The absence of intermediate civic organizations aggravates this situation\cite{Tomba_2005}. Participation in the community level needs to be strengthened in a way, the grassroots’ voice need to be heard by the decision makers. Actually, community participation and resistance to redevelopment is high in places like Xi’an, it’s expensive to demolish and compensate, and where the citizens and officials proactively participate in protecting the heritage\cite{Abramson_2000}.

Physical

On the physical aspect, the first challenge is needs for upgrade the living condition, both interior and urban environment. As we mentioned before the compensation for the depilated housing policy is “get what you had”. Originally the housing before the ODHR project is rather small (average living area of 6.19 sq.m). This fact led to the relocated housing from ODHR is accordingly small. (From the incomplete data from housing rental website and company, most of housing is blew 50 sq.m.) However, the living standard has improved constantly, by the new version of Design Code for Residential Buildings (MOHURD, 2014, Design Code for Residential Buildings& Code for Urban Residential Areas Planning& Design)\cite{Abramson_2000}, the average housing space per capital should be at least 28 sq.m.(According to the Sixth Census in 2011, and China Social Science Research Center in Beijing University, China Family Panel Studies, CFPS, 2012, Beijing University Press.) The gap between current condition and standard is obvious. (Fig.11)