Resumen de Capital accumulation and urban land development in China: (Re)making Expo Park in Shanghai
This study goes beyond the crisis-based understanding of spatial fix to consider a holistic exploration of capital accumulation and urban land development in association with a mega-event in China. Decoding the event-triggered land banking (tudi chubei) process in the (re)making of Expo Park, it shifts the focus of this land-based accumulation to pre-event relocation and post-event investment attraction. The contributions of this study are twofold. First, this study contributes to the mainstream literature by incorporating the place-based mega-event into the study of spatial fix. Spatial fix through mega-events is enacted through pre-Expo primary land development, which reshapes the built environment to articulate a “higher and better use,” followed by a post-Expo land disposition, which fixes investment to accomplish capital restructuring. Second, this study indicates that state entrepreneurialism offers a more accurate interpretation of the governance of land processes led by mega-events than urban entrepreneurialism, and enriches the literature on state entrepreneurialism by illuminating the ways in which capital accumulation is achieved through land development under this governance paradigm. In the pre-Expo phase, a state-owned urban development corporation (UDC) was established to take charge of land finance. An ad hoc quasi-government in proximity to the central state and on behalf of the municipal official mobilized administrative resources to aid land resumption—tailoring space to squeeze out inefficient accumulation modes. In the post-Expo phase, a restructured municipal state-owned enterprise (SOE) took over responsibilities for land disposition from the state-owned UDC and prioritized central state SOEs over other investors.
