Conceded informality. Scopes of informal urban restructuring in the Pearl River Delta

This paper analyses the variety of informal urban development and restructuring in the Chinese Pearl River Delta (PRD) in the field of urbanized village (UV) redevelopment and how the Chinese party-state takes up a stance over them. By introducing the notion of “conceded informality”, which describes the situation in this respect in a fragmented authoritarian party-state, the scholarly debate on informality in urban planning shall be widened. After an introduction of the political environment in which conceded informality can be found, an emphasis will be put on restructuring processes of the two megacities of the Pearl River Delta - Guangzhou and Shenzhen - and the scopes of conceded informality will be illustrated by case study examples. The redevelopment and integration of urbanized villages into the urban fabric poses one of the most difficult challenges urban planners are facing today. Conceding informality can be seen as a coping strategy the Chinese governments are using as an experimental mode of governance in order to deal with new phenomena of urbanization and critical situations in times of permanent change and legal uncertainty.