Young graduates are facing housing difficulties in the Chinese metropolis. The Chinese government published new policies to encourage regeneration of the land stock resources as affordable rental housing targeting young people. This study aims to explore how urban regeneration can benefit young graduates’ livability. Specifically, it investigates the possibility to regenerate urban villages as affordable rental housing provisions. In this context, affordable rental housing tackles spatial inequities and should be located in opportunity-rich areas.
To test the assumption that urban villages can be regenerated as affordable rental housing, spatial analysis on multiple scales was conducted and four well-located urban villages were chosen as cases to study. The villages were evaluated based on the indicators from young graduates’ demand analysis, and different governance models were analyzed to explore the possibilities for regeneration. The results shows that the conflict between the private interest in densification and public interest in open space is the main challenge for regeneration, and not only the spatial intervention but also the operation mechanism need to be proposed.
These results suggest that encouraging spontaneous regeneration by combining top-down and bottom-up strategies may be an approach for future regeneration as well as a chance to legalize the informal village settlement. This requires not only the efforts of the village collective but also the support and active participation of the public sector. By improving the public space network and doing some experiments on strategic projects, the regeneration strategy can be tested and applied to other well-located urban villages in Shenzhen, providing more affordable housing options for young graduates.