Tenure-Based Housing Spatial Patterns and Residential Segregation in Guangzhou under the Background of Housing Market Reform

Abstract

China’s urban housing distribution system has been transformed from a redistribution system to a market-oriented distribution system, which has profoundly affected the ways and opportunities for urban residents to obtain housing resources and has triggered a large-scale reconstruction of urban residential social space. Based on the national 5th and 6th census data of Guangzhou, this paper analyzes the spatial patterns of housing tenure and tenure-based residential segregation in 2000 and 2010 with the research aim of analyzing the internal logic of urban housing distribution and residential segregation in urban China using Guangzhou as an example. The study finds that the home ownership rate in Guangzhou dropped from 62.31% in 2000 to 49.72% in 2010, with the percentage of social housing particularly low. The index of evenness and concentration is used to analyze tenure-based residential segregation. The results show that the tenure-based residential segregation index in 2000 and 2010 is between 0.4 and 0.6, which implies that residential segregation is basically moderate and that social housing is more segregated than open market housing. On the whole, market mechanisms have gradually played a fundamental role in tenure-based residential restructuring and segregation since 2000, and governmental and institutional factors also significantly influence such elements.