Commercial activities as stimulators for entrepreneurial social spaces in residential neighbourhoods

摘要

Since the Chinese economic reform, especially after the Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation rolled out in 2014, there has been an increase in entrepreneurial activities in planned innovative parks and urban residential neighbourhoods. This paper studies the entrepreneurial social spaces produced by adaptive commercial activities (ACAs), and its impact on spatial publicness. It is argued that ACAs can promote spatial publicness in urban residential neighbourhoods. ACAs foreground contradictions between housing policies and private interests. While physical and social spaces of the neighbourhood are modified, the contradictions are negotiated among entrepreneurs and residents in public. Case studies of three residential neighbourhoods in Beijing showed that ACAs in designated residential neighbourhoods are more effective than in designated mixed-use urban areas. Housing policies should provide the flexibility to tolerate ACAs. The construction of neighbourhoods with statistical mixed functions but fixed usage for each space should be avoided. Urban designers should be able to realise the potential of publicness in spaces both inside and around a neighbourhood.