CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH DESIGN
3.5 RESEARCH METHODS
In 2012, a preliminary data collection was conducted in the DTMD area. Informal interviews were given to local people and around 40 questionnaires designed based on the Structural Equation was distributed. It was found that data collected through the quantitative research methodology was ineffective in telling the whole story of the regeneration case. Besides, the educational background of the residents in the DTMD area was generally low,
which directly affected their completion of the questionnaires. On the country, interviews conducted with local residents brought more valuable information.
The formal fieldwork took place in the Xi'an DTMD in November 2013. 15 semi-structured interviews were taken with people who deeply involved in the redevelopment process, ranging from planners, politicians, local residents, and relocates that are currently living outside the area. The local residents' living conditions and community-oriented activities organized by the Residents' Committee and supported by the volunteers were observed. In terms of the KNDC case study, from April to July 2013 and in October 2014, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 11 interviewees that had directly or indirectly participated in the KNDC regeneration, ranging from local residents, councillors, community activists, academicians and managers of social enterprises. Local government officials in the DTMD case and former members in the KNDC partnership were absent from the interviewees as requests for an interview were either neglected or refused. Their opinions and attitudes were mainly interpreted based on previous documents, including official announcements, newsletters, annual progress reports, etc.
In comparison with other research methods, semi-structured interviews are accompanied by a number of challenges. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for both cases was to find the proper interviewees who had not only deeply involved in the regeneration project but were also willing to offer a talk. It has been approved in both case studies that finding a gatekeeper can be effective for approaching people that have a deep knowledge about the
government. At that time although he could not directly undertake a interview, he actually showed great interests to the research topic and gave the researcher some of the local activists' cell phone number. One of these activists was Mr. Ding, who had deeply involved in the resistance. According to him, a important reason for him to make the determination of giving a detailed description about the implementation and resistance of the West-DTMD regeneration projects was that this research would be written up in English and he hoped to let more people out of the country to have a sense of what had happened in his community. These activists then introduced the researcher to some of the people they are familiar with for a talk about their own experiences regarding the regeneration process. Generally interviewees that were approached through the referees appeared to be more outspoken when answering questions regarding some quite controversial issues. Mr. Ma at that time was refurbishing his property on the street. The researcher saw the refurbishment and asked whether he would like to undertake an interview and he gladly accepted, as he hoped that his financial difficulties brought by the refurbishment could be understood by they government, which would then provide him with an interest-free loan in support of his rebuilding activities. Although the researcher had explained that there was less likely to have a connection between undertaking the interview and receiving financial support, the interviewee still acted quite proactively. There was an obvious concern from his wife regarding his outspokenness, and she attempted to stop him from taking too much. Yet it appeared that many of the local Hui people's family were male-dominated and a female can hardly influence the decisions made by her husband. Mr. Ma interrupted his wife abruptly when she attempted to stop him and continued to complain about his situation. His wife did not make any further argument.
In the UK case, Jerry Spencer, a professional working for the Liverpool Vision was firstly introduced. After the interview, he wrote an email to Allen Tapp, who gladly undertook the interview and introduced Steve Faragher… While some of the interviewees, including the politicians and scholars were contacted through emails. The two selected cases are compared form the following aspects, as is shown in Table 3.5.
Table 3.5: Aspects that are compared through the two case studies
KNDC and KHMRI (UK) DTMD (China)
Profile of the selected regeneration cases
Major features of the regeneration area
Major features of the regeneration area
Source of funding Source of funding
Delivery strategy and the dominant body
Delivery strategy and the dominant body
Regeneration aims and the priorities
Regeneration aims and the priorities
Forms of public participation Forms of public participation
Evaluation of the
regeneration outcomes
Statistic changes regarding economic and social figures
Statistic changes regarding economic and social figures
Effectiveness of public participation Effectiveness of public participation Opinions of the participants
Challenges faced by the area and the causes identified by local people;
Challenges faced by the area and the causes identified by local people;
projects Local people’s perceived political and economic reasons for the initiation of the regeneration project;
The effectiveness of partnership as the delivery body;
Costs and benefits of the regeneration project for local residents;
Local residents’ reactive strategies towards physical regeneration and their rational behind it;
The gap between the expectation and reality;
Unsustainable social
regeneration programs and the reasons;
Inequality created by the area-based features of regeneration projects;
Partnership as a
mal-functional delivery body that facilitate alienation rather than participation;
Deep embedded political reasons behind the
formation of partnership and political struggles within the micro-environment;
Difficulties to facilitate real
Local people’s perceived political and economic reasons for the initiation of the
regeneration project;
The effectiveness local
government as the predominant deliver of the regeneration project;
Costs and benefits of the regeneration project for local residents;
Local residents’ reactive strategies towards physical regeneration and their rational behind it;
The gap between the expectation and reality;
Social regeneration programs and the delivery mechanism;
Inequality created by the area-based features of the regeneration projects;
Municipal government’s role in manipulating public participation to realize its primitive
accumulation
Interactions between local residents and the municipal government in the regeneration process;
Difficulties to facilitate real participatory democracy;
participatory democracy;
Local residents’ resistance against the unwanted outcomes
Local residents’ resistance
against the unwanted outcomes
In this research, the discourses used by different players involved in the regeneration projects are analysed and compared. According to Jacobs (2006, pp. 44), discourses used by different players that involve in one particular social event can be viewed as a ‘complex set of competing ideas and values’. Discourse analysis is often accused for its interpretative nature and limited utility in a practical context (Jacobs, 2006). Indeed discourse analysis is more than often employed by scholars (Lemke, 1995; Rydin, 1998; Dean, 1999; Fairclough, 2000) to ‘highlight organizational inequalities and contested dynamics of power’ (Jacobs, 2006, pp.46) yet seems to have little contribution to changing the inequalities. Moreover, the effectiveness of discourse-related approaches are also likely to be undermined by bias and distortion in selecting evidences that are used for analysis. Goodchild and Cole (2001, p.195) raised the concern that discourse analysis ‘risk degenerating into a confusing set of episodic narratives that cannot be put together’.
In spite of the shortcomings listed above, discourse analysis is still an effective instrument in exploring the rationales and power-relations behind different players involved in the inner city regeneration projects. It is argued
‘significant insights that are not always evident from other research methodologies’ (Jacobs, 2006, pp. 40). Connolly (1983, p.1) argued that ‘the language of politics is an institutionalised structure of meaning that channels political thoughts or actions in certain directions’. Discourse analysis has been employed by Skillington (1998) as an instrument to study inner city development projects in Dublin and it was argued that ‘symbolic and referential discourses have created an insular hegemonic paradigm that promotes a tight demarcation of public and private space, thereby making it difficult to establish progressive or alternative visions of urban renewal’ (Jacobs, 2006, pp. 43)
In conducting the discourse analysis, Fairclough (1992a, 1995) provided a three-layer framework (Jacobs, 2006, pp. 41)
-Text analysis: Studying the structure of the text, vocabulary and grammar cohesion;
-Discursive practice: Analysing the process in which texts are framed, I.E, the context in which statements are made and feed into other debates;
-Social Practice: Relating the discourse to wider power structures and ideology.
3.6 SUMMARY
This research adopts a cross-national comparative perspective and use case study as the major research methodology. The selected British case study is the KNDC and the KHMRI in in Liverpool and the Chinese case study is the
Drum Tower Muslim District regeneration in Xi’an. Both cases provide unique opportunities for observing the social dynamics and interactions between different players in urban regeneration practices. Research methods include literature review, semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis.