Resident Participation in Old Community Renewal: Recent Literature Review

With the slowdown of new urban development, urban renewal has entered a stage of sustainable development. The renewal of old communities in urban renewal has attracted increasing attention from scholars due to its large size and the numerous residents involved. As the main participants in old community renewal, residents gradually have a greater say in old community renewal. Resident participation can be defined as the process in which community residents participate in decision-making, management, and supervision of community affairs through certain channels and forms, participate in expressing opinions, and exercise their rights. However, currently, scholars lack a clear and systematic understanding of resident participation in old community renewal. With the large-scale renewal of the old community being carried out, promoting understanding of this field is becoming increasingly important, and the focus of this study is to fill this gap. Based on a review of 70 journal papers related to resident participation in old community renewal, this paper explains the connotation of resident participation and proposes to summarize factors influencing resident participation into four parts: participants' factors, participation prospects, participation process management, and support from relevant departments. This article studies the role of resident participation, incorporating it into the government needs, the resident’s needs, and the connection between the government and residents. Although optimizing resident participation is difficult, to better serve old community renewal, this study proposes four suggestions, including enhancing residents' sense of community identity, training residents' ability to participate, building a communication platform, and confirming resident participation in planning. This review article can serve as an important reference for researchers interested in the theme of resident participation in old community renewal.