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Attachment to place is a positive emotional bond that develops between individuals and their environment (Hunter, 1978; Altman & Low, 1992). It is a state of psychological well-being experienced as a result of the accessibility of place, or conversely a state of distress set up by the remoteness of place (Giuliani, 1991). This attachment is important because it generates identification with place and fosters social and political involvement in the preservation of the physical and social features that characterize a neighborhood. In fact, a number of studies have shown that the stronger the neighborhood attachment, the more likely individuals are to develop a set of norms and to exert effective formal and informal social control that reduces crime (Sampson & Groves, 1989) and to fend off attempts to change the social and physical nature of the area (Mesch, 1996).

In an urbanising world, neighbouring is perceived to be steadily losing significance and a remnant of the past. The same belief can also be found in China where rapid urbanisation has had a tremendous impact on the social networks and neighbourhood life of urban residents. This chapter challenges the common perception of neighbouring in demise and argues that neighbouring remains an important form of social relationship, even if the meanings and role of neighbouring have changed. This chapter first charts the changing role of neighbouring from the socialist era to post-reform China. It then provides an account of four common types of neighbourhoods in Chinese cities – work-unit estates, traditional courtyards, commodity housing estates and urban villages – and considers how and why neighbouring in different ways still matters to them. In pre-reform socialist China, neighbourhood life and neighbouring comprised much of the daily social life of residents. Since the reform era, with the proliferation of private commodity housing estates, middle-class residents prioritise comfort, security and privacy, such that neighbouring levels have subsided. Nevertheless, in other neighbourhood types, such as work-unit housing estates, traditional courtyards and urban villages, neighbours still rely upon one another for various reasons.

Based on a case study of the Logan Renewal Initiative (LRI) in Queensland Australia, this chapter examines the competing aims bound up in programmes of urban renewal and the way different stakeholder groups advocate for one component of the programme while seeking to prevent another.

A qualitative case study approach is used based on interview and documentary material to elicit the competing views and opinions of local residents, state and local governments, housing providers and other stakeholders around a renewal programme.

It is found that there are two competing agendas bound up within the LRI, with gentrification at the heart of each. One focuses on the virtues of the social housing reform agenda, but sees gentrification as an unintended and undesirable outcome that needs to be carefully managed. The other is a place-improvement ambition that sees gentrification as an effective policy mechanism, but one that will be undermined by any increases in the stock of social and affordable housing.

The chapter emphasizes that programmes of renewal are rarely coherent policy tools, but are subject to change, contestation and negotiation as stakeholders compete to impose their own desired outcomes. In the case of the LRI, both outcomes will likely result in the marginalization of low-income groups unless their needs are placed at the forefront of its design.

The chapter engages critically with the widely held view that urban renewal is a means of gentrifying local neighbourhoods by showing how local conditions and circumstances render the relationship between renewal and gentrification far more complex that generally conceived.

In Chapter 2, the author will develop the theoretical framework of the sociological analysis of youth delinquency in SEA. The author will introduce the control theory (both self-control and social control), in order to understand under what circumstances youths are more and less likely to behave in a deviant manner. The author will, then, mention the general strain theory, to draw the relationships between the encounters of negative life events, the development of strain, and the disposition to perform delinquency. The author will also, address the cultural deviance and social learning theories that help justify the expression of juvenile delinquency from a sociocultural perspective, alongside pathing the way to explaining how social costs of youth delinquency can be raised by policy amendments in order to mitigate adolescents’ exercises of smoking, drinking and sexual misconduct behaviours. In this chapter, the author will highlight how poverty, the availability of delinquent opportunities, peer influence and pressure, a lack of parental and school socialisation, and deviant social and cultural norms are all risk factors for youth delinquency.