Before common prosperity is achieved, the coexistence of rich and poor people is essential. To build informal settlements is not to emphasize that some people are inferior to others, but the fact that some are richer than others is undeniable. This proposal actually gives poor migrant workers an opportunity to live in cities. Driving the poor away from urban areas makes cities cleaner, but destroys social harmony.

If city governments want to be proud of having no informal settlements, the only way out is to provide the poor with more welfare and economically affordable houses, and not to build artificial barriers like hukou.

Integration not segregation

Mao Yingying (Financial World): In Professor Qin's opinion, informal settlements will help migrant workers to get rooted in cities, but if they are placed in informal settlements far away from downtown, is it possible for them to get integrated with the city or are they further segregated?

Low-income earners are affected by their environment for living and survival. If they have to live in suburb settlements, how do they make money? It will also cost them much time and money to get downtown.

Based on the market economy theory, the separation of the rich and the poor is an inevitable result, as real estate developers only build houses for the rich and thus it's natural to see rich districts and poor districts coexisting in cities. Real estate developers will never try to solve the conundrum of balance and fairness, but the government has the responsibility to reverse the extreme trend of polarization.

Actually, apart from collective dormitories, most migrant workers stay in old and low-class houses. Shenzhen is an open and modern city. It is composed of many small and poor-equipped residential communities. These communities are habitats for low-income earners. Although they are not pretty, they are evenly scattered around the city. Because of the mixing of communities of people at different income levels, migrant workers who have just moved there feel that they are still part of the city, instead of feeling alien.

To better protect the interests of migrant workers, it's about how to offer them more low-rent houses, more freedom to make business in cities, better education opportunities for their children, not about how to throw them into designated informal settlements.

Bi Ge (Chongqing Times): In China, the functions and convenience of a city are usually found in downtown areas and the farther away from the city, the less city conveniences one can enjoy. If informal settlements are built in the suburbs, the most urgent problem facing migrant workers is employment and the access to urban public facilities and services will also become a big question.

In developed countries, downtown residences are usually for the poor while suburbs are for the rich, because the poor need to be near the urban core areas for job and public transport while the rich are able to afford to live in the suburbs and drive downtown. Therefore, if the reverse happens in China, the result may well be a big disadvantage to the poor population.

If the poor are thrown into a special area outside the city, they tend to feel being marginalized and living in a world different from the one for local urban residents. Will they hate and refuse to live in informal settlements? It is found that in Western countries, children growing up in these shack areas tend to shift their hatred for their living conditions to the rest of the society. Informal settlements deprive people of many opportunities to start off life on an equal footing with other children and they find it difficult to get integrated with mainstream society because of their social standing.

The government must attach more importance to these disadvantaged groups. To allocate them informal settlements is a shortsighted way to deal with the migrant worker issue. They do not deserve this. What the government should do is to offer them equal welfare benefits and housing guarantees and make sure they are never paid in arrears.

Tao Duanfang (The Beijing News): In many developing and even developed countries, the process of urbanization is always accompanied by the influx of farmers into cities and informal settlements in different shapes and sizes appear. Nevertheless, these are a natural part of urbanization and, with the development of the urban economy, they gradually disappear or move to other places. In these cities, the government offers favorable policies in attempt to transform informal settlements into standard communities and part of the city. This is a way for urban expansion and further development of a city. Here, welfare-oriented houses are provided to the needy, from both the rural and urban areas.

Urbanization is an irreversible trend and the mixing of the poor and the rich in residential areas is also a global trend. To solve the shelter problem for migrant workers is not to move poor villages from the countryside to cities, but to treat the disadvantaged group equally and show them respect.

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Editor: Yao Bin