The demolition of old buildings and the creation of new buildings on the same site. Redevelopment can solve existing problems of congestion and poor design but, for residential areas in particular, it is seen to be wasteful of resources, destroying communities. Wu and He (2005) Tijdschrift 96, 1 find that the root cause of such problems was the way local officials and local developers ‘utilised their privileges inherited from a planned economy to benefit from the emerging real estate markets’. Fang and Zhang (2003) Asia Pac. Viewpt 44, 2 also detect ‘the hidden agenda of local elites’ during urban redevelopment.