Commercial activities as stimulators for entrepreneurial social spaces in residential neighbourhoods Tianyu Zhu MArch Doctoral candidate, Chair of Urban Design and Regional Planning, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany (corresponding author: tianyu.zhu@tum.de) (Orcid:0000-0003-1628-9040) Qian Lu MSc Doctoral candidate, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (Orcid:0000-0001-8698-1986) Since the Chinese economic reform, especially after the Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation rolled out in 2014, there has been an increase in entrepreneurial activities in planned innovative parks and urban residential neighbourhoods. This paper studies the entrepreneurial social spaces produced by adaptive commercial activities (ACAs), and its impact on spatial publicness. It is argued that ACAs can promote spatial publicness in urban residential neighbourhoods. ACAs foreground contradictions between housing policies and private interests. While physical and social spaces of the neighbourhood are modified, the contradictions are negotiated among entrepreneurs and residents in public. Case studies of three residential neighbourhoods in Beijing showed that ACAs in designated residential neighbourhoods are more effective than in designated mixed-use urban areas. Housing policies should provide the flexibility to tolerate ACAs. The construction of neighbourhoods with statistical mixed functions but fixed usage for each space should be avoided. Urban designers should be able to realise the potential of publicness in spaces both inside and around a neighbourhood. 1. Introduction Since the 2014 policy of Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the number of small and medium enterprises in China has dramatically increased. About 4 439 000 new enter- prises were registered in the year 2015 (SAIC, 2016). Only a small portion of them settle in industrial parks, incubators or hackerspaces. The rest are located in residential neigh- bourhoods, adapting commercial activities (ACAs) to neigh- bourhoods’ environment. The policy pushed ACAs, which have already emerged since the Chinese economic reform in 1978, to a new climax. In contrast, a governmental operation initiated in January 2017 forced 36 000 enterprises to stop business within half a year. Aiming at ‘optimizing the develop- ment structure and reducing the population density in inner city districts’ (Beijing Municipality, 2017), the operation includes removing informal constructions in Beijing. In all, 21 000 informal openings on residential building facades were walled (Beijing Daily, 2018). While the operation receives great attention among academics and practitioners, new forms of ACAs have already emerged and were welcomed by the resi- dents. What are the incentives for these ACAs? What social impacts do they have on urban residential neighbourhoods? How should these impacts be evaluated? As early as the 1960s, Jane Jacobs (1961) identified the mutual promotive effect between a dense, diverse, walkable, mixed-use urban area and local business, as well as their positive social impacts. Scholars further explain how neighbourhoods can promote local entrepreneurial activities through social spaces along four strings: the formation of entrepreneurial spirit (Ahlstrom and Ding, 2014), the acquiring of local knowledge (Von Hayek, 1945), the inclination of venture capital for agglomerating enterprises (Florida and King, 2016), and self- declaration of creative cities or areas (Scott, 2014). While plenty of theoretical and empirical evidences are offered for advantages of urban neighbourhoods on entrepreneurial activi- ties, little attention is paid to the influence of the latter on the former in everyday interactions. The theoretical framework of neighbourhood by Georg Galster (2001) views commercial activities as constructive elements of local residential environment. Business people together with households, property owners and local government are foregrounded as the four key actors who are responsible for neighbourhood changes. Galster views a neighbourhood as a set of spatially based attributes in dynamics. These attributes are consumed and at the same time produced by the actors through interactions with flows of resources in and out of space. He notices that external forces – that is other actors’ actions, can dominate an actor’s decision. The overall process of neighbourhood changes is non-linear and socially inefficient concerning local factors, such as collective socialisa- tion, contagion, gaming, individual tolerance, expectations and sentimental factors (Galster, 2001). This paper looks specifi- cally into how commercial activities influence neighbourhoods’ attributes in China. It develops Galster’s theory by bringing in 1 Cite this article Zhu T and Lu Q Commercial activities as stimulators for entrepreneurial social spaces in residential neighbourhoods. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Urban Design and Planning, https://doi.org/10.1680/jurdp.18.00032 Urban Design and Planning Research Article Paper 1800032 Received 18/06/2018; Accepted 28/08/2018 ICE Publishing: All rights reserved Keywords: local government/public health/public–private partnerships