Unlike participatory urban regeneration in developed economies, China's approach to urban regeneration is top-down and financially supported by the government (Sonn et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2018). It is oriented around a robust centralized governance mechanism (Wang et al., 2020). The leading activities of the government play an important role in the regeneration projects. Undoubtedly, the formulation of plans and relative policies has made great progress. Numerous renewed areas, however, lack effective property management after project completion. Most residents in those renewed communities still keep the idea that paid management is unnecessary and thriftless as the prior unserved surroundings remained long (Liu et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2020). Due to the contradiction between management demands and the residents' willingness, it is hard for the government to bear this financial burden. Hence, their construction and reconstruction achievements face challenges in keeping up with long-term maintenance. Furthermore, there are difficulties in collecting property fees and maintaining facilities even though property management teams were introduced in the real-estate management system.

In recent decades, the property-led development pattern has prevailed and is touted in China's urban regeneration projects (He and Wu, 2005; You-Tien, 2010). It undoubtedly brought considerable economic benefit in multiple ways, and the most significant one is the improvement of local floor area ratios (FARs). Since the main financing approach of urban regeneration during the period of incremental expansion, increasing the floor area ratio focuses on land finance (Shen et al., 2021). In other words, land capital is often obtained by increasing FAR. Owners, developers, and planning and design consultants participating in the projects form a set of mature working methods to obtain legal and compliant FAR and economic benefits after they are familiar with the rules. It may, however, damage the urban landscape and livable quality when higher FARs are blindly chased. Meanwhile, if increasing FAR fails to generate enough tax revenue, enormous pressure on future finance will be enhanced. Thus, there is a mismatch between rapid FAR increase and urban regeneration models in China.

Existing studies widely discussed the issues of public participation in China's urban regeneration projects (Zhuang et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2020, 2021; Li et al., 2020). While residents, government, and developers are considered the three main actors in the project, scholars consistently consider that residents and their participating ways are the key to successful projects and put forward many available participating approaches (Yu et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022). A group of residents unquestionably plays a vital role in the projects as they are considered the main users. Nevertheless, they cannot directly participate in decision-making processes due to China's top-down social governance mechanism, which is a degree of tokenism (Arnstein, 1969). Apart from this, the contribution of the government is exaggerated. The decision-making for the urban renewal process is related to whether a particular area is situated within an urban regeneration plan developed by the local government (Yung et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2022). In other words, other stakeholders have no right to launch an application of urban regeneration even if they consider it urgent. Thus, such limited engagement between different stakeholders could cause further problems and conflicts in the areas that may be left to deteriorate.

The renewed areas are mostly lived by low-income people or migrant workers (Wong et al., 2018). Urban regeneration can bring a high-quality living environment and cause expensive living costs. The residents cannot bear these costs and are replaced by those of higher social status, which is a typical process of gentrification (Sutherland, 2019). In this process, the residents are removed from their arrival cities² to the outskirts (Saunders, 2010). Such a social Darwinism phenomenon³ seems to improve social progress but destroys multi-stakeholder diversity and integration in those areas, resulting in challenging social norms and civility (Furbey, 1999; Ye, 2017). As argued by Lees (2014), urban regeneration needs to re-establish the city as the driver of democratic politics, rather than the one that gets mired in a dystopic post-justice city. Consequently, the resettlement of those vulnerable groups becomes the key issue in defense of lower differential inclusion.

Based on the characteristics of each area, long-term management measures can be added to the existing management mechanism. These could be residents' self-management, public welfare jobs for residents, and menu-based property management⁴ to increase the interaction between residents and their living areas. Furthermore, pilot communities can be selected to explore advanced long-term management modes, such as the trust-based property service pattern. In detail, the owners' committee is the mandator, the property enterprise and the trust company are the co-trustees, and all residents are the beneficiaries of the service trust. Through the trust system, community owners can effectively supervise various services of property based on the details of the use of account funds (Zhuang et al., 2019). In addition, the operation management plan should be advanced to planning, design, construction, and other links for holistic consideration to improve the rationalization and effectiveness of resources and facilities allocation.

It is impossible to persuade the developers not to mainly focus on GDP, FAR, and other economic factors. Therefore, a comprehensive assessment framework can be a reference to remind them that socio-cultural aspects should be given attention in urban generation projects. The significance of socio-cultural aspects and their instrumentalised functions have been verified in existing studies (Chan and Lee, 2007; Shin and Stevens, 2012; Rius Ulldemolins, 2014). In other words, socio-cultural factors can also bring economic benefits, such as tourism after industry heritage regeneration. More importantly, further attention to different categories based on a comprehensive assessment framework could benefit the urban landscape and sustainable development.

Residents and other stakeholders can submit applications about urban regeneration projects on the platforms from application consultation. A committee can be formed to gather residents' ideas and submit their applications to relative agencies (Li et al., 2020). Community asset evaluation reports, community participation transformation guides, relevant policy compilation, and case sets can be shared on such platforms. In doing so, the authorities can provide information to support engagement between different stakeholders. Moreover, a consultative mechanism for urban regeneration can be arranged to ensure the expression and consultation of opinions.

Migrant workers contribute to urban economic construction and are primary providers of essential urban services (Chen and Wang, 2019). However, their living space is being greatly reduced. The urban housing security system fails to include them while considerable informal housing is rapidly disappearing. Based on this phenomenon, multiple stakeholders can actively explore the feasibility of transforming parts of buildings into public rental houses to alleviate their housing pressure and provide them with an affordable but decent living environment. This consideration would reflect the inclusiveness of the city and has the benign function of maintaining the urban social ecology.