Many countries have precedents for large scale urban renewal and movement of people in the second half of the 20th century. The notion of large-scale urban renewal and the social impacts it carries is an essential question today, especially in a context such as China where we are seeing the largest urbanization in the world. However, the social impacts of urban renewal has not been sufficiently exploited yet.

This research is the new theoretical and empirical knowledge it generates on framework of social impacts of urban renewal and explore the relationship among different social impacts’ variables in Chongqing, China. This thesis addresses an interesting topic against the backdrop of the prevalence of urban renewal in Chinese cities. Firstly, this research identify the changing residents’ social factors and aims at designing a scale to measure residents’ social capital under urban renewal in a Chinese context. Secondly, the research attempt to provide a nuanced understanding of the social network changes caused by urban renewal projects. This research also tries to identify different segments of residents who may be affected by urban renewal to varying degrees, which would be of significance to have some interesting findings. Thirdly, this research sheds light on the deficiencies of evaluating urban renewal projects in China from local residents’ subjective perspectives. Finally, this research also complete the mission on explore the relationship among different social impacts’ variables in Chongqing, China, by determining which of these social factors.