Beijing to move thousands in renovation project

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese capital will double its investment in protecting the city's imperial-era neighborhoods next year but thousands of families will be moved in the process, state media said on Thursday.

Beijing will spend up to 2 billion yuan ($292.7 million) upgrading aging homes, the official Xinhua news agency cited vice mayor Chen Gang as saying.

"Issues concerning people's living standards should be resolved quickly. We should begin renovations in the early spring," Chen was quoted as saying.

"The goal is that no more shabby and dangerous homes should be found in downtown Beijing within two or three years."

More than 20,000 families would be affected and one-third of them would be moved out of the downtown area "to ease the population pressure in the heart of the city," the report said.

"The government will not force residents to move out. The evacuation is completely based on the residents' own wishes and they need to submit applications themselves," it quoted Sui Zhenjiang, head of the Municipal Committee of Construction, as saying.

"The government had prepared favorable locations in four outer districts for residents who were willing to move," it also paraphrased him as saying.

China's Olympic preparations saw wide swathes of old housing leveled, angering some local residents who complained of forced relocations to distant suburbs and inadequate compensation.

But real estate developers will be banned from getting involved in the latest renovation scheme for fear they would just end up demolishing the houses, Xinhua added.

Beijing argues that many of the old courtyard properties, often subdivided to house up to six families, are decrepit, dangerous and a fire hazard in tight alleyways too small for fire-trucks.

While many of Beijing's oldest and most beautiful traditional houses and alleyways have been demolished, the government has begun to pay more attention to protecting the city's heritage in recent years.

($1=6.832 Yuan)

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)