Micro-reconstruction Strategies of Urban Villages in Small Towns from the Perspective of Policy Orientation:A Case Study of Zhuangqian Xiongjia Village,Fengcheng City

As China’s economy shifts from high-speed development to high-quality development,China’s urbanization also shifts from incremental expansion to stock optimization,providing a new direction for the transformation of urban villages.At present,the reconstruction work office of urban villages in small towns is mainly promoted based on government-led and villager main body in the initial exploration stage.From the perspective of policy orientation,to solve the main problems in urban villages in small towns,Zhuangqian Xiongjia Village,Fengcheng City was taken as an example,and the micro-transformation strategies of urban villages were put forward from the perspective of satisfying the appeals of the government,village committee and villagers,so as to provide some references for the transformation of urban villages in other small towns across the country.

Research on the Optimization of Public Spaces in Urban Villages Based on Space Syntax:A Case Study of Luochengtou Village in Handan City

This paper based on the theory of space syntax took Luochengtou Village in Handan City,Hebei Province for example,tried to figure out a proper way for the renewal of urban villages,and change the current dilemma of"one-size-fits-all"and"removing all"in most cases,and put forward that local conditions and regional characteristics must be considered to propose the renewal strategies more suitable for the targeted objects.Based on the space syntax Depthmap software and field investigation,the paper analyzed the accessibility,intelligibility and throughput of public spaces in Luochengtou Village,and put forward 3 optimization strategies in view of the problems such as insufficient public spaces,poor accessibility and intelligibility of roads,and poor activity of spaces,specifically,increasing public activity spaces,sorting out public space network,and creating active space nodes,so as to optimize public environment of the village,enhance villagers’sense of belonging,sense of safety and sense of identity.

SUSTAINABLE URBAN-RURAL RELATION IN RAPID URBANIZATION AREAS——Case of Transformation of "Urban Village" in Guangzhou

Many studies have been made concerning the problems, characteristics, formation, transformation measures, etc. of urban village from sociology, urban planning and geography, etc., which have made insightful analysis. However, most of these studies started mainly from the standpoint of the city govemment, drumming for the land- scape-oriented urbanization, namely pulling-down the urban village and constructing the splendid residence or business buildings. The article maintains that the most important thing the city government should do is to pay much attention to the sustainable living of urban villagers, who would lose their main income source, namely, the collective dividend and the family housing rent. The single method of compensation has been proved to be harmful to the villagers＇ community, in which some young villagers relying on rent were no longer to do anything but stay at home. On the other hand, considering the floating population has become the main stream of renters in urban villages, the emergence of urban villages was inevitable and would continue to exist in a long time under the socio-economic transition in urban China and globalization. Based on the analysis above, the transformation of urban village should take more concerns on the housing demands of floating population besides compensation for local villagers. Meanwhile, it is necessary to avoid the “landscape-oriented urbanization” without the “peasant-to-citizen” transformation.

Changes of Villagers' Welfare and Security in the Reconstruction of Urban Villages——A Case of Guangzhou Province,China

In the paper,the connotations of welfare are briefly outlined from the broad and narrow aspects and the changes of villagers' welfare ofurban villages in city are analyzed.In economic welfare terms,at the same time of losing their lands,villagers have obtain certain amount of landcompensation after the expropriation of lands.In non-economic welfare terms,the social status,lifestyle,environmental conditions and psychologi-cal state of the reallocated villagers have changed obviously.The status quo of the urban villages is outlined.Besides,the main problems in the ur-ban villages of Guangzhou are probed into,which covering the ubiquitous illegal utilization of lands and illegal construction,poor public order,lowpublic quality,imperfect public facilities and so on.The modes(Liede mode,Pazhou mode,Huadi mode and public self-financing mode) andcharacteristics of reconstructing the urban villages are concluded.The impact of the construction on villagers' welfare is concluded as well as the se-curity system for protecting villagers' welfare in the reconstruction of urban villages.It is suggested that the government and the villages should sharethe expenditures on the education and training of villages and share the input on infrastructure.In addition,the government and the villages shouldtake the responsibilities in terms of public security,culture and so on.

Urban Morphology of Urban Village: A Case Study of Dafen Oil Painting Village in Shenzhen

Dafen Oil Painting Village, the largest oil painting village in current China, takes cultural industries like creation and wholesale of oil paintings as the pillar. As one of the urban villages in Shenzhen, Dafen Village not only has the common characteristics of urban morphology as ordinary urban villages, but also has something unique. In this paper, study of the urban morphology of Dafen Oil Painting Village is mainly from 3 aspects: firstly, the formation of street space in Dafen Village; secondly, analysis of the status of urban morphology of Dafen Village; thirdly, the plane layout and public space of Dafen Village. In the end, this paper put forward some suggestions about the future development of urban morphology and space layout in Dafen Village.

Problems of Spaces in Urban Villages and Optimization Strategies Based on the Concept of Healthy City:A Case Study of Luotuo Lane in Lanzhou City,Gansu Province

Urban villages are closely related to residents’health as the built-up areas for their living activities.Taking Luotuo Lane in Qilihe District,Lanzhou City,Gansu Province for example,this paper based on the concept of healthy city analyzed the study area mainly from the perspectives of fundamental research,influence factors,status quo investigation,and problem analysis,so as to put forward the optimization strategies.

Microbiological quality of roof tank water in an urban village in southeastern China

Urban villages are unique residential neighborhoods in urban areas in China. Roof tanks are their main form of water supply, and water quality deterioration might occur in this system because of poor hygienic conditions and maintenance. In this study, water samples were seasonally collected from an urban village to investigate the influence of roof tanks as an additional water storage device on the variation in the microbial community structure and pathogenic gene markers. Water stagnation in the roof tank induced significant decreases in chlorine(p < 0.05), residual chlorine was as low as 0.02 mg/L in spring. Propidium monoazide(PMA)-qPCR revealed a one-magnitude higher level of total viable bacterial concentration in roof tank water samples(2.14 ± 1.81 × 105gene copies/mL) than that in input water samples(3.57 ± 2.90 × 104gene copies/mL, p < 0.05), especially in spring and summer. In addition,pathogenic fungi, Mycobacterium spp., and Legionella spp. were frequently detected in the roof tanks. Terminal users might be exposed to higher microbial risk induced by high abundance of Legionella gene marker. Spearman’s rank correlation and redundancy analysis showed that residual chlorine was the driving force that promoted bacterial colonization and shaped the microbial community. It is worth noted that the sediment in the pipe will be agitated when the water supply is restored after the water outages, which can trigger an increase in turbidity and bacterial biomass. Overall, the findings provide practical suggestions for controlling microbiological health risks in roof tanks in urban villages.

Super-resolution GANs for upscaling unplanned urban settlements from remote sensing satellite imagery - the case of Chinese urban village detection

The semantic segmentation of informal urban settlements represents an essential contribution towards renovation strategies and reconstruction plans.In this context,however,a big challenge remains unsolved when dealing with incomplete data acquisitions from multiple sensing devices,especially when study areas are depicted by images of different resolutions.In practice,traditional methodologies are directed to downgrade the higher-resolution data to the lowest-resolution measure,to define an overall homogeneous dataset,which is however ineffective in downstream segmentation activities of such crowded unplanned urban environments.To this purpose,we hereby tackle the problem in the opposite direction,namely upscaling the lower-resolution data to the highest-resolution measure,contributing to assess the use of cutting-edge super-resolution generative adversarial network(SR-GAN)architectures.The experimental novelty targets the particular case involving the automatic detection of‘urban villages’,sign of the quick transformation of Chinese urban environments.By aligning image resolutions from two different data sources(Gaofen-2 and Sentinel-2 data),we evaluated the degree of improvement with regard to pixel-based landcover segmentation,achieving,on a 1 m resolution target,classification accuracies up to 83%,67%and 56%for 4x,8x,and 10x resolution upgrades respectively,disclosing the advantages of artificially-upscaled images for segmenting detailed characteristics of informal settlements.

From Redevelopment to In Situ Upgrading: Transforming Urban Village Governance in Shenzhen Through the Lens of Informality

The study on informality has experienced a shift from describing the spatial characteristics toward exploring the connotation of urban governance in recent years. This paper takes urban villages in Shenzhen, a typical informal settlement in China, as cases to analyze the two urban village governance modes of redevelopment and in situ upgrading and reveals the dynamics of the governance mode transformation. Through the lens of informality, this study focuses on the interaction among the government, the market, and former property owners on tenure legalization. The study finds that first of all, informality is the core of the transformation of urban village governance in Shenzhen. By strategically making use of informality, the government adopted different modes of urban village governance to fulfill the demands of urban development at different phases. Second, in the process of formalizing informal settlements through redevelopment, although the institutional framework is relatively complete, the boundary between informality and formality still changes continuously in property titling. While in the new governance mode of in situ upgrading in recent years, the government creates "special areas" in informal settlements via approving their de facto tenure security, so as to attract market force to upgrade physical environment and social management. Through revealing the mechanism in the blurred area between informality and formality, this paper responds to the dualistic argument on the informality theory, deepens the idea of taking informality as a flexible urban governance strategy in developing countries, and provides new thoughts for governance of informal settlements in China and other developing countries.

Citizenization of Native Villagers after Redeveloped Urban Village:A Case Study of Liede Community in Guangzhou

Based on qualitative data from in-depth interviews,participative observation,and literature study,this paper aims to get insights into the patterns and process of the citizenization of native villagers living in Liede Community,which is the first redeveloped urban village in Guangzhou.Investigation on villagers' citizenization level is carried out to examine how the redevelopment project affects villagers' citizenization.Our finding reveals that the redevelopment project has improved villagers' living conditions and income levels remarkably,has facilitated the mixed housing patterns of diversified social groups,and has increased their chances to be integrated into urban social life.Nevertheless,as villagers kept their traditional mode of thinking,behavioral habits,and lifestyles,the citizenization process made little progress in terms of land ownership,management mode,mode of livelihood,and citizen identity.Therefore,the Liede redevelopment project has turned out to be a "passive citizenization" process,i.e.,villagers merely received socio-economic benefits from the redevelopment passively but remained isolated from the socio-economic and cultural system of the city.Finally,this paper proposes some policy suggestions to promote the citizenization from both conceptual and practical perspectives.

Characteristics and Causes of the Spatial Evolution of Urban Villages:A Case Study of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone

Studies on the renovation and governance of urban villages have become the interest of human geography since the 1990s.However up to now,there is little literature focusing on the development patterns and dynamic mechanism of the spatial evolution of urban villages based on the theoretical system of urban spatial structure,and there are few scholars doing analyses on the relationship between urban villages and general urban areas in terms of spatial development.In this paper,Shenzhen,the most representative city of China in terms of urban village development,is taken as a case for exploring the characteristics and modes of the spatial evolution of urban villages.With census data of urban village construction in 1999 and 2004 in terms of built-up area,floor area,and construction intensity,the spatial and temporal evolution of the 91 administrative urban villages in the original Shenzhen Special Economic Zone have been analyzed in comparison with that of Shenzhen's general urban areas.It is indicated that the spatial evolution of urban villages matches with the general rules of the spatial development of general urban areas in three aspects.First,land expansion is the most remarkable mode of spatial evolution in the early stage of development;second,in the period of rapid development,there is the obvious tendency of "distance-decay" in terms of construction intensity accompanied by some anomalous fluctuations at certain points;third,renewal and redevelopment are carried out gradually in the mature stage of development.However,because of historical and institutional restrictions,the spatial evolution of urban villages shows its unique characteristics in the aspects of original spatial distribution and spatial expansion mode in the period of rapid development,etc.The outcomes of this study would help not only enrich the theoretical study on the evolution mode of urban spatial structure,but also strengthen the administration over urban villages,in particular with the suggestions that the spatial evolution of urban villages as a type of urban space should not be the same as that of general urban areas and its unique characteristics should not be ignored;specific rules should be set up to guide the rational spatial evolution of urban villages according to the economic development of the city,as well as the housing demands of various kinds of residents.

Research on the Characteristics and Evolution of Residential Morphology of Urban Villages in Shenzhen Under the Informal Housing Market

This article studies the phenomena of urban villages against the background of an informal housing market, and provides analysis of the characteristics and mechanisms responsible for its formation during different stages in its evolution, including the strategies and policies that affect urban villages, such as the Planning Layout of Industry Districts and the Affordable Housing Policy in Shenzhen. Lastly, the article examines how it enables a possible development tendency for the future residential morphology of urban villages in Shenzhen.

Reflection on the authenticity of urban sites

With the continuous development of society and city,the urban village has been born with time.The book Naked City:The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places by Sharon Zukin is a reflection on the"authenticity"of urban village under the background of big city’s development.Through the study of this book,other four books and the field investigation of Nantou Ancient City and Baishizhou which are typical"urban village"in Shenzhen,we can understand the authenticity,and further explore how to construct the authentic places and how to find their own way of authenticity in the development of The Times.

From Villages to Urban Neighborhoods:Urbanization and Health

With rapid urbanization,millions of rural villagers have become urban citizens in China.This paper estimates the effect of the in situ urbanization policy on an individual's health by employing the difference-in-differences framework and using panel survey data from the China Family Panel Studies.Our findings show that this program,unlike other kinds of urbanization,which have had negative impacts on mental health or made people smoke or drink more,increased people's self-reported health status significantly.Further mechanism analysis reveals that the in situ urbanization policy afected health by increasing people's confidence in the future,their satisfaction with their current lives,and their medical insurance enrollment.This study highlights the importance of"the city comes to villagers"urbanization in China,and it can play an essential role in advancing the urbanization rate and avoiding the negative impacts of urbanization on health.

城中村保障性住房化改造的财务平衡机制研究——以深圳市水围村柠盟公寓更新为例

Financial balance is a requisite for the sustained operation of urban regeneration projects in the stock-based planning period.From the perspective of financial balance,this paper analyzes the operation strategy and mechanism of the LM Apartments Project in Shuiwei Village of Shenzhen from four aspects:the financial input in the initial stage,the revenue and expenditure in the operational stage,the financial relationship between multiple stakeholders,and the control of non-financial costs.The findings reveal that under the tripartite cooperation between the government,the state-owned enterprise,and the village collective,the LM Apartments Project in Shuiwei Village is a model of urban village regeneration that effectively supplements Shenzhen’s government-subsidized housing system.Of the three parties,the government provides policy support and asset-light investment;Shum Yip Group,a state-owned enterprise,has carried out innovative practices of urban village regeneration while making a small profit;the Shuiwei village collective has achieved sustained economic benefits and a high-quality living environment.The paper further discusses the external effects of this practice and probes into the conditions for the wide application of this mode in the hope of providing a useful reference for promoting the application of the financial balance mechanism in urban village regeneration projects.

Transition of Implementation Pattern Under the Predicament of Urban Renewal:A Perspective of Spatial Governance

The recent prevalence of property-led urban renewal in Chinese cities has generated problems such as"nail households"1 and the loss of public welfare.This paper begins with the theoretical framework of spatial governance in urban renewal and then discusses the problems of property-led urban renewal.From a perspective of spatial governance,it proposes the framework,process,and policy design for the transition of the urban renewal model characterized by"government leadership and self-renewal of village collectives."By taking an urban village within a large city in south China as a case study,this paper compares the profit distribution among each party between the property-led urban renewal model and the village collectives’self-renewal.It concludes with the significance of this new model for the establishment of a spatial governance system and highquality urban and rural development in China.

Study on Gregarious Low-Income College Graduates in Beijing: Tangjialing Phenomenon and Its Afterefect

During China's rapid urbanization process, the survival condition of low-income college graduates who live in urban villages has become a serious issue that attracts the attention of policy-makers and sociologists. Based on existing literatures, relevant information, and independent field investigations, this paper focuses on Tangjialing, an urban village where low-income college graduates gather, investigating on their current situations of sociological features and settlements, as well as the reasons for the formation of urban villages.