Study on the Characteristics of Community Human Settlements in Peri-urban Area during Urbanization: A Case of Jimei District, Xiamen City

Abstract

Different types of community exist in peri-urban area during urbanization,including rural type,urban-rural transition type containing small town,village in suburb,village in the fringe of built-up area,village in built-up area,and urban type such as residential community.The urbanization gradients of these communities are from low to high.Human settlements of these communities thus present diversity and variability.And affected by urbanization,the human settlements of these communities take on certain characteristics.Taking Jimei District of Xiamen City as a case,the characteristics of human settlements of different types of communities in peri-urban area during urbanization were analyzed with seven study communities,using landscape pattern analyzing method and questionnaire survey techniques based on human settlements assessment index system.The results are shown as follows.(1) From rural community to urban-rural transition community,the proportion of building area increased significantly,but little change took place in road area,and the proportions of woodland and grassland area decreased gradually.The landscape pattern had been turned into less types of community and modern building landscape being the dominant state.And the holistic landscape tends to the state of fragmentation and a little more complex.For urban residential community,the proportions of all kinds of landscapes area are relatively reasonable,but the holistic landscape is highly fragmentized and the shape of landscape is more regular.(2) The qualities of human settlements of all types of communities were gradually getting better during urbanization,especially for urban-rural transition community and rural community.But the quality of human settlements of urban residential community is much higher than that of urban-rural transition community and rural community.And except village in built-up area type,from rural community to urban residential community,a positive correlation exists between the quality of community human settlements and the urbanization degree of community.(3) On the whole,urbanization has promoted the improvement of the quality of community human settlements.But its impacts on different aspects of community human settlements have played different roles,and it had some negative impacts on environmental quality and human environment of community,which needs to pay more attentions in the future during the formulation of sustainable urbanization strategy.