Sustainable urban-rural relation in rapid urbanization areas

Abstract

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 government, drumming for the landscape-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.