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    Rural-Urban Integration Development in the New Era
  • Rural-Urban Integration Development in the New Era
    LI Xiaojian, HU Xueyao, SHI Yanwen, YANG Huimin
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    This article started with an analysis of the background of rural decline, and the content and logic of the national strategy of rural revitalization from the perspective of human-land relationship. We proposed that rural recession is the result of the adjustment of human-land relationship lagging behind the process of social and economic development. The ultimate purpose of rural revitalization is to adjust the relationship between human and land to adapt to the change of the value of production factors in the new stage of social and economic development. Then, the review of the literature on rural revitalization found that the existing research has paid more attention to the implementation of its strategic content, but not enough attention to rural settlements that have been the important carrier of rural population. There is a close relationship between rural settlement and rural revitalization. Rural settlements are the focus of human social and economic activities in rural areas, and are the core and starting point of rural human-land relationship adjustment. But in the existing literature on rural settlements, emphasis is placed on development cases and neglecting mechanisms, especially the mechanism of change of rural settlements, which is closely associated with rural revitalization. Therefore, bearing in mind the key role of rural settlements in rural revitalization, this article finally put forward five focus areas of future research: the theory of rural settlement evolution, changing trend of spatial structure in rural settlements, specialization transformation of rural settlements, optimization of rural settlements, and landscape of rural settlements.

  • Rural-Urban Integration Development in the New Era
    YE Chao, YU Jie, ZHANG Qingyuan, ZHU Xiaodan
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    Governance has become an important theoretical and practical issue of multi-disciplinary concern. In the context of rapid urbanization and wide rural-urban disparity, rural-urban governance is particularly important for China. Based on the Chinese and international governance theories, the key aspects of governance include: an open system, self-organization, and the interactive relationship between power and rights. Internationally the research frontier focuses on the governance of social-ecological systems, while urban governance has grown significantly, and rural governance has also risen in recent years. The research trend and policy evolution of governance in China indicate that China has undergone a comprehensive transformation from management to governance by top-level design, and rural-urban governance is becoming a key issue. The main path of China's rural-urban governance in the future lies in three aspects. First, it is necessary to shift from power-oriented to rights-oriented governance. Second, equal attention needs to be paid to both ecological environment and social governance instead of focusing only on social, single-dimensional, and urban governance systems, and form a rural-urban co-governance system with the participation of multiple subjects. Third, it should be launched to assist rural and urban vulnerable groups actively. Rural-urban co-governance will become a new growth point for theories, and multi-disciplinary, multi-subject, and multi-department collaboration is much needed.

  • Rural-Urban Integration Development in the New Era
    ZENG Guojun, XU Yuchen, WANG Longjie, ZHONG Shuru
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    The relationship between people and land provides an important perspective on urbanization paths. This study analyzed the development context and basic logic of the transformation of human-land relationship in China, and argued that the relationship between people and land has gone through three stages: localization, de-localization, and re-localization. In the stage of localization, the economic form of the country based on agriculture determined people's economic dependence and emotional attachment to the countryside, and the logic of localization is hard to shake. In the de-localization stage, the transformation of industrialization and urbanization in China pushed farmers to leave the agricultural fields and leave the countryside, and structural changes occurred to the value constraint that people cannot be separated from their lands. Under the influence of land use institutions and the household registration system, the passive landless farmers and those leaving the land behind at their own will jointly led the de-localization process of human-land relationship. In the stage of re-localization, the institutional reform led the farmers to become the main agent of urbanization. Nostalgia promotes the coexistence of urban and rural civilizations, which helps reshape the relationship between people and land. Finally, this article maintained that examining the historical context and basic logic of the transformation of human-land relationship can provide a theoretical reference for the institutional adjustment of human-land relationship in the new era and the smooth implementation of new urbanization.

  • Rural-Urban Integration Development in the New Era
    LI Bohua, LI Xue, CHEN Xinxin, DOU Yindi, LIU Peilin
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    Under the background of new urbanization, characteristic tourist towns, as an important carrier of rural-urban integration and rural revitalization, undertake multiple functions such as industrial development, cultural heritage preservation, community management, spatial integration, and ecological optimization. Currently, characteristic tourist towns face problems such as the lack of integration of industrial and urban activities, and the lack of distinctive characteristics. Therefore, from the perspective of industrial integration and landscape reconstruction, a two-wheel driven mechanism for the construction of characteristic tourist towns is discussed. The research results show that: 1) With regard to realizing the transformation and upgrading of characteristic tourist towns development through industrial integration: on the basis of recognizing shared features of industries and identifying their unique characteristics, industrial integration can be realized through the use of integration methods. In this way, the strong effects of industrial integration on population, industrial, consumption, service, spatial, and ecological agglomerations are stimulated to promote the economic, social, and ecological construction of characteristic tourist towns. 2) With regard to realizing genetic inheritance in characteristic tourist towns development through landscape reconstruction: through identifying landscape genes, extracting landscape nodes, combining landscape corridors, and constructing landscape forms, the blueprint for the construction of cultural landscape of characteristic tourist towns can be drawn. This path highlights the cultural genes of characteristic tourist towns. 3) Combining industrial integration and landscape reconstruction to form a two-wheel driven mechanism for the construction of characteristic tourist towns: Under the premise of identifying landscape genes and determining the identity of characteristic tourist towns, industrial integration can be carried out. At the same time, the integration results can be used to extract landscape nodes to form tourism channels. Thus, the social space functions are integrated and a harmonious landscape form is formed. It provides a highly integrated development path of industrialization and specialization for characteristic tourist towns.

  • Sustainable Urbanization
  • Sustainable Urbanization
    CHEN Mingxing, HUANG Xinrong, HUANG Gengzhi, YANG Yanshan
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    With the development of urbanization, promoting the citizenization of migrant workers and improving the quality of employment has become an important goal of China's urbanization strategy in the new era. Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem of informal employment stands out even further. Starting with an examination of the relationship between new urbanization and informal employment, this study draws on the data from population census and the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) to estimate the scale of urban informal employment in China and analyze its spatial and sectoral characteristics. It then identifies the main social integration problems faced by informal workers and discusses some policy options. It is found that urbanization and informal employment are interrelated. Informal employment provides job opportunities for rural migrants with the inability to find formal jobs in cities and urban workers who are unemployed, playing a role in alleviating employment and poverty problems. It is argued that the new urbanization with the principle of putting people first should be concerned with the social integration of informal workers with the aim to promote their citizenization. According to the estimation based on multi-source data, the number of informal workers is 138 million-155 million, accounting for 33.2%-44.7% of urban employment in China. The unobserved/unregistered informal workers are the majority. The distribution of informal employment is characterized by the spatial pattern that the scale of informal employment decreases from the eastern to the central and the western parts of China. In terms of employment types, most informal workers are employed in enterprises. Informal employment in China is mainly concentrated in the sector of wholesale, retail trade, and catering, followed by the sectors of residential service, repair, and other services and manufacturing industry. Informal workers are faced with difficulties in social integration, including job precarity, income instability, social marginalization due to population registration restriction, limited access to public services, and vulnerability to crises. It is recommended that policy intervention should pay attention to improving the quality of informal employment and promoting social integration of informal workers in the future.

  • Sustainable Urbanization
    CHEN Ruishan, ZHAO Zhiqiang, XU Di, CHEN Yi
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    The twenty-first century is an urban century, and high quality urban development is critical for regional and global sustainable development. China has experienced a very rapid urbanization, with its urbanization rate increased from 17.9% in 1978 to 60.6% in 2019. This rate will further increase to more than 70% in 2030, with most of the population lives in cities. Cities are the engine of economic development in China. With 7% of the terrestrial area, they produced 70% of the national gross domestic product (GDP), and the urban agglomerations even concentrated more population and GDP in China. The health and sustainability of cities and urban agglomerations therefore will determine China's development quality and progress in the future. To identify the levels of their development, the issues they face, and the gaps with other cities in China and internationally, we need to quantitatively evaluate their development. In this study, we systematically reviewed the evolution of the theories and index systems of sustainable development evaluation, examined the methodology of urban sustainable development evaluation based on the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals framework, and proposed an approach to evaluate the level of sustainable development of cities and urban agglomerations. Finally, we suggest an approach to create a urban development dashboard from platform building, big data processing, and index monitoring and releasing. This approach based on the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals can provide the focal city a reference from other cities, make it possible to compare cities in different regions, and contribute to identifying development direction and existing problems.

  • Sustainable Urbanization
    ZHANG Hua, LIU Zheda, YIN Xiaobing
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    Along with the urban industrial structure adjustment and the development of the rural economy, a large-scale backflow of inter-provincial migrant workers gradually emerged, which had a tremendous impact on China's economic and social development. The spatial differences and influencing factors of inter-provincial migrant workers' backflow intention are vital issues, particularly in predicting the changing demographic trends and understanding the migrant population's needs and demands. Drawing on data from the 2016 China Migrant Population Dynamic Survey, this study discussed the spatial distribution and influencing factors of 82846 inter-provincial migrant workers from 31 provinces of China's mainland using a binary Logistic regression model. The results are as follows: 1) Older migrant workers with lower education level or without stable marital status seem to have stronger backflow intention. 2) The distribution of backflow intention presents a remarkable spatial differentiation. Among the three main geographical regions, the backflow intention of migrant workers currently in the eastern and western regions of China is stronger while the migrant workers who came from the central region express their clear willingness to return. 3) Backflow intention is influenced by personal factors of migrant population, their migration characteristics, family factors, and institutional factors. For all the factors, age, marital status, education, years of working after migration, migrating with family or not, family income, housing condition, and social security system are significant forces that shape the spatial pattern of inter-provincial migrant workers' backflow intention in China.

  • Sustainable Urbanization
    WANG Cheng, REN Meijing, HU Qiuyun, LI Qin
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    As an important attribute of rural production spatce system (RPSS), resilience is a sustainable ability, including persistence (system maintenance), adaptability (system evolution), and transformability (system mutation) in response to internal and external environmental disturbances. It is the only pathway to realizing rural revitalization and sustainable development in rural China. Based on the international and Chinese research and RPSS attributes, this study explored the connotations and essence of RPSS resilience. Meanwhile, based on the epistemology and ontology of philosophy, a qualitative model of RPSS resilience was developed considering the five dimensions of disturbance, stakeholders, state of system, objective of system, and ability of resilience. Applying this qualitative model, this study identified four main research contents of RPSS resilience, which include disturbance recognition and vulnerability analysis, the feedback relationship between vulnerability and resilience, resilience assessment and threshold effect analysis, and the development of adaptive governance system. This article also presented some future research focuses, which include new multidisciplinary and integrative methods, spatiotemporal scale association and multi-dimensional factor transmission, and the integrated development of adaptive governance system of stakeholders. This study may be helpful for the prevention and reduction of major risks and for promoting the development of rural revitalization and rural sustainable development in rural China.

  • Sustainable Urbanization
    LIU Zhimin, YE Chao
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    Along with the rapid progress of urbanization, dramatic changes in the ecological environment and profound changes in the social and economic systems have made issues related to China's urban and rural development more prominent. Urban and rural governance faces new challenges. The concept of social-ecological resilience may shed some light on changes in the practice of rural-urban governance, but there is a lack of research on the relationship between them. Focusing on major issues of urban and rural development in China, this study clarified the relationship between social-ecological resilience and urban and rural development, and constructed a logical framework of rural-urban governance from the perspective of social-ecological resilience. The framework aims to promote urban and rural integration and sustainable development by introducing the key characteristics of social-ecological resilience (coupling, self-organization, and learning) into rural-urban governance mechanisms (planning, participation, and policy). In the future, social and ecological issues should be taken into overall consideration in rural-urban governance, with the idea of human-earth system coupling. A multiple-tiered network of coordinated rural-urban governance should be established. Attention should be paid to the cultivation of cooperation and innovation of the participants at different scales, especially to the construction of learning and adaptability of urban and rural communities. In practice, it is necessary to make full use of spatial planning, to incorporate ecosystem services into rural-urban spatial governance and take them as a priority. The goal of enhancing the resilience and adaptive capacity of urban and rural areas to uncertain challenges will be achieved by coordinating the relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being.

  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
    HU Die, ZHOU Shangyi, CHEN Zixiong, GU Lili
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    Rapid urbanization is the main reason for the disappearance of villages with rich cultural and historical heritage. In order to reverse this trend and achieve the purpose of protecting and using ancient village resources, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and the Ministry of Finance jointly announced the list of "Traditional Chinese Villages". The goal of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of this administrative method by using the spatial analysis method of geography. Jiangxi Province was chosen as the research area for two reasons: the number of Traditional Chinese Villages in the province exceeds the average of all provinces in China; and the related data are available to our research team. Two hypotheses of this study are tested that the disappearance of traditional villages is most obvious around cities; and that identifying "Traditional Chinese Villages" has prevented to some extent the disappearance of old architecture and the historical heritage of ancient villages. This study used nightlight remote sensing, gross domestic product, and population data in grid format and road network data to comprehensively determine and map the zones of urban influence in Jiangxi Province. It then compared the map of urban influence zones with the density of the Traditional Chinese Villages in the province. The results support the two hypotheses. Finally, this article showed that although the naming of Traditional Chinese Villages cannot restore the disappeared ancient villages, it has thwarted the disappearing trend to a certain extent. We recommend that when identifying and naming Traditional Chinese Villages in the future, relevant government departments should pay more attention to ancient villages around cities.

  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
    YANG Ren, ZHANG Jing, XU Qian, LUO Xiuli
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    Addressing the land issue is the key for implementing the rural revitalization strategy. Land consolidation and capitalization as important means to improve land quality and promote rural-urban integration have been the hot topic of discussion. This study took the demolition and reclamation policy in Guangdong Province as a case, analyzed the mechanism of capitalization effect of rural construction land reclamation, and clarified its influence on rural revitalization as well as rural-urban integration. First, during the implementation of rural construction land reclamation, the "weak relationship" dominated by market mechanism and the "strong relationship" dominated by land circulation play important roles in the renovation and reclamation, which are the main ways to realize land capitalization. Second, rural construction land reclamation mainly promotes rural revitalization through structural reconstruction, spatial reorganization, production mode transformation, and ecological environment optimization. Finally, rural construction land reclamation takes cross-regional market trading platforms as the carrier to guide the circulation of land, capital, and other factors between urban and rural areas. Meanwhile, it guarantees the development right of rural areas by setting the protection price and the right of preemption, which realizes the smooth flow of factors between urban and rural areas.

  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
    FAN Qingyu, YANG Shan
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    Based on the national strategy of Yangtze River Delta economic integration and regional coordinated development and after measuring the urbanization coordination level of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta from 2001 to 2016, this study analyzed the spatial characteristics and formation mechanism of the coordinated development of urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta by using the methods of Theil Index, center of gravity track, hotspot analysis, and spatial econometric model. The results show that: 1) the overall difference of urbanization coordination level in the Yangtze River Delta is fluctuating and decreasing, and intra-provincial differences are shrinking while the difference between the provinces is expanding; the spatial distribution of the coordination level of urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta is generally higher in the east and lower in the west. The pattern of coordinated development of urbanization has experienced little change in the northwest-southeast direction and the center of gravity is relatively stable over the years, but the spatial correlation scope and dispersion degree are expanding. 2) According to the characteristics of spatial agglomeration, there is a significant positive spatial autocorrelation in the coordination level of urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta. The hotspots are gradually converging to the economically developed areas such as Shanghai, Southern Jiangsu, and Northern Zhejiang. The cold spots are stably distributed in Northern Anhui, Southern Anhui, and southern Zhejiang. 3) All factors that affect the spatial characteristics of coordinated development of urbanization are significantly positive. The level of economic development still dominates coordinated regional development of urbanization. Population agglomeration is more obvious for the improvement of the level of coordinated development of urbanization of neighboring cities. Giving full play to the driving role of the highly coordinated area of urbanization will realize the balanced development of the Yangtze River Delta.

  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
    ZHANG Haina, ZHU Yiwen, DENG Xiaoxiang
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    Urbanization in China has changed from speed focused to quality focused. The core of this change is to realize the urbanization of people, that is, the citizenization of agricultural population who have moved to cities and towns. After land requisition, the suburban landless farmers often need a new place of living, and the residential form has changed from the original homestead construction to the coexistence of various forms. Based on the empirical data of the Yangtze River Delta, this study took the social-spatial perspective as the main approach of research, and used regression models to analyze the impact of residential spatial differentiation on the social integration of landless farmers in suburbs. The study found that housing type, as the main dimension of residential space differentiation, affects the social integration of landless farmers in suburbs, while human capital factors such as individual monthly income and housing type work together. On this basis, we put forward policy recommendations from the aspects of implementing mixed residential mode, enhancing employment ability, and increasing government input to improve the level of social security, with a view to promoting the citizenization process of landless farmers.

  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
    SUN Biao, YANG Shan
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    In recent years, urban innovation input feature has played an increasingly role in the economic integration process of the Yangtze River Delta. This study used the spatial econometric model and Markov chain to measure the economic spillover effects of innovation input feature based on the spatial panel data of cities in the Yangtze River Delta from 2010 to 2017, and revealed the impact of innovation spillovers on the pattern of regional economic convergence under the economic integration of the Yangtze River Delta. The main conclusions are as follows: 1) The innovation features and economic growth of the Yangtze River Delta show strong spatial agglomeration characteristics, the trend of Moran's I value of innovation input feature and economic growth are similar, and the Moran's I value of innovation output feature shows an unstable trend in time series. Both innovation input and output features have positive effects on economic growth. 2) From the global view, the innovation input feature has a significant spillover effect on regional economic growth, and the spillover effect of innovation input feature is greater than the direct effect, suggesting that innovation investment will affect the pattern of economic integration development of the Yangtze River Delta; while the spatial spillover effect of the innovation output feature is not significant. 3) From the local view, cities adjacent to higher levels of innovation input are positive for economic growth by local positive spillover, and cities adjacent to lower levels of innovation input are negative for economic growth by local negative spillover. Under the spillover effects of innovation input feature, the economic growth of the Yangtze River Delta region has formed a "club convergence" phenomenon, and the spatial pattern of the regional economic structure is changing from a high level convergence in the center of the Yangtze River Delta to a low level convergence in the periphery. 4) The cities with economic growth type transferred are mainly concentrated at the provincial boundaries, showing complex transfer mechanisms under the effect of local spillovers. The developed regions and the developing regions tend to be stable and have obvious inertia of spatial transfer, and the spillover effect of innovation will exacerbate the Matthew effect of economic growth in the Yangtze River Delta. Based on the results of the analysis that innovation spillovers promote club convergence of economic growth, this study proposed specific recommendations for the development of regional integration in the Yangtze River Delta.

  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
    WEN Shixian, LIAO Jianhao, CAI Haohui, CHEN Xiaoliang
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    During the process of urban construction in the new era, the Chinese government advocates for the development of beautiful towns and cities with historic memories and cultural context. The renewal and development of historic blocks, which are the carrier of local history and culture, is a vital part of implementing the new urbanization strategy. Based on Foucault's and Harvey's theories of the production of space, this research analyzed the process of spatial reconstruction and subjects' cultural practice of Yongqing Fang, Guangzhou City. We found that culture was a crucial factor for the smooth transformation of Yongqing Fang. With the efforts of the residents with cultural identity and other social agents, the cultural value was officially recognized and protected. Hence, the renewal of Yonqing Fang could be gradually carried out under the framework of cultural protection. After the renewal, Yongqing Fang was transformed from a living space to a cultural consumption space, where cultural production and consumption showed a high degree of commercialization. The local culture was mixed with exotic culture, resulting in low satisfaction of tourists' cultural experience. The case of Yongqing Fang highlights culture as an active factor that directly plays a role in the multi-subject spatial production of historic districts, which enriches the theory of spatial production from the perspective of culture. This case is of reference for the implementation of the new urbanization strategy. In the process of urbanization, we should build towns and cities with locally historic and cultural characteristics.

  • Typical Cases of Rural-Urban Integration Development
    HU Xiaoliang, LI Hongbo, ZHANG Xiaolin, YANG Jiahui
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    Due to the rapid urbanization, rural areas in China is undergoing drastic transformation and reconstruction, showing a diverse scene of rural spatial differentiation. With the transformation of rural areas from agricultural production space to multifunctional space such as production, living, and ecological, the potential value of spatial elements such as human settlements, natural landscapes, history, and culture in rural areas is gradually emerging. Examining the research theme of the commodification of rural space can meet the requirements of theoretical development and practice. There exist only a few studies on the commodification of rural space conducted by the Chinese human geography community, which is still in its infancy, and the discussions on the formation mechanism of rural space commodification lack depth. Using field surveys and unstructured interviews, this study took Xixiang Village of Suzhou City as a study case to examine the process and mechanism of rural space commodification in developed areas. Field surveys conducted in Xixiang Village in September and October 2019 investigated the village building layout, industries, and residents' lifestyles. Seventeen respondents were interviewed on issues concerning the development and change of the village, production and daily life, and tourism development. The results show that the commodification of rural space is a process in which rural space itself gradually becomes a kind of commodity under market economy conditions that can obtain profit. The spatial connotation of this process embodies in space representation and space practice. From the perspective of space representation, the commodification of Xixiang Village space expanded from the commodification of agricultural products in the rural space to the commodification of the rural space itself, which was accompanied by the transformation from a single agricultural production space to a multifunctional space combining production and consumption. From the perspective of space practice, based on the actor-network theory, the commodification of space in Xixiang Village is driven by the connection of various heterogeneous actors inside and outside. Common interests of all actors are the basis of the network development, and the subjectivity and agency of non-human actors must be given full attention.