1. Introduction
With China’s economic development into the new normal, the simple "growthism" development model has become unsustainable, and some problems in the development process have been gradually highlighted. Recently, more attention has been paid to the imbalance of development between regions, such as the development gap between urban and rural areas, and the large income distribution gap between residents; as well as over-concentration of resources, such as industry, fund, technology, talent highly concentrating in large cities, etc. As a result of this, the Chinese government has repeatedly stressed the need to promote the coordinated development of urban and rural integration, promote urban and rural transformation and achieve balanced economic development. In such an era and development background, the construction projects of “characteristic town” were put forward as a new measure and a new model in 2016.
The characteristic towns that are studied in this paper include the “characteristic town” and the “characteristic small town”. “Characteristic town” mainly refers to focusing on the characteristic industries and emerging industries, gathering the development elements (which is different from the administrative designated town and innovation), and entrepreneurship platforms of industrial parks. The “characteristic small town” refers to the administrative designated town with the traditional administrative division as the unit, distinct characteristic industry, a certain population, and economic scale. Both refer to gathering relevant elements, such as organizations, institutions, enterprises and personnel, and the developing a modern community with a characteristic and cultural atmosphere, based on a characteristic industry. These two forms complement each other and support each other.
The construction of characteristic towns is determined by the development status quo of China and is an important measure to promote the development of the rural economy. China has elevated the cultivation and construction of characteristic towns to a national rural development strategy. Governments at all levels have made financial support plans for the construction of characteristic towns. The construction of characteristic towns has become the most prominent carrier and presentation mode of China’s new urbanization at the current stage. It can not only release part of the functions of large and medium-sized cities, but also improve the comprehensive carrying capacity of surrounding cities. On the one hand, characteristic towns start from the development of characteristic industries, tap into local characteristics, promote the enrichment and development of the industrial system, increase the employment of the rural population, and promote the development of villages and towns. On the other hand, through industrial development and economic upgrading, the characteristic town creates a living environment that is more suitable for people to live for a long time, and the spatial layout is in harmony with the ecological environment, to absorb labor and realize the revitalization of towns and villages.
With the support of the policy, the construction project of “characteristic town” has developed rapidly in China. In July 2016, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China (MOHURD), National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China (MFPRC) jointly issued
the Notice on the Cultivation of Characteristic Town. The notice clearly states that by 2020 China will cultivate about 1000 small towns with unique characteristics and vitality, and lead the construction of small town [
1]. In October of the same year, NDRC of China issued the
Guidance on Speeding Up the Construction of Small (City) Town with Beautiful Characteristics. The guidance states the connection and distinction between the characteristic town and the characteristic small town, and puts forward the requirements and suggestions for the construction and development of the characteristic town [
2]. In March 2019, NDRC of China issued the
Key Tasks for the construction of the New Urbanization in 2019. The document states that we should support the orderly development of the characteristic town and adhere to the idea of characteristics thriving the town and industry constructing the town [
3].
As an important development strategy in the fight against poverty, various parts of China are actively applying for characteristic towns to improve rural development. To our knowledge, few studies have yielded how the government choose “characteristic town” construction projects more reasonable planning. Better foundation and better development prospects for investment projects from a large number of declared projects to invest and build is currently the most urgent problem China’s “characteristic town” construction projects face. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out relevant theoretical research on characteristic towns.
The characteristic towns studied in this paper include the characteristic town and the characteristic small town. Both refer to gathering relevant elements like organizations, institutions, enterprises and personnel and the developing a modern community with a characteristic and cultural atmosphere based on a characteristic industry. Although there is no clear concept of a characteristic town in foreign countries, the relationship between rural and urban areas studied by many scholars is very instructive for the development of characteristic Chinese towns. McGee et al. [
4] argued that the goal of development should be to increase the links between rural and urban areas in order to generate social change, not to separate them. It is, therefore, necessary to replace the old division between rural and urban areas with urban and rural planning and to adopt sustainable management strategies to create reliable urban areas, cities and societies. Bantjes et al. [
5] assessed the applicability of node development theory in small towns and rural areas and simulated the impact of density of the building environment, the distribution of amenities and related changes in travel distance to improve social facilities and environmental sustainability in small towns or rural environments. Chen et al. [
6] jumped out of the traditional town planning model, introduced the panoramic viewpoint, put forward the development strategy of the characteristic town from the four levels of “full level” “full space” “all factors” “all dimensions”. They put forward a specific strategy combined with the actual situation of the characteristic town of Guzhu town in Heyuan City, Guangdong Province, China.
The human society is embedded and enmeshed in economic and non-economic [
7]. Local resources, population, environment and so on will affect economic development, among which the non-economic factors mentioned refer to cultural, political and other factors. Similarly, Granovetter [
8] argues that social behavior is influenced by economic structure and social environment, and is intertwined with complex social relationships. Stiles and Cameron [
9] discussed how rural communities in Atlantic Canada had changed their old development models, summarized lessons learned from the past development of the region’s rural areas, and provided guidance on economic viability and ecological health for their future development.
Existing studies show that the development of characteristic towns can be roughly divided into economic and non-economic factors, among which economic development is the cornerstone of the development of characteristic towns. The main factors that affect the distribution of characteristic town are economic basis, population density, industrial cluster innovation, and urbanization level [
10]. The construction of rural areas needs to abandon the old development ideas and drive the economic development of the region by making rational use of its unique resources. Xi et al. [
11] built the dynamic coupling mechanism of culture source plus an industrial cluster of characteristic town, put forward the construction of characteristic town should be in line with the cultural source and industrial cluster. Saunders et al. [
12] explored how small-town government personnel use the “capital-based” framework to plan sustainable development, thereby promoting the development of local society, economy, environment and culture, i.e., planning a small town that is based on their unique capital.
The non-economic factors of the characteristic town directly restrict economic development. Only by fully exploiting the local characteristics can the economic development of the surrounding area be promoted [
13]. The functional system and characteristic system are the cornerstones of the formation and development of characteristic towns [
14]. Li et al. [
15] insisted that the development of characteristic towns should be coordinated from ecological construction, characteristic industries, urban planning and construction and cultural undertakings and many other aspects. From the point of view of embeddedness, Fu et al. [
16] divided the characteristic town’s embeddedness expressive style into three categories: natural resource endowment, social capital base and market demand preference. On this basis, they discussed the development model and development proposal of the characteristic town under different embedded types. Xu et al. [
17] put forward the sustainable development path of the characteristic town and some suggestions for its healthy development according to local natural resources and location advantages. Jiang et al. [
18] used Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to build an evaluation system for the function of characteristic town tourism, including ecological value, ornamental value, social value and economic value—which in total 17 indexes from four aspects, and analyzed the index weight. Then finally, used the method of example research to analyze the cloud manufacturing town. Ma et al. [
19] maintained the development of the characteristic town is significantly influenced by the local characteristic resources and culture, and the geographical type presents five categories, among which the advantages of the regional base condition of the industrial development-type in the plain area or agricultural service-type, river network-type or low-town historical and cultural tourism-type are significant. Xu et al. [
20] considered that emphasizing traditional culture is the sustainable development road of characteristic town construction; local culture is the driving force of the construction of characteristic small town; and nonmaterial culture is the culture of characteristic towns, and it is also an important embodiment of extracting characteristics.
If the correct evaluation and selection method can be established, the blind construction can be avoided, and the waste of resources and funds can be reduced. By visiting the grass-roots towns in Liaoning Province, China, interviewing government workers, and consulting policy and declaration materials related to the characteristic town, we found that the research theory of traditional small town does not apply to the characteristic town. But at present, the choice of “characteristic town” construction projects does not have accurate and objective selection index and measure standard. Only by establishing the correct evaluation and selection method can we effectively avoid blind construction and reduce the waste of resources and funds.
In this paper, the evaluation and selection evaluation model blending comprehensive and multivariate index for the tourism-type characteristic town is established to guide the objective selection of construction projects of “characteristic towns” in China. First of all, it surveyed from the perspective of the pre-project selection, and then established an evaluation selection index system for characteristic town projects, based on the results of the research. The index system takes into account the common and individual character develop cooperatively, the division of functional areas of characteristic town, the rationality of special planning, the clarity of the support of characteristic industries, the difficulty of planning and the difficulty of realizing the planning scheme, etc. In addition, according to the results of the questionnaire survey, a selection evaluation model based on Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Improved Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (Improved-TOPSIS) was established for the evaluation of the pre-selection of the construction projects of characteristic town. In the process of pre-selection, the systematic evaluation of the characteristic town declaration project is beneficial to find the problems in the construction scheme of each town, and put forward scientific and reasonable improvement methods.
This study provides an exciting opportunity to advance our knowledge of select the declared town construction projects. This evaluation model can help the government to judge the construction projects with more reasonable planning and better development prospects, to maximize the construction benefits. Governments can obtain relevant feedback information through evaluation results, thus, clearly restrict the main factors of the development of towns, to promote the development of towns to take into account the living facilities, environment, population, transportation and other aspects, and ultimately achieve the sustainable development of towns.
3. Selection Evaluation Model
3.1. ANP-Based Index Weight Calculation
After the evaluation index is determined, in order to obtain more accurate evaluation results, the weight of each index still needs to be calculated, and the weight reflects the importance of the index relative to other indexes in the evaluation process. At present, the common weight determination methods include the subjective method represented by Delphi or AHP and the objective method represented by the entropy method. In this study, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) method is used to calculate the weight value of each index.
ANP is a method formed by the further development based on AHP. AHP is to treat the problem under study as a system. In many complex system problems, the elements within the system always interact with each other, not only the domination of the upper layer over the lower layer, but there is also feedback from the upper layer to the lower layer. At this time, the whole system is no longer a hierarchical structure, but more similar to the network structure. So ANP is more suitable for this kind of problem. ANP can consider the interaction between elements and more accurately describe the relationship between objective facts, making the decision more accurate and effective. ANP makes up for the defect that the weight of AHP is too idealized, due to the assumption of independent indicators when it is used, which is the superiority and of ANP over AHP. Since the characteristic town selection evaluation index developed in this paper is not completely independent, there is a certain influence relationship, so the Analytic Network Process method is used to calculate the weight.
In the process of solving the index weight, this paper uses Super Decisions software that can solve the ANP network model to carry out an auxiliary calculation to solve the problem of super-matrix solving. As this paper involves four types of characteristic towns, and the selection index of four types of towns are totally different, so different types of characteristic town ANP structure model and the weight of each index are also different, so it needs classification when calculating the index weight. Considering the commonality of its calculation process, this paper introduces the calculation process of index weight only for the tourism-type town.
The steps for establishing model are as follows:
(1) Build element groups and internal elements. Create, name and describe the new element groups, and complete the establishment and naming of element nodes within each element group in turn;
(2) Establish a network relationship between elements. Since the characteristic town selection evaluation index developed in this paper is not completely independent, there is a certain influence relationship, so the ANP method is used to calculate the weight. This paper took the tourism-type town as an example, through the consulting literature, analyzing index data, understanding the meaning behind the index and discussing with the relevant researchers. We can judge and obtain the correlation of the index in the tourism-type town evaluation index system. As shown in
Table 4, the first column is the parent node and the second column is the child node affected by the parent node, which can construct a complete ANP structural model. The ANP structural model for building tourism-type characteristic town is shown in
Figure 2.
(3) Build an unweighted super-matrix. According to the principle of the dominance of ANP, using 1-9 scaling method, 10 experts (who have studied the policy and development of characteristic towns in-depth) evaluated and scored the relative importance of each index, thus, forming a judgment matrix. The backgrounds of the ten experts are shown in
Table 5.
Then, all the data for the two comparisons between the element groups under the different criteria layers and the different elements under the same element group are input, so that an unweighted super-matrix can be obtained, and the weights are calculated on this basis.
(4) Build element group weight matrix and weighted super-matrix. In order to get the importance of the index elements relative to the decision target, that is, the unweighted super-matrix of the whole is normalized, so the element group weight matrix and weighted super-matrix need to be constructed. Whether the consistency test results are less than 0.1, if less than 0.1, the consistency test is passed, and a weighted super-matrix is obtained.
(5) Limit super-matrix. In order to correctly reflect the interdependence between indexes, it is necessary to make the weighted super-matrix stabilize through continuous iteration. Then obtain the normalized characteristic vector of each element, and finally get the limit super-matrix .
(6) Determine the element weight. Only one decision target and element groups and elements at the network layer, considering less multiple decision-making criteria in the characteristic town index system. Calculate the priority of each element group and element under the decision target without to repeat the above steps to weight the network layer elements under the different criteria layer, just. Therefore, we can get the weight results of each element relative to the target layer.
Repeat this step for the 10 expert questionnaire data. Exclude two data that failed the consistency test and normalize the weight values obtained from the remaining 8 data, and the index weights of tourism-type towns were eventually obtained, as shown in
Table 6.
3.2. Selection Evaluation Based on Improved-TOPSIS
In this paper, the evaluation model of Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to select the construction projects of characteristic town. The TOPSIS method, also known as the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution, is sorted by calculating the relative distance between each evaluation object and the calculated ideal optimal solution (positive ideal solution) and ideal worst solution (negative ideal solution). In Euclidean space, the closer the distance to the positive ideal solution and the further the distance from the negative ideal solution is, the better the scheme is. In order to avoid the phenomenon of reverse order in the practical application of the TOPSIS method, this paper introduces the Improved-TOPSIS evaluation model. By setting the absolute positive ideal solution and absolute negative ideal solution ensure that the change of the scheme number will not change the ideal solution.
Within the effective scope involved in the decision-making, no one scheme will be better than the absolute positive ideal solution, nor worse than the absolute negative ideal solution. When the number of scheme is increased or decreased, nothing of the absolute ideal solution will change. Therefore, the advantages and disadvantages relationship of each evaluation object related to the absolute ideal solution remains unchanged, thus, eliminating the reverse order of the traditional TOPSIS model.
In the selection evaluation of the characteristic town projects, the first step is to determine the type of industry of the characteristic town, and then put the characteristic town of the same type of industry together for comparison and selection. The specific selection evaluation characteristic town steps are as follows:
Step 1: Collect data, calculate each index attribute value for each alternative project, and construct the initial decision matrix;
Step 2: Standardize the original index value of each scheme, and before the comprehensive comparison of the scheme, the data of the original decision matrix should be standardized, to obtain the normalized decision matrix:
Step 3: Determine the unweighted absolute positive ideal solution as , and the absolute negative ideal solution as ;
Step 4: Select the index weight value under the corresponding industry type according to the index weight, weight the standardized data processing, and determine the absolute ideal solution of the weighting:
where
;
;
Step 5: Calculate the Euclidean distance of each scheme to the absolute positive ideal solution
and to the absolute negative ideal solution
:
Step 6: Based on the formula (5), calculate the relative closeness of each alternative project to the ideal solution
and the higher the
, the better the scheme is, according to the size of the
value:
Step 7: After the traditional TOPSIS method is standardized in data processing, the values in the normalized decision matrix are between 0 and 1, that is, the maximum value obtained after standardization of the original values of all indexes is 1, and the minimum value obtained is 0. The characteristic town evaluation index established in this paper is benefit type index. Therefore, the absolute positive ideal solution corresponding to the standardization of the data is
, the absolute negative ideal solution is
. Think about the weight value of each index, and then we can get the weighted absolute positive ideal solution and weighted absolute negative ideal solution, respectively, is formula (6) and formula (7). This is based on
and
to calculate the Euclidean distance and relative closeness, and then to obtain the scheme’s order of merit.
5. Conclusions
A characteristic town is an important means to promote the coordinated development of urban and rural integration. Constructing a characteristic town in the area with a better foundation provides a new way of thinking and mode for the development of small towns, and injects vitality into the traditional industrial upgrading and the development of traditional culture. The characteristic town has four obvious features, namely, special and strong industry, gathered and convergent function, small and beauty form, new and live mechanism. These four features determine that it is different from other development subjects, but also determine that the construction of characteristic town is of great significance. With a construction boom launched across the country, governments at all levels have issued their own characteristic town construction plans, and give the characteristic town policies and funds of strong support.
In the process of promoting the construction of characteristic town, we must take into account the regional differences and the actual conditions of the town. We must also choose the area with better basic conditions to carry out the construction of characteristic town, to drive the economic development of the surrounding area more quickly and realize the return of funds. Carrying out the construction of characteristic town blindly, it will waste a lot of resources. By analyzing policy documents and questionnaires, this study established an evaluation index system for characteristic town and a selection evaluation model based on ANP and Improved-TOPSIS for the pre-selection of tourism-type characteristic town projects. For towns with general basic conditions, the main work of the government should be put on laying the foundations, not only improving the environment, protecting the history and culture, but also investing funds to improve infrastructure, and laying a solid foundation for the later development of the towns.
The characteristic town projects should be evaluated accordingly in the process of pre-selection, medium-term construction and late-stage development. The evaluation of the pre-selection is to select a more suitable area for construction investment; the medium-term construction evaluation is to judge the situation of town construction, whether to achieve the construction objectives and requirements, whether the investment planning and other aspects are in line with the policy provisions, which is the annual assessment of the characteristic town; the late-stage evaluation is to judge whether there is a greater development of the characteristic industry, to judge the efforts of characteristic town to drive the economic development of the surrounding area and to sum up the shortcomings in the construction process of the town, to avoid the same problem in the later town construction.
The establishment process of characteristic town is the process of dynamic development. In the development process of characteristic town, the evaluation index system is not changeless, but constantly changing. Therefore, we can develop index systems of different stages, thus, making the evaluation more scientific and more reasonable. In addition, the developing emphasis on different industry types of characteristic towns is also different. Therefore, different evaluation index systems should be used to evaluate different types of industrial towns. The evaluation system of the characteristic town established in this study is only suitable for the pre-selection of the characteristic town projects. However, the evaluation of the characteristic town could not be completed at one time, but needs to be dynamically evaluated according to the development progress of the characteristic town. Furthermore, Building Information Modeling (BIM) implements the evolution of traditional design, which incorporates geometric, costs, environmental and maintenance information [
32], as well as to encourage the use of sustainable and recycled materials in the characteristic town construction [
33]. Therefore, the index system used to evaluate the development status and development level of characteristic town can be adjusted dynamically with the construction of characteristic towns on the basis of the index system established in this paper. For example, the original leading industrial output value can be adjusted to the added value of the industry, and the number of employed persons can be adjusted to the number of increased jobs, etc. Thus, a complete set of index system throughout the construction of characteristic town is formed, and the sustained and healthy development of characteristic towns is promoted.