Search Results (26)

In the stage of high-quality development, the functional coordination between transportation systems and territorial space is a key issue for improving urban spatial efficiency. This paper breaks through the traditional volume-to-capacity ratio analysis paradigm and innovatively integrates the “production-living-ecological space” theory. By introducing an improved accessibility evaluation model and developing a coordination measurement algorithm, a three-dimensional evaluation mechanism covering development potential assessment, service efficiency diagnosis, and resource allocation optimization is established. Empirical research indicates that the improved accessibility indicators can precisely identify the transportation location value of regional functional cores, while the composite coordination indicators can deconstruct the spatiotemporal matching characteristics of “transportation facilities—spatial functions,” providing a dual decision-making basis for the redevelopment of existing space. This measurement system innovatively realizes the integration of planning transmission mechanisms with multi-scale application scenarios, guiding both overall spatial planning and urban renewal area re-optimization. The methodology, applied to the urban villages of Guangzhou, can significantly increase land utilization intensity and value. The research results offer a technical tool for cross-scale collaboration in land space planning reforms and provide theoretical innovations and practical guidance for the value reconstruction of existing spaces under the context of new urbanization. Full article

Urban village redevelopment plays an important role in advancing sustainable and inclusive urbanization, aligning with global and national priorities, including China’s five-year plans. Residents’ satisfaction is one of the important measures of the success of urban village development. This review focuses on residents’ satisfaction in urban villages in China and its correlation to the SDGs rather than analyzing urban village transformation itself. This review employs a dual-method approach: a traditional review identifies the characteristics of urban village development phases, and a systematic review examines the indicators influencing residents’ satisfaction and their alignment with Sustainable Development Goals. This study highlights critical indicators influencing residents’ satisfaction, such as building quality, green space, and sense of security, and the changing trends in the value of these indicators through different urban village development phases. The findings reveal significant challenges, including housing affordability, governance methods, and social cohesion, emphasizing the need for redevelopment strategies to be aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote equity and create sustainable urban environments. This review provides valuable insights for policymakers and urban planners, offering a framework for providing a knowledge base to understand the dynamics of satisfaction and support sustainable urban regeneration. Full article

The micro-renewal of rural heritage in urban villages transcends spatial transformation, profoundly altering social structures and relational dynamics. Recent research has emerged concerning the cultural impact of rural revitalization on rural heritage. However, little research has been undertaken regarding the specific mechanisms via which various renewal orientations influence the community. This study focuses on the case of Whampoa Village in Guangzhou, China, specifically highlighting the rehabilitation of its ancestral temples. Utilizing a field–space–society analytical framework, it analyzes how these revitalized ancestral temples enhance community resilience and instigate a reverse reconfiguration of spaces. Moreover, it emphasizes that the varied rehabilitation approach of ancestral temples, by including different social groups, fosters the establishment of new community connections. NGOs and small investors act as the primary catalysts for the preservation and inheritance of cultural heritage. The redevelopment initiative in Whampoa Village has enhanced spatial diversity, thereby reinforcing and transforming existing community structures. Nonetheless, it highlights the potential for spatial inequities arising from capital-driven commercialization in these rural regions. This article seeks to enrich the global database of cultural heritage by including cases from southern China and to contribute to the literature on the preservation of rural cultural assets. Full article

Despite extensive research on what draws people to urban streets, most existing insights originate from Western contexts, offering limited perspectives from wider urban contexts. This study addresses this gap by examining everyday street activities in Chinese urban villages, focusing specifically on how two spatial scales, the entire street edge and territorial segments, influence necessary, optional, and social engagements. Drawing on video recordings and walk-by observations in two urban villages in Wuhan, China, the research systematically measured the type and duration of activities across 110 territorially defined segments. The findings reveal that territorial segments, i.e., smaller-scale personalised subdivisions at a micro-scale often shaped by bottom–up adaptations, exert a significantly stronger influence upon how people use and linger in street space rather than entire street edges at a macro-scale, which shows only limited impact. This underscores the importance of fine-grained socio-spatial design and local ownership in fostering vibrant people-centred streets. By demonstrating the decisive role of micro-scale features, which span storefront layouts, semi-public alcoves, and adaptive uses, these results carry important implications for urban practitioners seeking to balance top–down redevelopment with bottom–up initiatives. Ultimately, the study enriches the global discourse on street-edge understanding and design, emphasising that territorial segments can be powerful catalysts for promoting activity and community life in dense urban contexts. Full article

Successfully advancing the redevelopment of urban villages can unlock land resources for high-quality urban development. This study attempts to explain the heterogeneous outcomes of urban village redevelopment projects in China. A comparative case study method is adopted to analyze the transaction costs and the processes applied under distinct institutional arrangements. The analysis of four cases demonstrates how institutional arrangements affect transaction costs by creating a power structure that encompasses the different participants, who represent the different interests of constituent groups in exchanges of land and housing. This study demonstrates that institutional arrangements are not immutable. In addition to transaction costs, changes in the external institutional environment can alter institutional arrangements. Changes in relative prices and ideologies can also induce institutional changes. Subtle factors, such as issues indirectly linked to the redevelopment, can increase the transaction costs of achieving a consensus if policymakers ignore them in the initial policymaking stage. The findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of the heterogeneous outcomes of urban village redevelopment in China and will encourage local governments to take effective measures to ensure smooth urban village redevelopment. Full article

The scarcity of land drives urban village redevelopment projects, which involve interest redistribution among stakeholders with distinct demands. This paper utilizes evolutionary game theory and simulation methods, constructing a tripartite game model under the institutional arrangement of bottom-up with private developer funding. This study identifies the stable strategies and evolutionary trends of the tripartite interactions under four distinct scenarios and validates these strategies through simulations. The redevelopment of XC village validates the assumptions of the model and theoretical analysis, suggesting that when private developers adopt forced demolition strategies, although villagers ultimately choose to sign the contract of property exchange, it can easily lead to social conflicts. These research findings can enlighten the government to form a tripartite alliance to smooth urban village redevelopment. Full article

To achieve sustainable development, the improvement of villagers’ subjective well-being has become the main policy goal of urban village renewal. However, the mechanism of how urban village renewal affects subjective well-being remains untested in previous research. Utilizing the survey data on 414 resettled households in the urban village renewal through a random sample method in Wuhan, China, we adopted the intermediary model to test the mechanism of how urban village renewal affects the resettled villagers’ subjective well-being. We explored the contribution rate of each intermediary variable to subjective well-being through Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition and, consequently, proposed corresponding policy suggestions. The results show that the renewal of urban villages can improve the economic conditions, housing conditions, social security status, and living environments of residents and significantly enhance the subjective well-being of the resettled villagers and households. The multi-dimensional changes resulting from the renewal of urban villages increase subjective well-being through complete mediation. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition results demonstrate that improvement of the living environment has the strongest influence on subjective well-being, with a contribution rate of 69.81%. In the future, the renewal of urban villages should focus on environmental improvement, protect neighborhood networks, and promote community engagement, so as to realize the sustainable redevelopment of urban villages. Full article

Accurately mapping and monitoring the urban impervious surface area (ISA) is crucial for understanding the impact of urbanization on heat islands and sustainable development. However, less is known about ISA spectra heterogeneity and their similarity to bare land, wetland, and high-rise-building shadows. This study proposes a feature-based approach using decision tree classification (FDTC) to map ISAs and their spatio-temporal changes in a coastal city in southeast China using Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS, and Sentinel-2 images from 2009 to 2021. Atmospheric correction using simplified dark object subtraction (DOS) was applied to Landsat imagery, which enabled faster computation. FDTC’s performance was evaluated with three sensors with different spectral and spatial resolutions, with parameter thresholds held constant across remote-sensing images. FDTC produces a high average overall accuracy (OA) of 94.53%, a kappa coefficient (KC) of 0.855, and a map-level image classification efficacy (MICE) of 0.851 for ISA mapping over the studied period. In comparison with other indices such as BCI (biophysical composition index), PISI (automated built-up extraction index), and ABEI (perpendicular impervious surface index), the FDTC demonstrated higher accuracy and separability for extracting ISA and bare land as well as wetland and high-rise buildings. The results of FDTC were also consistent with those of two open-source ISA products and other remote sensing indices. The study found that the ISA in Xiamen City increased from 16.33% to 26.17% over the past 13 years due to vegetation occupation, encroachment onto bare land, and reclamation of coastal areas. While the expansion significantly reduced urban vegetation in rapidly urbanizing areas of Xiamen, ambitious park greening programs and massive redevelopment of urban villages resulted in a modest but continuous increase in urban green space. Full article

The urban village represents a particular problem in urban design and renewal in China. Many cities in China have started the redevelopment of urban villages. Based on the investigation of four urban village redevelopment projects in Guangdong Province, China from 2010 to 2020, building façades, plant landscape, roads, and municipal public facility variety were taken as physical factors in this study. Urban village residents with different demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, income, family size, and urban village-native status, were selected as respondents, and the influence of the considered village physical factors on the visual preference assessments performed by the respondents was analyzed by means of photo stimulation. The results show that all four village factors exerted a certain influence on the respondents’ visual preference assessment. Redeveloped urban villages presenting repaired and decorated building façades, various species of plants, resurfaced roads, and medium municipal public facility variety were favored by the respondents. Urban village residents with different demographic characteristics also provided different visual preference assessments of different physical factors of the redeveloped urban villages. Full article

Traditional urban design is time-consuming and laborious. We propose a computer-generated architecture (CGA)-based workflow in this work, with the goal of allowing designers to take advantage of a high level of automation. This workflow is based on procedural modeling. A three-step CGA rule was applied to implement 3D urban procedural modeling, (1) parcel subdivision and clustering, (2) building extrusion, and (3) texture mapping. Parcel subdivision and clustering is the key step of layout modeling, giving the modeler flexibility to adjust the placement and size of the inner building lots. Subsequently, a land-use-based combination of eight common building types and layouts was used to generate various urban forms for different urban functional zones. Finally, individual buildings were decorated by creating texture maps of a planar section of the building facade or, alternatively, decomposing facades into sets of repeating elements and texture maps. We employed the proposed workflow in the H-village urban redevelopment program and an air–rail integration zone development program in Guangzhou. Three design proposals were generated for each project. The results demonstrated that this workflow could generate multiple layout proposals and alternative facade textures quickly and, therefore, address most of the collaborative issues with its analysis functions, including a flexible adjustment mechanism and real-time visualization. Full article

Villages in the cities (VICs) exhibit all the contradictions of contemporary Chinese urbanisation. These historic settlements attracted large floating populations during the booming urban economy, which redefined their morphological assets. Moreover, their urban persistence reflects the social and cultural modifications occurring within metropolises. Municipal governments’ attention was drawn to the extraordinary densification process, triggering negotiation regarding urban upgrades and social engagement alongside the overall transformation of VICs. Despite the broad scientific literature on VIC redevelopment, especially from urban and social studies perspectives, little attention has been paid to the spatial and monetary compensation awarded for forced or planned demolitions. The transition from informal agglomerations to residential compounds implies the action of local authorities cooperating with real estate developers to make existing house ownership the basis of compensation for measurable spaces in new typological configurations defined by radical social shifts. Lijiao village in Guangzhou was selected as a case study to observe how its urban renewal programme affected the evaluation of historic building preservation versus large selective demolition. Cultural heritage and spatial compensation have become the cornerstones for reconfiguring the village’s morphology and the everyday life experiences framed by interested local groups’ mediation. Full article

A well-designed institutional arrangement for urban village redevelopment projects (UVRPs) must consider transaction costs, but academic papers discussing it from the perspective of transaction cost economics are lacking. This paper applies theory of transaction cost economics to analyse the types and sizes of transaction costs and who bears these costs during redevelopment when implementing UVRPs in China. This paper finds that transactions in UVRPs have high asset specificity, high uncertainty and low frequency, which easily results in high levels of transaction costs. Based on 439 UVRPs collected from seven cities, this paper finds that UVRPs implemented with top–down institutional arrangements remain prevalent in China. Based on semi-structured interviews with participating parties, this paper proves that the sizes and types of transaction costs and the distribution of these costs borne by different participating parties vary with the change of stage under dissimilar institutional arrangements. This implies that a high level of transaction costs at one stage does not necessarily mean the costs stay high at another stage. Transaction costs have essential implications for process efficiency, so policymakers need to consider transaction costs and use hybrid institutional arrangements to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of policies. Full article

The recent economic advances made by China have now obliged the country to address the need for sustainable urban redevelopment. Unlike other recently developed areas in China, urban villages are in dire need of improvement. Consequently, the redevelopment of urban villages has garnered considerable public and academic interest. However, a comprehensive understanding is lacking on the drivers of urban village redevelopment in China. This study aims to fill this gap through a comprehensive survey of existing literature on redevelopment of urban villages. A total of 167 papers have been retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database. A bibliometric analysis and a critical content analysis are conducted on the bases of these papers. We found at least three main processes which have driven urban village redevelopment in China. First, the growth of urban population and their income level has created a strong emerging demand to improve urban living conditions, which has triggered the restructuring of urban villages with sub-standard built environment into high-quality urban spaces. Second, from the production side, the market-oriented land reforms and the developers’ pursuit of land-related investment returns from land rent gap is also a strong driving force for demolition and redevelopment of urban villages. Lastly, the states and local governments have played a critical role in promoting urban village redevelopment and integrating informal urban spaces into formal urban areas. This research concludes with an evaluation of current studies on urban village redevelopment and provides suggestions for further research in the future. Full article

As a crucial part of China’s development strategy, the redevelopment of urban villages and the redevelopment willingness of villagers have attracted considerable scholarly interest. However, the literature to date has neglected the effect of the geographical location of urban villages on the redevelopment willingness of villagers. The purpose of this study is to examine the influential factors of the redevelopment willingness of urban villagers, especially with regard to geographical differences and their effects. Based on prospect theory and 1083 questionnaires administered in 45 selected urban villages in Guangzhou, we use the ordinal logistic regression model to explore the influential factors behind villagers’ redevelopment willingness in inner villages (<15 km from the city center), urban fringe villages (15–40 km from the city center), and suburban villages (>40 km from the city center). The results show that in inner villages the confirmation of residential land rights can significantly increase redevelopment willingness, but in urban fringe villages the number of stories in dwelling houses significantly decreases the willingness. Further, a high level of villagers’ trust in the government, market enterprises, and the village collective each has a significant positive impact on the redevelopment willingness of villagers in urban fringe villages. However, only trust in the government and market enterprises have significant positive impacts on redevelopment willingness in the inner villages and only trust in the village collective is significant in this regard in suburban villages. The effects of geographical differences imply that China’s redevelopment policy should be applied in a differentiated way based on the geographical locations of urban villages. Full article

The existing literature explains well how dual urbanization promotes land development and spatial expansion in China, but few studies have examined the emergence of state-led and village-led land development by measuring the urban expansion ratio from the perspective of institutional arrangements. To fill this gap, this study examines the spatial pattern and evolution of urban expansion and then explains the institutional dynamics in evolving different spatial forms of land development in Guangzhou. Among the findings of our research, two important points merit special attention. First, this study examines the emergence of collective-led and state-led development in Chinese cities from the perspective of institutions with the support of empirical evidence from Guangzhou. Herein, urban expansion intensity (UEI) was used to improve urban expansion as an evaluation index of urbanization speed. Second, the present study developed a theoretical framework based on land property rights from an institutional perspective to explain the two forms of land development in the dynamic urbanization process. From a broader theoretical perspective, diverse spatial forms of land development in Chinese cities contribute to the understanding of urban land expansion based on an institutional approach. The policy implication of this study is that the speed of urban expansion will gradually slow with the advancement of new urbanization, and growth in collective land in the urban area will gradually decrease. Land redevelopment policies and regulations should be taken into account for collective land in urban areas, which is necessary for sustainable urban development in China. Full article