An Empirical Study On Urban Residential Differentiation

With the reform of Market Economic Structure in the 80's and the commercialization process of housing which began in the 90's, the urban residential differentiation in china appeared gradually. Previous study of some big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou and so on showed that the urban residential differentiation in china emerged in variety of scales. Take Jinxiang community in Wucun Street for example, the study probed into the level the development of residential differentiation in Xiamen. With the study of Xiamen, we got to know the situation of other small and medium-sized cities, so as to hold the process of the whole residential differentiation in China more completely and more comprehensively.Based on division of different types of the residential areas, the study explored the method of one-way ANOVA to analyze the residents' income, occupation, education, community identity, community contacts of the residential areas of different types respectively. The outcome indicated that there was clear differentiation in terms of income, occupation, education, as well as in terms of community identity in residential areas of different types. But no differentiation could be found in term of community Contacts. Further, the author stack the results of multiple comparison test of income, occupation, education and community identity and found that situation of differentiation in income, occupation, education was different from one residence to another. We concluded, there was residential differentiation in Xiamen, but the level of differentiation was distinct concerning different types of residential areas. The level of differentiation was determined by the level of residence. Addressed concretely, there was no differentiation between low-level commercial estate and traditional housing unit. Primary differentiation existed among medium-level commercial estate, low-level commercial estate and traditional housing unit. But there was deep differentiation among high-level commercial estate, low-level commercial estate and traditional housing unit. It was both subjective and objective. Nevertheless, Xiamen did not appear the class of the communityThe harvest of this research was mainly reflected in the following two aspects: firstly, conclusions about the level of urban residential differentiation in Xiamen city's communities could be obtained when analyzed in perspective of objective stratification, subjective stratification as well as the behavior stratification. Secondly, the relationship between community identity and the level of residence could be discovered, that was, the higher the level of residence, the higher the residents got the feeling of identity in the community. This finding could be helpful for the understanding of the development of urban residential differentiation. And it could be used to anticipate the trend of the development of urban residential differentiation.