Exploring Village Self-Urbanization Process In P.R.CHINA

Urbanization process in P. R. China is taking place mainly in two forms. First one is a form that a city usually expands under the government control by absorbing the surrounding villages, and second one is such that the villages themselves turn to the urban areas under the influence of a nearby large urban city without the official approval. This research focuses on the latter form, which is called"Village Self-urbanization Process"in this thesis.The main objective of this research is to explore the situation of the villages in term of stages in the spatial changes associated with land rights, land use and socio-economic aspects under the influence of a nearby large urban area as a catalyst of urbanization. In order to achieve this objective, this research consists of critical studies on the available scientific literature, carrying out field work with intensive interviewing the villagers, analysis of these field data together with changes in the spatial pattern of villages. Four villages are selected near the built-up area in the city of Xi'an. The changes of spatial pattern on these villages are detected and analysed using IKONOS images and other available images such as satellite images of Google Earth.The main finding of this research is that these villages tend to undergo through the three stages of growth under the"Village Self-urbanisation Process"depending upon the four factors: spatial patterns (specifically patterns of road and surrounding areas), changing the land use, land rights and social-economic aspects. These stages relate to the transformation process from the potential one to developing and to the mature urbanizing village. This research further gives an assumption in village self-urbanization process, called life quality curve. When village develops to a certain level, the quality of housing and people life will dramatically go down and slum in city will be formed. The main reason of forming slum is that land tenure of villages is not the same as urban areas. This research also identifies the drivers that transform the villages from one stage to another stage. Such drivers are the economic development, housing demand, job opportunities, industrial structure changes, etc. At last, it analysed the urbanizing village transform mode in the past years. The three transform modes were summarized. And different modes of urbanizing village transform according to the different stages classification of Xi'an were put forward: The potential urbanizing village is suitable for transform mode of government investment or developer investment; The development urbanizing village is suitable for transform mode of developer investment; the mature urbanizing village is suitable for transform mode of villagers transforming by themselves, government investment, developer investment or jointly investment.