Research On The Religious Public Space In Urban Village

Currently,the problem of urban village is an urgent issue that many Chinese cities need to solve in the process of urbanization.Minnan area has its own regional characteristics.Taking Suncuo community in Jimei District,Xiamen as a research example,this paper tries to analyze the religious public space in urban villages under different status from the perspective of ‘religion'.This paper aims to study the formation mechanism and evolution trend of religious public space in urban villages.Also,it tries to explain the spatial production change of religious public space in urban villages.All of these hopes to provide suggestions for the transformation of urban village public space in Xiamen.This paper is based on theories of everyday production of space and sacrificial circle under disciplines of architectural scheming and folklore sociology.Through local chronicles and documents collection,field studies,case interviews and tracking,this paper observes and analyzes the religious public space under belief activities and daily activities respectively.It also compared parallelly the spatial production and change of religious public space under different conditions in the same period.At the same time,it vertically observes the transition of rural system in urban villages and the impact on spatial production and change of religious public space.The paper summarizes the aspects of settlement,population,industry and culture,etc,and tries to reveal the interaction between ‘social-spatial' of religious public space and the factors influencing changes in the urban village belief space.In a word,it hopes to probe into the future development possibilities of religious space in urban villages under special community background.This paper has found that such factors like rural and village system,population structure,industrial economy and cultural customs have influenced the evolution of religious public space.These are the following conclusions.Firstly,Minnan area has its own folk belief,and religious space forms an important part of urban village public space in Xiamen.Secondly,with the transition of village and rural system,the groups using religious public space have gradually transferred from local people to outsiders.The religious public space will be a good opportunity for ‘floating population' to integrate into urban villages.The religious space which was once a single symbol of spiritual public space has gradually been compounded with multi-functions.In additions,the targeted groups of religious space have changed from family members to the whole village people.Thus,this kind of public space has demonstrated the tendency of ‘commonality of cohesion' to ‘openness of exterior'.Lastly,as the number of original religious public space in urban villages is decreasing,if this kind public space improved properly,the utilization of public space with higher openness will increase.All of which will become the important spatial part of urban villages.At the same time,the religious space will undertake much significance of being the center of social activities,and to stimulate the vitality of urban village community.