Research On Planning Strategies For Urban Villages Of Hangzhou Guided By New-type Urbanization

Urban villages,a unique phenomenon in which rural settlements are gradually encircled by urban environments during China’s rapid urbanization process,are becoming important urban issues that cannot be ignored in the present day.“The National New-type Urbanization Plan(2014–2020)” issued by the Chinese government in 2014 embarks on a significant transformation of the model of urbanization in China and provides a new cognitive perspective of urban villages and their role during the urbanization process,namely from centered on physical form to centered on “people”,from being static to being dynamic,and from passively accepting urbanization to actively participating in the urbanization process.It is against this background that research on planning strategies of urban villages is conducted.Hangzhou is the capital city of Zhejiang Province,the pioneer area practicing newtype urbanization and one of the megacities with the greatest growth rate of population.During the process of urban expansion,a large number of urban villages proliferated,creating a huge challenge for urban development.Moreover,the mountainous urban terrains and the long historical culture in Hangzhou provide a specific opportunity to compare the development of urban villages through the governent’s uniform and formal planning and through local villagers’ spontaneous and informal planning,also making Hangzhou a typical case study to compare the planning strategies of urban villages guided by traditional and new-type urbanization.From the perspective of new-type urbanization,this article develops an analytical framework based on formal and informal planning and conducts comparative research on planning strategies for urban villages of the different urbanization stages in Hangzhou mainly at the policy and construction levels,aiming at exploring the relationship between the planning strategies of urban villages guided by new-type urbanization and the socioeconomic development of urban villages.At the policy level,this article focuses on the municipal-level planning policies for urban villages in Hangzhou since the reform and opening up and uses content analysis method to analyze the policy contents and policy orientations of different urbanization stages.This article also uses one-way variance(ANOVA)to analyze the difference in the rental levels of urban villages developed under different policies to compare the implementation effects of the policies of different urbanization stages.At the construction level,this research selects three typical urban villages,namely Luojiazhuang,Wangyue Apartment,and Yangjiapailou,located in different geographical areas and constructed through planning strategies of different urbanization stages as study cases and analyzes their construction process and construction approach by urban morphology analysis methods.Moreover,the villagers’ rental income,shopkeepers’ business benefits,and tenants’ residential satisfaction are investigated to compare the socioeconomic development of the three urban villages.Results indicate that guided by new-type urbanization,the planning policy orientation of urban villages shifts from limiting and preventing informality to allowing certain degrees of informality,and the construction approach shifts from the local government’s uniform and formal planning-dominated approach to local villagers’ spontaneous and informal planning-dominated approach,achieving a higher rental level,continuously rising rental income,more stable business benefits,and higher residential satisfaction.It is argued that informal planning may exert positive power that formal planning cannot replace and the urban villages developed mainly by informal planning can not only survive but also contribute to the overall development of urbanization.By investigating the development of urban villages from the perspective of newtype urbanization,this research opens up a new research direction for urban villages and provides great significance in supporting the implementation of the national strategy of new-type urbanization.Additionally,this research builds up the analytical framework based on formal and informal planning,serving as a new attempt in the research methods for urban villages.