Public Service Of Suburban Village Communities In The Peri-urban Zones

As a result of urbanization and land acquisition, a large group of villages on the fringes of expanding urban areas, which currently are being enclosed by cities and towns, turn into suburban village communities in the peri-urban zones, carrying both urban and rural properties. As a special community type in the process of urbanization, transitional and peripheral, it bears the feature of being "both city and county on one hand; but neither city nor county on the other hand". The coming decades will witness the rapid development of urbanization in China, which makes it impossible for suburban village communities to be out of stage in a short-run period. Accordingly, how to further promote the integration of city and countryside has proved to be a significant issue both practically and theoretically. Among this, it is of great importance to make the same public service as that in city communities accessible to rural citizens, which plays an essential role in promoting the urbanization of suburban village communities as well as is regarded as one of the symbols of ultimate realization of its urbanization. This paper, taking T-village community as a case study, aims at analyzing the characteristics of such community's public service so as to uncover its main influential factors as well as put forward some policy suggestions.This paper is made up of four parts.The introduction part mainly focuses on the origin and significance of the research, reviews previous related studies, explains the research methods and data source, and likewise defines the involved concepts.PartⅠ, basic information of T-village community's public service. A brief introduction to T-village community is presented first with an emphasis on describing its features as a suburban village community. After that, attention is highly concentrated on introducing the current situation of the public service in T-village by investigating its public facility construction, employment service, social security service, public health service, family planning service, public security and settlement service, public culture, education and sports service, and the like.PartⅡ, characteristics of T-village community's public service. Four features that make T-village community different from common urban and rural communities are analyzed in this part:community-driven public service suppliers, shortage of rich public services, isolation of public service customers, and duality of public service structure.PartⅢ, key influential factors of T-village community's public service. Some hidden factors, that is, urban-rural dual system, absence of local government and duality of community, are revealed in this part.PartⅣ, reflections on how to promote suburban village community's public service. Some countermeasures and suggestions to tackle the problems existing in T-village community's public service are put forward, mainly including working out corresponding policy of public service, the government's providing clear regulations regarding suppliers, contents, targeted customers and patterns of public service, building an open pubic service system so as to realize the openness of both public service suppliers and targeted customers.