| The traditional villages in China are mainly dominated by geo-and blood-related settlements,and the social ties of villages are relatively close.Since the reform and opening up,under the impetus of urbanization,the villages around the cities have undergone great changes in spatial form,as reflected in the historical transformation of the physical spatial structure,and the consequent social structure has also shown obvious changes-the farmers have gradually disassociated themselves from the traditional blood and geo-dominated form and moved towards an urbanized life.There have been many judgments about the imminent end of suburban villages,but there are still many rural villages in urban areas.This is one of the hot issues that academics continue to focus on.In this paper,we choose the village of Z in the suburb of Shanghai,where the beautiful peach garden scenery and the leisurely daily life together form a "peach blossom paradise"-the village is also one of the host sites of the "Peach Blossom Festival" in Shanghai.Therefore,this paper attempts to present and analyze the "development history" of Z Village,revealing how the "peach blossom paradise" has become the home of people’s real and spiritual lives in the process of urban development.Taking this as an entry point,the paper explores the dynamics of spatial change in the village at the macro level,and observes the daily life of farmers and population movement at the micro level.Especially in the "post-urbanization" period of Shanghai,some residents have returned to the countryside one after another,living an "urban-rural amphibious" life,while the village after this amphibious state has undergone a great change in the subject of residence.In this context,how have the social relations in the village changed and how do they reorganize village life in the process of modernization?It is found that the direct causes of the geospatial changes in villages vary from one period to another,but the spatial changes in village areas are deeply embedded in the changes of urban-rural relations in Shanghai.During the collectivization period,there was a spatial segregation between urban and rural areas,and village Z mainly provided food crops to the city during this period;after the reform and opening up,market mechanisms played a direct role in the loose urban-rural relationship,which led to the development of peri-urban market agriculture in village Z.In the new century,urban control over the countryside increased,and the village’s rural enterprises and farming industry were regarded as inefficient construction sites and subject to largescale remediation and cleanup;at the same time,the urban government also carried out planning and reconstruction of the village space in the name of rural construction,which manifested itself in ecological and environmental management,infrastructure construction,public service improvement and tourism space creation in Village Z.During this ephemeral process,the population flow inside and outside of village Z has become more and more frequent,with both urban tourists who come to the village with nostalgia and the younger generation of middle-class village residents who return to the village with the hope of a better rural life.This paper argues that the geographical boundaries of the rural suburbs have been blurred,and the countryside is embedded in the city,reflecting the physical proximity and the convergence of basic public goods.In terms of lifestyle,community organization,and other social and cultural aspects,Z villages also show characteristics of convergence with urban communities: rural order has completely given way to legal systems,economic separation between production and life,and social relations are more based on karma and interest.Therefore,this paper proposes the concept of "rural domain" to describe the morphology of suburban rural areas,i.e.,an urban-rural proximity in physical space,an urban-rural integration in daily life,and an urban-rural complementarity in spiritual life. |
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