Search

China has also experienced a phenomenon of counter-urbanisation. Many urban residents have moved to suburban and even remote rural areas for living, establishing and operating businesses over the past decade. However, research is scarce on the counter-urbanisation trend in China. This paper investigates the driving forces behind the migration of China's high-and-middle-income groups to rural areas in the Yangtze River Delta region and their impacts on rural villagers and development. The paper contends that counter-urbanisation serves as an important pathway for rural revitalisation. More significantly, China's rural land ownership system facilitates the migration of urban dwellers to rural areas, thereby promoting rural revitalisation while avoiding the rural gentrification observed in Europe and the United States. In light of this, the authors propose a new term "Rural Middle-class Formation" as a Chinese type of "rural gentrification" to achieve common prosperity in both urban and rural areas and to distinguish it from "rural gentrification." • Counter-urbanisation is emerging in China within the Chinese unique land ownership system. • Urban migrants seek benefits from both the consumption and production sides. • The emergence of counter-urbanisation in China is a spontaneous inclination among high- and middle-income urban groups. • Urban-migration has a significant impact on rural businesses. • Counter-urbanisation may promote rural revitalisation and common prosperity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alienation among young residents is imposing different degrees of distress on society and community residents. For this paper, an online survey platform was used to collect 637 samples of young residents from 22 provinces in China. Based on the mediating effect of social capital, and by using path analysis and structural equation modeling, this paper examines the effect and mechanism of how the usage of urban community public spaces alleviates alienation among young residents. The findings show that the usage of urban community public spaces can not only alleviate alienation among young residents at the general level, but also through the path of interpersonal trust and reciprocity norm. The implications of these findings are that urban community public spaces play an essential role in improving community relations and happiness of residents. Therefore, in urban development, sufficient community public space, especially space for social activities, should be reserved. Furthermore, accurately understand to the use characteristics and actual needs of young residents for community space should be highlighted, to meet the diversified social needs of young residents and expand the value of public space through community space reconstruction and micro-renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: China already has more numerous and larger cities than ever before. If the current trend holds, by 2025 it will have a predicted 1 billion of urban population and 8 megacities, each containing 10 million residents or more. China is facing enormous challenges when it comes to balancing rapid economic development with social development, sustainable use of resources and environmental protection in its fast-growing urban areas. Of the 10 most polluted cities in the world, 7 are in China. To meet these challenges, China has become a vast living laboratory for experiments on sustainable urban development. This paper reviews the use and development of city concepts and approaches regarding sustainable urban development in China. The large number of different concepts used appears to be partly due to institutional reasons and partly because they involve gradual changes in national policies. However, the data indicate that the concepts are generally becoming more comprehensive in relation to sustainable development, including social and heritage aspects. The most common barrier to the development of sustainable cities in China is still lack of clear visions, targets and indicators for sustainable development. More holistic approaches are needed for integrated urban planning, such as that used in Tangshan Bay Eco-city, a joint project between Sweden and China. This paper proposes the use of metabolic thinking and eco-cycle models derived from the discipline of Industrial Ecology to support urban planners in developing more sustainable and resource-efficient urban pathways. This will require closer cooperation between academics and practitioners and better monitoring of projects. Finally, it will be important to identify ways to scale up successful interventions in the urban area, rather than just moving from one innovative pilot project to the next. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Housing pressure is one of the most important factors affecting urban residents' quality of life and subjective well-being (SWB). However, few studies have examined the impact of housing pressure on people's SWB and whether housing pressure has heterogeneous effects on SWB in cities of different sizes and for different social groups is still under-researched. Using data from a large-scale social satisfaction survey of 115,000 respondents across 36 cities in China, this paper employs a multiple linear regression model to explore the combined impacts of both subjective and objective housing pressure on urban residents' SWB. It also examines the heterogeneity effects of housing pressure for different city sizes and housing tenure groups. The results show that individuals' subjective housing pressure is significantly and negatively associated with SWB, and its impact intensity is greater than most perceived living environment factors. As for objective housing pressure, only the housing rent-to-income ratio has a significant negative correlation with SWB. Dimensions of individuals' perceived quality of the living environment are also significant positive predictors for the SWB level of urban residents except for the urbanscape and portrait dimension. Housing pressure has heterogeneous effects on SWB in different city sizes and housing tenure groups. • Both the impact of subjective and objective housing pressure on SWB are examined. • The heterogeneity effects of housing pressure for different city sizes and housing tenure groups are considered. • Perceived housing affordability is positively related to SWB. • Perceived quality of the living environment are positive predictors of SWB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: House prices in China increased at an average annual nominal rate of 11% in the two decades to 2009. This increase in prices occurred during a period of rapid transition in ideology (from the plan to the market), in income, urban population and policies. This paper uses annual data from 29 provinces from 1998 to 2009 to determine the contribution of market fundamentals to house prices in urban China. The findings show that important market fundamentals such as the levels of income, construction costs, impending marriages, user cost and land prices are the primary determinants of house prices. A second finding is that housing prices in more developed provinces are determined by supply factors including construction costs and land prices, while prices in other provinces are determined by both demand and supply factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In China, rapid and extensive urbanization has brought not only benefits due to urban agglomeration but also various urban problems; both affect residents' happiness. Previous studies have emphasized the direct impacts of growing city size on happiness, and few have addressed the indirect effects of city size on happiness through subjective evaluations in developing countries. Based on an extensive questionnaire survey conducted in 44 cities in the Bohai rim area in 2014, this paper establishes a theoretical framework to explore both the direct and indirect effects of city size on residents' happiness by applying subjective measurements in urban China. City size is found to have a nonlinear correlation with happiness. Individual satisfaction with both urban life and income mediate the relationship between urban objective attributes and happiness. House price has a positive impact on urban satisfaction, while the influences of haze pollution and traffic congestion are negative. Income positively affects happiness at the individual level. However, the city-level average wage has little relationship with happiness. These findings provide insights for deeply improving citizens' quality of life under rapid urbanization and designing urban construction in developing countries. • City size has a nonlinear correlation with residents' happiness. • Individual satisfaction with both urban life and income mediate the relationship between urban context and happiness. • House price increases residents' satisfaction, whereas haze and congestion decrease it. • Individual income positively affects happiness, while the city-level average wage doesn't matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]