Situation and Treatment Methods of Ecological and Environmental Problems during the Process of Urbanization in Rural Areas of China

Rural urbanization is a process of population agglomeration catalyzed by industrialization. At present, China’s urbanization process is accelerating against the backdrop of rapid social development. However, in some areas, economic development is emphasized, while the protection of the ecological environment is neglected, leading to the increasingly obvious contradiction between urbanization and rural ecological environment and is not conducive to economic development. In this paper, the development trend of China’s rural urbanization, the current situation of environmental pollution, and the progress of important environmental treatment projects are analyzed. Accordingly, the main problems in rural environmental protection and the impact of urbanization are explored. The problems led by industrial and domestic pollutants have been amplified by urbanization, while the improved connection between urban and rural areas will benefit the improvement of environmental infrastructure in rural areas. The government-led projects of rural water improvement, sanitary toilet penetration, methane gas production, and solar water heater have made great progress during the past two decades. Based on these understandings, we put forward feasible countermeasures to implement rural ecological environment protection during the process of urbanization to promote the benign development of rural urbanization. Our results will be helpful in providing some useful references for environmental protection in rural areas and promoting the coordinated development of the economy and environment during the process of urbanization in China.

ALEXANDER CHAYANOV’S THEORY OF PEASANT FARMING AND PERSONAL SUBSIDIARY FARMS IN THE SOVIET VILLAGE (MID-1930s – 1980s)

The paper analyzes the possibility of applying the theory of peasant farming by Alexander Chayanov to personal subsidiary farms (LPH) of collective farmers and state farm workers. It is noted that the significant factors affecting their functioning were rural urbanization and the demographic evolution of the rural family, as well as the policy of severe administrative restrictions on individual households. Despite the unfavorable conditions for development, personal part-time farms have demonstrated stability over time. The relations between family size and farm size noted by Chayanov were distorted by a system of repressive taxation, active off-farm employment of farm members, and natural processes of family deformation under the influence of urbanization. The author characterizes why LPH have lost their function of the main source of livelihood. It is concluded that ideological restrictions led to an artificial archaization of production within part-time farms and limited their evolution along the farm route, i.e. the labor-consumer balance in the budget of a rural family was achieved at an extremely low level. On the other hand, it is the spread of non-mechanized manual labor in personal part-time farms that allows the author to largely apply the provisions of Chayanov’s theory of peasant farming.

The Influence of Cultural-Historical Determinants on Functional-Spatial Development of Rural Areas

The article discusses selected issues regarding the influence of cultural-historical determinants on functional-spatial development of rural areas. Ecological, economic and social processes taking place in the last decades are examined in the context of the development of local self-governments and the rise of free market economy after Poland’s socio-economic transformation. The process of intensive rural urbanization occurs especially in areas within the impact zone of big cities. It is caused by, i.a., human migration into rural areas and development of areas of business activation. The abovementioned tendencies that occur in the ecological, economic and social context have a significant impact on functional-spatial development. Expansion of housing developments and, in effect, expansion and development of necessary technical infrastructure gives rise to many problems concerning preservation of cultural heritage of the Polish countryside. The pursuit of sustainable development of rural areas is fundamental in regard to ruralist solutions as well as preservation of traditional rural architecture. Cultural-historical determinants play a considerable role in this pursuit, especially in the context of threats that stem from overurbanization of rural areas.

Evoking the Industrial Past at the Urban-Rural Border Region: Social Movements and Cultural Production

An exploration of industrial ruin sites has received sufficient attention in the past. Framed under the hybrid perspective of non-representational theory and paralleled with Ingold’s taskscape conceptualized terms, this study examines the TSA (train service area), an opencast mining ruins site in Gongguan town of Maoming, southern China, as a case locus to depict the ‘lives lived’ and the textures of the taskscape encountered by locales and to sketch out the iterative and eventful movements of human and non-human dynamic phenomena at the rural-urban interface from the 1960s to the 1980s, with the aim to re-examine the locality of one industrial city and regenerate the local culture. As actualized through ‘stories and dramatic episodes’, i.e., an art intervention of a new geographical historiography, the ‘thick’ landscape of mine transport comes to the stage as the self-landscape and of group-place scenes. In the first scene, the industrial past is evoked along the actor’s movement, through situated knowledge and through shared personhood; thus, the spirit of place is finally obtained through the aesthetic sublimation in the landscaping. In the second scene, the movement between the workplace and other rural areas, which are rural and seasonal, has balanced the gap between the urban and the rural, whilst the proximity of the village to the TSA accelerates the process of rural urbanization in this area. Among which, tea, as a non-human item, irreducibly produces a ‘structure of feeling’ and conjures up a sense of past people and past times and of customs, beliefs and localism.

Urban-Rural Synergy in Shrinking Regions Through Application of e-co Model

Many regions worldwide are faced with the problem of shrinkage, manifested through demographic decline, economic loss, and perforation of the urban tissue. Starting from the assumption that the shrinking phenomenon is present in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the research deals with the diagnosis of the shrinking condition in urban and rural areas of the northwest region of the country. In the light of the shrinkage problems, the chapter defines a new alternative model—e-co—which should enable the recovery from the crisis and restore the vitality of the region. The chance for recovery is recognized in the processes of rural urbanization and urban ruralization, the integration of rural values and urban advantages, the modern globality, and traditional locality.

Rural urbanization under Xi Jinping: From rapid community building to steady urbanization?

‘Rural community building’ is one of the most prominent policies of rural urbanization and village renovation in China. Since the nationwide implementation of this policy within the scope of the programme ‘Building a new socialist countryside’, the large-scale construction of new residential complexes has accelerated the transformation of the country’s rural landscape. However, extensive demolition and relocation have drawn increasing criticism, and the policy has become synonymous with the seizure of rural land resources by local governments. When Xi Jinping came to power, the new leadership initially appeared to abandon the policy but has eventually revived it. This article studies the implementation and evolution of the rural community building policy as a case of policy learning. The analysis of national and local policy documents and implementation practices in four provinces highlights a new framing of the policy, more intensive hierarchical controls over rural land use, and the state’s increasing reach into village governance, as well as new incentives for local governments to continue with demolition and relocation projects. These changes reveal a mode of policy learning in the context of an authoritarian regime whose goal is to improve policy implementation in the face of growing public criticism and social tension.