2023 年 11 巻 2 号 p. 168-181
In order to optimize the layout of rural space, improve the living environment of rural areas, accurate implementation of village merging tasks is of great significance. In this study, with the help of statistical analysis methods such as fuzzy evaluation, the evaluation indexes were extracted and the weight values were calculated from two aspects: the development trend of the town outside the village and the basic development capacity inside the village, and an efficient village merger evaluation method was identified. Taking Zhangjiakou as an example, combining with its regional development policies and the related norms and standards, the author employed the village merger evaluation method to evaluate the merger conditions of the villages in Zhangjiakou, and established an evaluation index system of village merger to guide the formulation of village merger plans in Zhangjiakou. The empirical study has demonstrated that the village merger evaluation method can improve the efficiency and accuracy of town and village system planning, land use planning, as well as the development strategies of urban and rural areas.
In recent years, the rapid urbanization of rural areas in the world is mainly attributed to the goal-oriented rural planning. Through the top-down approach, the government mainly focuses on the guidance of the spatial system of rural settlements and the financial supervision. In contrast, the villagers participate in the decision-making of village autonomy through the bottom-up approach. In this way, the government and villagers have made a sustainable rural community for the goal and task of rural planning.
However, due to the late start and fast speed of urbanization in China, the demand for urban construction land in China will remain at a high level for a long time. At the same time, the large-scale and frequent population flow between urban and rural areas also brings about great changes in regional population distribution, making a large number of single-industry villages and villages without development capacity gradually abandoned. Due to these situations, serious waste has been caused, including large amounts of spare village construction land, rural infrastructure and administrative resources. For example, in Zhangjiakou (located on the northern edge of China Capital Economic Circle), the development of its rural areas is relatively backward as most of these areas are mountainous and hilly. Meanwhile, due to the effect of Beijing, a megacity, and the central city of Zhangjiakou, the rural areas of Zhangjiakou have suffered from serious population outflow, resulting in a large number of decaying villages. However, these decaying villages still obtain financial funds and public goods according to the standard of normal villages, thus causing a serious waste. As a result, it has brought a certain burden to the construction of rural living environment in Zhangjiakou.
Therefore, it is of great importance to match and support the rapid urbanization process in China, ensure the rationalization of the spatial layout of the rural areas, and maximize the comprehensive benefits of regional infrastructure, so as to realize the overall urban-rural development. According to the development of each village, it is necessary to optimize the layout of rural residential areas in the region, allocate rural funds and carry out the construction of rural living environment. This study aims to make a comprehensive and systematic statistical analysis of the planning elements of rural residential areas, and identify a reasonable evaluation method of village merger in accordance with the present situation of rural residential land, as well as the socio-economic conditions. In this study, the author set the evaluation indexes of village development, calculated the comprehensive scores of each administrative village and had them sorted. Finally, the villages to be built or moved out were selected, and the village merger scheme to guide the integration of village settlements and the overall distribution of regional public goods was formulated. This study is committed to providing theories and suggestions for the decision-making of the overall planning of land use, as well as town and village layout planning, and giving full play to the overall role of urban-rural integration in the reasonable allocation of urban and rural elements and public resources.
The international theoretical research on village merger mainly focuses on the summary and analysis of rural development mode, the evolution mechanism of rural settlement land, the readaptation of rural settlements, the consolidation of rural settlement land and the ecological environment protection planning. At present, there have been several successful cases in certain countries and regions to promote local economic development by adjusting the layout of rural settlements, which effectively promoted the adjustment of rural industrial structure and rural community construction, and changed the layout structure and living environment of rural areas at a deep level.
In Britain, the indicators of rural areas are mainly population density, economy, environment, etc., the villages are evaluated from top-down and bottom-up perspectives respectively (Murray, 2009). The functional status of villages was clarified (Hall, 2009), and the functional differences and connections between urban and rural areas and between villages were investigated to guide the village construction in rural areas (Cullingworth, Nadin et al., 2014). In Russia and part of eastern European countries in the former Soviet Union, influenced by the concept of communism, the rural settlement is mechanically divided by population (Antipova, 2013; Topole, Bole et al., 2006). A new urban comprehensive settlement of a community with the nature between rural and urban areas has been built (Chibilev, Akhmetov et al., 2015; Kunitsa, 2012), and city-type infrastructure and public services are provided to these districts under city. Japan, also in Asia, has made scientific laws to guide the implementation of village merger, carried out three large-scale city-village merger to reduce the administrative cost of the cities and villages (Mausoleum, 2004), and defined the reasonable scale to achieve high-quality public service allocation.
Other developed countries, such as the United States, the Netherlands, and even the developing countries including India and Iran, have also begun to improve the living environment of rural settlements by optimizing the structure of rural settlements, and most of them put the implementation of village merger in the first place. There is plenty of valuable experience and methods that can be used for reference. For example, Porta, Parapar et al. (2013) used Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and greedy algorithm to partition Spanish rural settlements. Sonis and Grossman (1984) applied rank rating method to explain the ranking system of Israel's optimal rural settlements. Hiroyuki (2017) employed comprehensive evaluation methods to establish an index evaluation system to evaluate the quality of village human settlements and guide the overall development of rural areas.
Practice and research of village merger in ChinaChina's village planning and construction has certain Chinese characteristics. On the one hand, China is greatly different from most other countries in land system, development history, custom and culture, mechanism and system, urbanization process, etc. On the other hand, its vast territory leads to great differences in the development of different regions. At present, the research of Chinese scholars on the consolidation of rural settlements is mainly on the policies, driving forces, potential estimation, construction of evaluation methods, and effect calculation of village merger. These studies are committed to guiding the agglomeration construction of villages and form a village system structure suitable for the development of economy and society, which is conducive to the smooth development of rural settlements, the construction of rural infrastructure and the intensive development of public service facilities.
Zhu, Y. (2006), Chen, Yin et al. (2009), Ding, Ding et al. (2008) summarized and reflected on the practice activities of "Village Relocation and Annexation" led by regional governments in Shandong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces in the early stage. It is pointed out that although the subsequent problems of urban-rural segregation can be solved through village merger, there are often some problems in the implementation of village relocation and merger. For example, the reserved residential areas designated are lack of attractiveness, the village merger plans are blindly formulated, a large number of villagers buy houses in cities, and the rural population outflows. In view of the problems occurred in the early practice of village merger, Li and Li (2008) analysed the rural residents' satisfaction with the current village and the factors affecting their willingness to move from the perspective of urban-rural integration. He found that the villagers' reluctance to move is mostly due to the unreasonable site selection of the new village and the inconvenience in production and life. Zhu, X., Wang et al. (2010) applied the spatial analysis function of ARCGIS and the least limiting factor method to divide rural settlements into several consolidation types according to the appropriate score of factors affecting the spatial development of rural settlements. Taking the development of rural economy as the starting point, Zhou, G., Lv et al. (2017) used statistical methods such as Analytic Hierarchy Process to extract the influencing factors for the comprehensive evaluation of rural settlements and classify the levels of village development potential. Zhou, L., Li et al. (2015) and Jiang, Xie et al. (2022) optimized the comprehensive evaluation method of villages by classifying villages with the comprehensive evaluation of development potential, and then selecting villages for merging and moving out.
Research trends and deficienciesIn academic circles, it is generally believed that rural residence is in urgent need of consolidation and a consolidation method for rural residence that is widely applicable and easy to be popularized should be identified as soon as possible. In the current research, there are various methods to measure the potential of village merger, mainly including increasing and decreasing urban and rural construction land, GIS spatial analysis method, urbanization degree measurement method, development potential evaluation method and comprehensive evaluation method. These studies have played a guiding role in the practice of village merger. In contrast, the comprehensive evaluation method, which integrates various factors to select indicators closely related to the potential for evaluation, is generally more comprehensive and reasonable. It has also been the current research trend for calculating the potential and conditions of village merger.
On the other hand, the existing evaluation methods of rural residential development is mainly through setting evaluation indexes of village development, and calculating and sorting the comprehensive score of each administrative village according to the current situation of rural residential land and socio-economic conditions. In this way, the village merger scheme is determined. But there are still some problems. How to select the index factors reflecting village development? How does the classification of index factors determine their weights more objectively and reasonably? How to ensure that the evaluation system is regionally representative? How to ensure the healthy development of the new urban-rural structure formed after integration? All these need further discussion and research.
The first key measure that needs to be solved is how to construct an evaluation system that can comprehensively reflect the development capability of villages. Village development is mainly influenced by external factors such as the spatial development policy of the county and the comprehensive development capacity of the town, and internal factors, such as natural socio-economic environment. Therefore, the evaluation of village merger should start from the analysis of internal factors (development ability of the village) and external factors (development level of the village). To quantitatively evaluate the comprehensive development ability of a village, the town should be taken as a whole unit and the administrative village as a basic unit. At the same time, the evaluation system must be adapted to a wide range. It should take both the different socio-economic level and policy background in to consideration, and ensure that no problems will be caused in the actual village evaluation process. Meanwhile, it should increase the replacement rate of indicators as far as possible, and facilitate the actual work according to the circumstances to make adjustment.
When the evaluation system is constructed, it is necessary to objectively extract the indicators reflecting the comprehensive development ability of the village. The evaluation index should objectively and scientifically reflect the merits and demerits of the village, and comprehensively reflect the main factors affecting the development of the village and its development potential. Among the factors that affect the comprehensive development ability of villages, many irregularity factors cannot be analysed quantitatively. In order to highlight the main characteristics of the studied region and objectively evaluate the comprehensive development ability of villages, dimension reduction analysis methods such as factor analysis or cluster analysis can be adopted according to the feasibility of original data collection, the quantification of indicators, the comparability and differences among indicators, etc. In this way, a few evaluation factors that can best reflect the regional characteristics of village development potential can be collected, and thus an evaluation index system can be established.
The final key measure to be solved is to determine the weight calculating method of the evaluation factors and comprehensive development capacity according to the existing research theory and practical experience. This study adopted the comprehensive evaluation method for the evaluation system. In this evaluation system, analytic hierarchy process and factor analysis method were used to determine the weight of each evaluation factor, and the consistency test was carried out. Finally, the weighted index summation method was applied to get the quantitative evaluation score and grade ranking, which was used to evaluate the comprehensive development strength of each village.
The method of village merger evaluationFirstly, the development capacity of each town and the coefficient of difference were evaluated, so as to determine the external development environment of the village (external urban-rural development difference coefficient).
Then, the village development capacity evaluation system was established to determine the development capacity of the village (village development capacity).
Finally, the evaluation score of the village was determined according to the village development capacity and the external urban-rural development difference coefficient, and then the score was taken as a reference for the corresponding improvement and merger program.
Zhangjiakou, also known as the host of the snow project of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, is located in the northwest of Hebei Province, with a total area of 36,800 square kilometres. Zhangjiakou is divided into two parts: the northern plateau and the southern basins. The northern plateau, which is on the southern margin of the Inner Mongolia Plateau, shows a typical wavy plateau landscape, accounting for about 1/3 of the total area of Zhangjiakou. The southern basins are mainly formed by large mountain basins. Zhangjiakou is a region with a total of 209 towns, 4175 administrative villages, and 7028 natural villages. Its total population is 468 million, of which the rural population is 312 million, with 0.195 natural villages per square kilometre and a 450 people per natural village. As most of the rural areas of Zhangjiakou are in hills or mountains, its socio-economic development is relatively backward, so the outflow of rural population and the village "hollow" situation is more serious. If no concise merger is taken on the administration and land, it is bound to bring about a series of problems, such as low-quality expansion of rural construction land, waste of infrastructure resources and administrative service cost (Gao, Wang et al., 2022). In order to successfully promote the urbanization and improve the living environment of rural areas, village merger is imperative.
Zhangjiakou clearly puts forward the task of continuously evacuating and consolidating about 2,000 villages. However, as there is limited experience and no scientific village merger evaluation method, the evaluation of the village development situation can only be conducted through several limited conditions and the subjective judgement of the local government. Due to the large number and complicated situation of the villages, not only does it take a lot of time for comparison and evaluation, but it is also difficult to accurately judge the development situation of villages within the planning scope. In order to improve the efficiency, accuracy and operability of the village merger plan, this study, combining with actual data collection, uses the evaluation method of village merger to construct an evaluation index system of village merger in Zhangjiakou region. It is used for the comprehensive evaluation of villages in Zhangjiakou region and can provide implementable technical support for village merger decision as well. Through the case of Zhangjiakou, which demonstrates the concrete steps of village merger evaluation method in detail, its convenience and practicality in application can be well reflected.
The first step is to construct a town development capability evaluation system. When evaluating the town development capacity, the evaluation indexes involved are quite complicated. In order to make the evaluation index system relatively simple, accurate, systematic, scientific, goal-oriented and operational (Latif, Karim et al., 2022), the related experience from the city comprehensive competitiveness evaluation system and the city sustainable development ability evaluation index system was taken as a reference, and the difficulty of collecting and quantifying town’s statistics and the feasibility of using the computer to model the operation were considered. This evaluation system was constructed from three aspects: economy, society and the environment and facilities (Table 1).
| Major factor | Main indicators |
|---|---|
| Social development | Town population、Total number of employees、Retail sales of social consumer goods、Million people have the number of hospital beds、Number of Employees in Agricultural Technology |
| Economic development | Public revenue、Total Public Finance Expenditure、Scale industrial output value、Present value of agriculture, forestry, Agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery |
| Facilities and environmental development | Cable rate、Whether broadband、With the proportion of tap water、Built area |
Then the next step is to evaluate the comprehensive development level of the town. As the main source of data is the regional statistical yearbook and the related information of local statistical department, the data types are complex. So firstly, all the qualitative indicators were quantified, and then all the indicators went though standardized treatment, so that the indicators can be transformed into a dimensionless form as required. After the dimensionless process, the data was input into the statistical analysis software SPSS, and the weight of each index was calculated by principal component method using factor analysis (FACTOR). Finally, the normalized value of the each index was multiplied and accumulated by the corresponding index weight. Thus, the comprehensive evaluation value of each town's development ability was calculated.
| Town development grading | Town |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Zhangbei Town, Laoyazhuang Town, Weizhou Town, Shalingzi Town, etc. |
| Level 2 | Wubao Town, Lijiaobao Town, Xibali Town, Dahenan Town, etc. |
| Level 3 | Jiubao Town, Dasuji Town, Nuanquan Town, Chuzhangdi Town, etc.. |
| Level 4 | Xiaosuangou Town, Dongmao Town, Diaoe Town, Tailugou Town, etc. |
| Level 5 | Tunken Town, Changliang Town, Beishuiquan Town, etc. |
According to the ranking of the development ability score of each town, taking into account the socio-economic development potential of each county to which the town belongs, the spatial strategic location of the county and the spatial structure layout of the county, the town was divided into different development ratings (Table 2). Based on the scores of towns in different grades, the difference coefficient K (Table 3) between towns was calculated with reference to the score of Level 1, which was used as conversion parameter of the development capacity value of the village in different towns.
| Town development grading | Level I | Level II | Level III | Level IV | Level V |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average development ability score | 1.0000 | 0.9615 | 0.9433 | 0.7692 | 0.6250 |
| Difference coefficient K | 1.00 | 1.04 | 1.06 | 1.30 | 1.60 |
According to the research method, the village development evaluation system of Zhangjiakou should be constructed first. The development ability evaluation system for village merger is composed of the target layer, the criterion layer and the index layer. To summarize, the whole evaluation system is the target layer, the basic needs of village development are further decomposed and embodied by the index layer, and these two layers together form the main structure of the evaluation system.
Village merger is to maximize the effectiveness of economy, society and land on the urban and rural space. On the basis of a large number of studies on village settlements and adequate field research, the above-mentioned evaluation index selection principle and evaluation system establishment principle, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, the principal component analysis method, the Delphi method and other statistical methods were applied to collect and classify the indicators. Finally, the village development capacity evaluation system (Table 4) was constructed from the following four aspects: the natural location condition, the socio-economic condition, the land scale and production capacity conditions, public services, and infrastructure conditions.
| Target layer | Criteria layer | Evaluation index layer | Indicator units |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evaluation of Comprehensive Development Ability of Villages | Natural location conditions | Topography | score |
| Connect with the town government resident | score | ||
| Socioeconomic conditions | Total resident population | person | |
| Number of employees | person | ||
| Percentage of migrant workers | % | ||
| Village collective income | ten thousand yuan | ||
| Production capacity conditions | Cultivated land area | hm² | |
| Facility agriculture area | hm² | ||
| Circulation of Cultivated Land Area | hm² | ||
| Rate of participation of cooperatives | % | ||
| Infrastructure conditions | Road hardening rate | % | |
| Integrated infrastructure construction* | score |
Note: *Including centralized treatment of sewage, centralized disposal of garbage, centralized drinking water purification, access to public transport and broadband Internet access.
After the evaluation index system of the village development ability was constructed, the evaluation system indexes were weighted so that the comprehensive development ability of the village can be evaluated. Since the rationality of the weight coefficient setting will directly affect the result of the final evaluation, it is the core of the evaluation system to reasonably calculate and set the weight. Here we used the Analytic Hierarchy Process and the Delphi method to determine the weight. Firstly, based on the hierarchical structure of the evaluation system, the judgment matrix was constructed by the pairwise comparison method (Si and Sun, 2011). Then, the 1-9 scale method proposed by A. L. Satty was used to compare each indicator in the same hierarchy. After that, the weight coefficient of each indicator in each layer relative to each index factor was determined. Finally, the weight of each indicator was calculated, with the formula being as follows Equation1. The results of each weight calculation are shown in Table 5.
| Indicator name | Topography | Road hardening rate | Connect with the town government resident | Integrated infrastructure construction | Total resident population | Percentage of migrant workers |
| weight | 0.083 | 0.087 | 0.235 | 0.164 | 0.131 | 0.034 |
| Indicator name | Number of employees | Circulation of Cultivated Land Area | Facility agriculture area | Cultivated land area | Rate of participation of cooperatives | Village collective income |
| weight | 0.029 | 0.056 | 0.055 | 0.037 | 0.052 | 0.037 |
In view of that the village evaluation is a comprehensive issue related to multiple factors, including both qualitative and quantitative indicators, with a lot of uncertain, fuzzy factors, the value of indicators cannot be accurately quantified. Besides, the discrepancy between different individuals is very large under the same indicators, so it can be evaluated by fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. Therefore, qualitative evaluation was changed into quantitative evaluation, and a membership function model was established to calculate the membership degree of each evaluation index. The membership function is listed according to the positive and negative correlations between the indicators and the target layer (Equation 2 to 3).
In accordance with the necessary conditions of the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, the minimum value (a) and the maximum value (b) of each index must be determined before calculating the membership degree of the index. Since the selection of the two values has a great influence on the accuracy of the index membership degree, it is necessary to select different forms of maximum and minimum according to the characteristics of different evaluation indexes (Table 6). This is one of the cores of the whole evaluation system. When determining the value, national standards, guidelines, and other policies can be preferentially selected as the reference. Also, we can refer to the regional status of the average and trend values, or refer to the villages with quality development. For those indicators that play an important role in the indicator system, it is not easy to collect the corresponding statistical data. When in the absence of reference, the values of similar areas or similar indicators can be referenced.
| Criteria layer | Evaluation index layer S | Min- value a* | Max- value b | Correlation | Standard value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Natural location conditions | Topography | 1 | 5 | - | 3 |
| Connect with the town government resident | 0 | 1 | + | 1 | |
| Socioeconomic conditions | Total resident population (person) | 800 | 2,500 | + | 1,500 |
| Number of employees (person) | 500 | 1,700 | + | 850 | |
| Percentage of migrant workers (%) | 15 | 35 | - |
|
|
| Village collective income (ten thousand yuan) | 0 | 10 | + | 10 | |
| Production capacity conditions | Cultivated land area (hm²) | 60 | 570 | + | 570 |
| Facility agriculture area(hm²) | 21 | 228 | + | 144 | |
| Circulation of Cultivated Land Area(hm²) | 18 | 120 | + | 144 | |
| Rate of participation of cooperatives (%) | 10 | 55 | + | 50 | |
| Infrastructure conditions | Road hardening rate (%) | 60 | 100 | + | 100 |
| Integrated infrastructure construction | 1 | 4.5 | + | 4.5 |
*Note: The maximum and minimum values refer to but are not limited to Beautiful Rural Construction Guide (GBT32000-2015), Zhangjiakou Beautiful Rural Planning Guidelines, The General Office Of The State Council On Improving The Rural Living Environment Of The Guidance, China Agriculture Statistics 2020, Hebei Rural Statistical Yearbook 2020, Zhangjiakou Economic Yearbook 2020, Small Town Planning Standards, as well as fieldwork surveys and other means to obtain information.
When the weights and membership functions of each index are obtained, we can calculate the comprehensive evaluation value of the development ability of each village. Assuming that Village A's "village's own development capacity" is
Through the comparative analysis of different evaluation criteria and actual research, the villages for merger were divided into four classes (Table 7). According to the classification, the corresponding scheme were developed for the specific village. In addition, there are still many issues which are in need of further study, including the village merger period of time, the protection of vulnerable groups, the characteristics of village heritage, etc. The villages included in Class I should give priority to the village merger construction. The villages in the Class II should take effective measures to give priority to improve governance. For villages in Class III, temporary measures should be taken, as some of these villages may have chance to upgrade into Class II if a certain period of time for development can be reserved. The villages in Class IV should give priority to studying the relocation program. For those with a strong relocation will, a program should be developed as soon as possible to move villagers out and replace the land.
| Village merger type classification | Class I | Class II | Class III | Class IV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Village rating score |
|
0.5＞
|
0.3＞
|
|
When operating the village merger evaluation, "village's own development capacity (
Village merger is an imperative and long-term task. It is not simply determined by the size of village population. Its implementation process depends not only on the development situation of the village and the wishes of the villagers, but also on the economic policy support of the town. Therefore, village merger planning should regard village as part of a symbiotic system between urban and rural areas. The development of the village is not only influenced by its own factors but also restricted by regional factors, which means the evaluation of village merger should not be taken out of context. Hence, it is necessary to evaluate not only the comprehensive development ability of the village itself, but also the development conditions of the town where it is located. Only by combining internal factors with external factors can the development of the village be evaluated systematically and accurately.
In addition, during the implementation of village merger, it is of great importance to conveniently and accurately determine whether the village possesses the development conditions and whether it needs to move out, merge or retain its development. Due to the obvious difference in economic development strength among the towns, the development of villages within their scope varies. Besides, the rural areas are affected by the development of towns, and the population mobility is large, making the development of villages a dynamic process. Moreover, village merger will inevitably bring about structural changes from bottom to top and the changes in the lifestyle of villagers. These changes should be reasonably predicted beforehand, and the new urban and rural structure should be considered in the merger process as the village merger scheme should meet the requirement of the future urbanization of the region. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce the development evaluation of each town, determine the merger strength of each village under the town differently, and avoid the waste of policy resources and funds caused by blindly sharing indicators without considering the actual situation of regional town development in actual implementation.
Taking Zhangjiakou region as an example, this paper introduces a village merger evaluation method. In this method, the development capacity of a village can be evaluated comprehensively from its own environmental background and the external urban and rural background. Then, according to the evaluation score of the development ability, different types are divided to guide the village merger planning, which can greatly increase the flexibility and accuracy of village merger evaluation. In this method, the relative development ability score (
However, considering the application stage, universality and convenience of this method, the following characteristic indicators are not introduced, including pastoral areas, forest areas, inland fishery areas, other large-scale forest and animal husbandry-based areas, natural scenic areas, water ecological reserves, historical and cultural protected areas, flood discharge areas, geological disasters prone areas, major facility construction area and other specific areas. Such villages are not only a few on the number, and are basically treated with corresponding special measures, which means they can be dealt with separately, but this method can still provide some reference for such villages. In addition, the village merger period of time, the protection of vulnerable groups, the characteristics of village heritage and other issues are also in need of further study.
Methodology, formal analysis, and original draft preparation, F.Y.; investigation, F.Y. and L.S; review and editing, F.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of the paper.
This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51578009).
We are particularly grateful to the reviewers for their most generous support with precious time and valuable comments.
