Diverse Morphological Patterns of Urban Villages and Insights for Achieving Adaptive Urban Neighbourhood

Abstract

Urban village is a prevalent urban phenomenon in China’s Pearl River Delta (PRD) region where thousands of former rural villages have urbanized along with the surrounding built environment during the past three decades of unprecedented rapid urbanization. Common perceptions position urban villages as to have “bad” environmental qualities amidst “chaotic” settings, and is commonly used as one of the main motivations to demolish these urban enclaves to be replaced by modern high-rise blocks. However, the urban village, as one of the most dominate residential building type and urban neighbourhoods in the cities of the PRD, has contributed significantly to the urban affordability of the megacities through providing low-rent housing and employment opportunities for the massive migrant populations. This paper argues that the environmental qualities of the urban villages are diverse in type and merits, rather than the generalized view as uniformly “bad”. This research reveals the urban village to demonstrate high environmental adaptability, owing to the diverse morphological patterns of the building fabric, as well as the ecological mechanisms of self-organization and self-maintenance. Hubei is an informed case for exploration due to its unusually diverse urban morphology with distinct types of built forms of multiple generations, accumulated throughout the past century. This paper has analysed the morphological characteristics, neighbourhood dynamics, and environmental performances of seven types of built forms in the Hubei Village neighbourhood. It aims to show that lessons can be learned from the urban village to be applied toward creating and adapting urban neighbourhoods with diverse urban morphology and high environmental adaptability. This paper also reflects on the problems of the current demolition-oriented mode of urban redevelopment in the PRD and other cities of China.