Neighbourhood satisfaction in rural resettlement residential communities: the case of Suqian, China

Abstract

Against the background of large-scale urbanisation and rural land expropriation, rural resettlement residential housing has been built to accommodate local rural residents in the peripheral areas of China. To explore the context-specific policy implications for improving neighbourhood satisfaction (NS) of residents in rural resettlement residential communities (RRRCs), this paper examines the determinants of NS, and their spatial effects, in rural resettlement residential neighbourhoods using Suqian, in Jiangsu Province, as a case study. This study contributes to the current literature in two ways: it constitutes the first attempt to examine NS among RRRCs; second, our spatial model helps to gain further understanding of horizontal and vertical spatial dependence effects. Our results indicate that income, gender, age, family structure, number of years living in a community, transport and architectural age all have significant effects on NS in RRRCs.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural resettlement residential communities
• urbanisation
• neighbourhood satisfaction
• Bayesian hierarchical spatial autoregressive model
• China

Note

Acknowledgements

This research is funded by the NSFC (Project No. 51808392), the EPSRC (EPSRC Reference: EP/R035148/1), the SCUE Research Fund, and School Funding from the University of Westminster. Thanks to the managing editor Dr Marietta Haffner and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the initial draft of this paper. Thanks also to Miss Meng Zhu and Dr Yanbo Zhang for providing photos.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 In the Chinese context, square dancing generally involves middle-aged or retired people, particularly women, dancing to music together in squares or other public spaces.

Additional information

Funding

The National Natural Science Foundation of China. This research was funded by the NSFC (Project No. 51808392), the EPSRC (EPSRC Reference: EP/R035148/1), the SCUE Research Fund, and School Funding from the University of Westminster.

Notes on contributors

Xing Gao

Xing Gao holds his PhD in Planning at University College London. His research interests include urban governance and planning, regional economy and governance, economic geography, built environment and social science research methods. In the future, Xing plans to focus on the following fields: Smart City Governance, Urban Innovation and Regional Development, Community Governance and Planning, and Regional Economics.

Zijia Wang

Zijia Wang received his PhD degree from the School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests include transportation planning, including pedestrian flow modelling, pedestrian simulation research, and transportation demand analysis and forecasting.

Mengqiu Cao

Mengqiu Cao is a senior lecturer in Transport and Urban Planning at the University of Westminster. He is also a researcher/guest lecturer at the University College London. He has worked in both academia and industry, specialising in an interdisciplinary research field, which is primarily a mixture of transport analysis and urban studies.

Yuqi Liu

Yuqi Liu is a researcher in Urban Studies. She receives her PhD in Urban Planning from University College London. Her research interests include health and wellbeing, healthy aging, social inequalities, and urban sustainability. She has published papers in Urban Studies, Urban Geography, Cities, and Population Space and Place.

Yuerong Zhang

Yuerong Zhang is a research fellow in Transport Policy at the University College London. Her main research interests include: 1) Sustainable and resilient transport planning; 2) Spatial and social network analysis in urban studies; 3) Travel behaviour analysis; 4) Travel patterns and urban structure; and 5) Data visualisation.

Meiling Wu

Meiling Wu is currently a PhD candidate at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her research interests focus on rural housing, community development, and post-disaster reconstruction.

Yue Qiu

Yue Qiu works as a lecturer in the School of English Culture and Literature at Beijing International Studies University. Her research interests include English Language and Literature, Translation, and Tourism Sociology.