关键词: 村庄格局, 规模, 演变, 黄淮海平原中部地区

Abstract:

The study on the village pattern evolution is important and significative to constitute the policy of land utilization in the new period and to build new socialist countryside. The Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, located in the central part of East China, is the important farm belt, and consists of multitudinous villages with a high population density. In this region, the marketization level and urbanization level are high because of close to the coastal developed areas, and the interior development problems of the villages are prominent such as a mass of farmlands being occupied, and too many houses being abandoned. So it is one of the representative regions to research problems of village development. Progress in the study related with countrysides, settlements, farmers, and villages have been reviewed. Studies of the village pattern evolution on macroscopic scale were much more than those on microscopic scale, so microscopic studies should be strengthened to better understand village development. The Wulou village in the central part of the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain was chosen as a typical case. The face-to-face interview and the global position system (GPS) measurement method were used in the study. The main results are as follows: Firstly, the Wulou village went through a series of evolution pattern including the absolute tardiness development before the establishment of People's Republic of China in 1949, the relative tardiness development before the implementation of the economic reforms in 1978, the fast expansion in the 1980s, the steady scale in the 1990s and the recessionary development in the early 21st century. In the meantime, the roads and ponds in the village have also been changed correspondingly. Secondly, the main factors of the village pattern evolution included economic improvement, the change of social structure, urbanization and the effect of national policy. However, population variation was still the decisive factor. Thirdly, the change of village scale was not obvious before the implementation of the economic reforms in 1978, the expansion of village scale was prominent from the 1978 economic reform to the 1990s, and the empty and abandoned houses have increased largely since about 2000.Fourthly, the previous village expansion attributed to four aspects as follows: No family planning after 1949 resulted in population increasing enormously; the economic development enabled people to improve their habitations; the status of nuclear families (namely a family consists of few people which only include husband, wife and their children in general) was enhanced step by step; and farmers were not conscious of the importance of protecting plantations. Finally, the causes leading to abandoned houses lately are that the urbanization and market economy are becoming or will become the direct drive of the village hollowing at present; the profit of planting grains is so low that it has become the important impetus of the village hollowing; and the fast increase of population has been successfully controlled by the policy of family planning in China since the 1980s. Furthermore, according to the status quo of the village development in the study area and the social development demands, the corresponding countermeasures have been brought forward.

Key words: village pattern, scale, evolution, the central part of Huang-Huai-Hai plain