Characteristics and Structural Differences in Land Use in Urban Villages

Internal land-use characteristics and structural disparities within urban villages were comprehensively analyzed through an empirical investigation of five representative cases in Guangzhou: Shipai (urban core), Tangxia (inner suburb), Huanxi (transitional zone), Wenchong (outer suburb), and Xiangang (peri-urban fringe). To address the spatial conflicts inherent in China's dual urban-rural land system, this study establishes a functionally driven hierarchical classification framework that categorizes land into four domains: production (subdivided into commercial and industrial activities), living (primarily residential use), ecological, and potential (agricultural/vacant parcels). Quantitative methodologies, including the Weaver-Thomas Combination coefficient, were used to identify dominant functional configurations, a diversification index for measuring structural heterogeneity, and GIS-based hotspot analysis at a 50-m resolution to map economic clusters. This study revealed profound spatial stratification patterns. There was an absolute dominance of living functions across all villages, with residential land occupying 35.87%-69.61% of the total area and exhibiting an inverse correlation between centrality and plot integrity. Central villages exemplify extreme densification: Shipai manifests a residential coverage of 69.61% coupled with severe fragmentation (average plot size: 0.08 ha), whereas peri-urban Xiangang retains 37.96% of its agricultural/potential land with 1.7-fold higher diversification indices. Production functions exhibit distinct spatial gradients: commercial activities cluster linearly along arterial roads, forming economic hotspots that occupy 15%-22% of the core zones. In contrast, 73.2% of high-value commercial nodes are located within 200 m of primary streets. Industrial land virtually disappears in central areas (<5% in Shipai) but persists in the peripheries (12.4% in Xiangang). Structural inertia, rooted in collective land ownership, perpetuates fragmentation, with 28.6 plots per ha in central zones, materially constraining spatial redevelopment potential. These observations delineate a location-filtered evolutionary trajectory: urban-core villages evolve into vertically integrated production-living complexes (quantified as a 1:2.3 ratio of production-to-living space), which adapt to condensed urban demands, whereas peripheral villages maintain horizontally hybridized production-agricultural landscapes (1:1.1 ratio) as transitional buffers for metropolitan expansion. Theoretically, institutional friction is validated because the clash between formal urban land economics and informal rural property regimes catalyzes spatially modulated fragmentation driven by locational gradients. This study proposes calibrated regeneration paradigms: for central villages, three-dimensional mixed-use intensification (embedding commerce within residential towers) to optimize spatial efficiency; for peripheral cases, multifunctional ecological-agricultural reserves preserving productive green buffers; and universally applicable incremental property rights consolidation via land shareholding cooperatives, which demonstrate a 30%-40% cost reduction in redevelopment implementation.