Uncovering the edge urban villages using social media big data: A case study in Beijing, China

Abstract

Spatial inequality in informal settlements has become a crucial issue in the sustainable development of global cities. Urban villages, emblematic of informal settlements in China, serve as focal points where migrant workers establish communities within urban areas. In recent years, the ongoing urban renewal and enhanced connectivity between urban centers and suburban areas have led to the progressive development of peri-urban informal settlements, which function as significant socio-spatial entities in the urban-rural continuum. This study introduces a concept of the Edge Urban Villages (EUVs) and applies it in a case study conducted in Beijing, China. EUVs are informal settlements located outside the physical urban area but serve traditional urban village functions, which play an important and as yet untouched role in serving migrants and sustainable urban development. Using systematic methods for analyzing social media big data, including conditional random field model, integrating natural language processing, geoparsing, and geocoding techniques, the locations and attention received by urban villages are identified. Moreover, the study outlines the spatial characteristics of EUVs based on their functions, utilizing a comprehensive dataset of 33,002 social media posts collected from various sources. The results indicate that: (1) 301 urban villages have been identified in Beijing, with over one third of them situated beyond the confines of the physical urban area, thus earning the designation of EUVs. (2) The proliferation of EUVs can be primarily attributed to the interdependence of their functions, encompassing rental services, public amenities, and transportation. However, the correlation between EUVs and their rural locale, measured by distance from urban centers, affluence levels, and land ownership types, lacks significance. (3) Although China has a strict urban-rural dichotomy in terms of population and land system, the rise of the EUVs identifies the fact that a large number of non-agricultural functions have emerged in the rural areas surrounding the big cities and maintain close functional links with the center cities. More attention should be directed towards EUVs, particularly concerning their emerging spatial inequality-related issues in the urban periphery.