In China, as the modern society develops, an increasing number of rural people are desiring for city life and moving to cities, which results in rapidly-increasing number of city population and housing price. In 1983, the Chinese government initiated ...
In China, as the modern society develops, an increasing number of rural people are desiring for city life and moving to cities, which results in rapidly-increasing number of city population and housing price. In 1983, the Chinese government initiated the "one-child policy", since when the family members decreased to less than 3 in 2017 from 4.41 in 1982. From Chinese main family structure nowadays, small families take up large proportion and family members of 1-2 are continuously increasing. Moreover, small family structure, including dink family, single-member family, single-parent family and big family with 4-5 members are also existing. The trend of aging and low productivity are also reasons resulting in new small family.
Shanghai, a major city in China, has a flat history of more than 100 years since the 1920s, and now in Shanghai there are more than 3,000 flat buildings built before 1949. On the basis of 2010, single-member family taking up 20%, while a family with two members taking up 32% and three members taking up 33%, all of which taking up 85% of total family members of 1-3. The family member of 2-3 occupies the most with the proportion of 65%.
Therefore, this paper, focusing on Shanghai city, conducts analysis on historical evolution of small flat and main examples in each year to explore the connection between layout transition and social development.
The study method of this paper is document retrieval and example investigation.
First, document retrieval refers to investigating on the history of Shanghai flat from relevant books and website reference.
Second, example investigation refers to investigating through time and space. The author selects small flats built before 2018 which are classified as per ten years, such as small flats built during 1979-1989, 1989-1999, 1999-2008 and 2009-2018 in different sizes. Similarly, the author also selects flats in 30m2 - 90 m2, including 30㎡-49㎡, 50㎡-69㎡, 70㎡-90㎡ with four flats in each space size and the total number of 12. The objects for investigation are selected from China's popular real estate websites- soho and anjuke.
The conclusions are as follows: in the 1950s to 1970s, Shanghai flats were observed with the features of small room size, shared kitchen and bathroom. After the 1980s when the Reform and Open Policy came into effect, rooms were separated from dining room and living room as people's living condition was improved. From then on, separate kitchen, bathroom and living room were observed and the day lighting of sleeping room and ventilation condition in kitchen were gradually improved. In 1990s comfortable housing appeared with the features of dining space with reasonable layout, separated room and living room. For bigger flats, big dining room, kitchen, bathroom and balcony space were obtained with substantial day light, good ventilation condition and improved sound isolation and lighting condition. In 1998 and 1999, the mechanism of welfare house distribution and welfare house were terminated, which led to the opening of commercialized housing era. The Chinese government took one family one flat as their goal before 2000, while after that their goal was one family member one room. Since the society develops rapidly, the number of people who prefer small flat are increasing continuously. The results can be drawn from analysis of space size in each times that since the end of 1990s, public space are increasing rather than private space. Moreover, the rooms between children's and parents' were becoming farer, or study room appeared instead of children's rooms. From the above results we can see that small flats in Shanghai emphasizes more on private space and the public space of living room and dining room is gradually increased, evolved into space for different functions.
Since this paper selects a small proportion of small flats in Shanghai, there exists limitation that cannot be popularized. More example investigation and deeper studies should be carried out on the connection of social incidents in the future.