Research on Functional Evolution of Existing Rural Dwellings in Western Zhuhai: Based on Diachronic Analysis and Statistical Modeling

In the rapidly changing landscapes of the Global South, where cities expand and industries rise, rural villages are often caught in a squeeze. They face a unique pressure known as "spatiotemporal compression," a concept describing how massive social and economic shifts happen so quickly that they force communities to reorganize their physical lives in a very short time. For decades, researchers and policymakers have focused on the big picture: national laws, city planning, and the broad trends of urbanization. However, the most intimate part of this transformation—the actual homes where families live and work—has remained largely invisible. These houses are not just shelters; they are physical records of how people live, what they value, and how their daily routines have changed. Understanding the evolution of these private spaces is crucial because it reveals how ordinary people adapt to a world that is moving faster than their traditions can keep up with.

A team of researchers from the Guangdong Polytechnic of Science and Technology has turned their attention to this overlooked corner of rural life in western Zhuhai, China. This region sits at a fascinating crossroads, with a modern, wealthy city center to the east and traditional, transforming villages to the west. The researchers wanted to understand how the homes of local farmers have changed over the last fifty years. To do this, they did not rely on government reports or broad statistics alone. Instead, they went into the field, visiting 31 villages and carefully measuring and interviewing the owners of 105 representative houses. They combined these direct observations with household surveys and existing government data to build a complete picture of how these dwellings have evolved.

The study uncovered a clear and distinct journey that these homes have taken, moving through three specific stages of design that mirror the changing lives of the people inside them. In the earliest period, before 1979, the typical rural home was organized around a "Courtyard Hub." In this traditional layout, the house was built in a ring around a central open space. This courtyard was the heart of the home, serving as a place for cooking, drying crops, storing tools, and even raising livestock. The rooms opened directly onto this shared space, which provided light and air but also meant that family life was deeply intertwined with agricultural work. The home was a center of production as much as it was a place to sleep.

As the decades passed and the economy began to shift, the design of these houses entered a transitional phase between 1980 and 1999. During this time, families began building taller structures, often adding a second story to accommodate growing populations. To manage the flow of people between these new upper levels, builders started using "External Corridor Linkage." This meant adding covered walkways on the outside of the house to connect rooms, reducing the need to walk through the central courtyard. This was a hybrid style, a mix of the old and the new, where the courtyard was still important but began to lose its dominance as the primary circulation space. It was a period of adjustment, where the architecture tried to balance traditional needs with the rising desire for more privacy and modern convenience.

By the time the researchers looked at homes built after 2000, a third and final model had emerged, which they call the "Living Room-Front" model. In these modern rural homes, the layout has flipped completely. The living room is now the main entrance and the central hub of the house, situated at the front of the building. The kitchen, dining area, and storage are pushed to the back. The traditional courtyard has largely disappeared or been reduced to a small patch of land used for parking or leisure, rather than farming. The house is no longer organized around a shared outdoor work space but is instead designed around the private, indoor needs of the nuclear family. The living room has become the place for television, gatherings, and relaxation, while the upper floors are dedicated to private bedrooms, often with their own bathrooms, separating generations and prioritizing individual comfort over communal production.

The researchers did not just describe these changes; they measured them to prove the pattern was real and not just a coincidence. They analyzed the data to see how the year a house was built correlated with its size, its windows, and its courtyard. They found a strong, clear link: as time went on, the floor area of the homes grew significantly, with the average size increasing from about 119 square meters for older homes to 273 square meters for the newest ones. At the same time, the amount of glass in the windows increased dramatically, showing a growing demand for natural light and a healthier, more comfortable indoor environment. Conversely, the size of the courtyard shrank steadily. The data confirmed that the courtyard, once the essential workspace of the home, has lost its functional importance as rural life has moved away from agriculture and toward a more service-based and leisure-oriented lifestyle.

This transformation tells a deeper story about the people living in these homes. The shift from a courtyard-centered house to a living-room-centered house marks a fundamental change in how rural families view their lives. They have moved from a collective existence, where the home was a factory for crops and tools, to a modern existence focused on privacy, comfort, and the needs of a smaller family unit. The researchers noted that this rapid change happened so quickly that it created a "hybrid" phase in the middle, where old and new styles clashed and mixed. This suggests that the current state of many rural homes is a direct result of the intense pressure to adapt to a modern economy in a very short time.

The findings of this study challenge the way rural development is currently approached in the region. Many government policies and renovation projects focus on the outside appearance of the houses, such as painting facades or standardizing the look of the village. However, the research shows that the real needs of the residents lie in the functional layout of the interior. The homes have already evolved to meet the demands of modern life, and simply making them look the same on the outside does not address the complex ways families actually use their spaces. The study concludes that future planning should look past the surface and focus on the functional adaptability of these homes. By understanding the real, lived experience of the residents and the specific ways their homes have changed, planners can support a more genuine and sustainable form of rural development that respects the new reality of rural life.