A residential community is a
community, usually a small town or
city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
, that is composed mostly of
residents, as opposed to
commercial business
Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...
es and/or
industrial
Industrial may refer to:
Industry
* Industrial archaeology, the study of the history of the industry
* Industrial engineering, engineering dealing with the optimization of complex industrial processes or systems
* Industrial city, a city dominate ...
facilities, all three of which are considered to be the three main types of occupants of the typical community.
Residential communities are typically communities that help support more commercial or industrial communities with
consumers and
workers. That
phenomenon is probably because some people prefer not to live in an
urban or industrial area, but rather a
suburb
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
an or
rural setting. For that reason, they are also called
dormitory towns,
bedroom communities, or
commuter towns.
An example of a residential community would include a small town or city outside a larger city or a large town located near a smaller but more commercially- or industrially-centered town or city, for instance
Taitou in Gaocun, Wuqing, Tianjin, China.
China
In the
People's Republic of China, a community (), also called residential unit or residential quarter () or
neighbourhood () or residential community (), is an urban
residential area and its residents administrated by a
subdistrict A subdistrict or sub-district is an administrative division that is generally smaller than a district.
Equivalents
* Administrative posts of East Timor, formerly Portuguese-language
* Kelurahan, in Indonesia
* Mukim, a township in Brunei, In ...
(). Communities are generally organized around a territory consisting of 100 to 700 households.
History
The reform that created residential communities as local government in their current form was called ''shèqū'' (
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
: 社区, "neighbourhood community building"). Originally, these organizations consisted of participating citizens and chiefs, the latter ones being installed by the central governance. Shequ represented an attempt to restructure the relationship between state and urban community in China.
The
social anthropologist Fei Xiaotong is considered the first to have proposed the introduction of the idea of shequ in China.
[Heberer, Thomas/Derichs, Claudia: Einführung in die politischen Systeme Ostasiens. VR China, Hongkong, Japana, Nordkorea, Südkorea, Taiwan (2): VSVerlag 2008, pp119-144.] The introduction of shequ started after the collapse of the previously existing social institutions (''
danwei'') during the mid-1990s. Shequ were supposed to relieve the state of certain duties and responsibilities by transferring them to citizens participating in the shequ. They take over responsibilities which in democratic states are assumed by organisations of the civil community.
Local government
Each community has a community committee, neighborhood committee or residents' committee (). The creation, adjustment or dissolution of a community committee is decided by the subdistrict government.
A community committee is directly elected and consists of 5 to 9 members; it is responsible to the residents assembly, which consists of all residents in the community who are over at or above the age of 18.
See also
*
Administrative divisions of China
*
Age-restricted community
*
Xiaoqu
Microdistrict, or microraion (russian: микрорайо́н, ''mikrorajón''), is a residential complex—a primary structural element of the residential area construction in the Soviet Union and in some post-Soviet and former Socialist ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Residential Community
Society of China
Human habitats
Types of communities
Types of administrative division