Abstract Rapid economic growth in China leads to a large influx of migrants in cities and a continuous urban expansion. In order to save financial and administrative cost, urban authority prefers to choose farmland for urban development rather than the urban villages. As a result, villages on urban-rural fringes have been gradually surrounded by urban landscape and become urban villages. As a new type of urban landscape, issues on urban village attract many scholars' interest. This paper gives a comprehensive literature review on urban village and explores the current research problems and shortages from the perspective of research theoretical basis, research topic and research methods. As a specific phenomenon along with China's rapid urbanization, a majority of study productions are made in China. Until recently, scholars overseas begin to give their interest on this topic. Research on urban village started since the end of 1980s from describing the concept, features and forming mechanism, to analyzing some deeper academic topics. This paper does the literature review from the national and international aspects. Research in national academe can be classified to three topics:understanding, forming mechanism and renewal. Scholars overseas hold different research visual angle on urban village. They usually focus on self-help housing, floating population and land use. Through the review of current literatures, there are several problems and shortages which need to be improved in further research. Firstly, a specific and strong theoretical system should be built to give an important research foundation. From the perspective of urban geography, using the research system of urban social geography is very necessary to coordinate the numerous topics and guide the research development along with a canonical path. Secondly, current research should be deepened with choosing more fresh and profound topics, such as exploring different factors' effects and their relationships in driving urban village's development, theoretical evaluation of urban village's objectivity, and urban village's roles in urban special structure. Thirdly, more mathematic methods which depend on great statistical and survey data should be used in further researches.
2009, Vol. 24 
