When the urbanization frontiers sprawled to the villages that used to be located on the outskirts of the city, government compulsorily purchased some farmlands formerly cultivated by the villages and turned them into urban land, while reserved the residential lands due to the high social and economic costs to relocate the villagers. To compensate the villagers for their lost dwellings, the government had to arrange jobs and larger apartments in the city for these unskilled villagers, which is usually difficult to achieve during the early period of China's reforms.