Abstract: Socialist China has undergone a transformation from a planned system to a market economy, and South China region is at the forefront of this modernization process. In the process of urban expansion and industrial construction, the original rural settlement form will evolve and undergo adaptive transformation. This study starts from the theoretical foundation of the Conzen’s research on the evolution of urban morphology, and takes a series of urban villages in the central city of Guangzhou in South China, represented by Shipai, Yangji, Pazhou and Wenchong Village, as the research objects. By using literature research, archival research, map and image analysis methods, the morphological periods of the land parcels are divided, including the morphological framework, plane type units, and the plot pattern and architectural pattern, as well as the underlying social driving factors. It is concluded that the driving force for the morphological change of villages on the edge of urban areas in southern China should be the change in production and living organizational forms caused by differences in urbanization levels, which is essentially a process of urban-rural game and interaction, and has characteristics such as gradualness, complexity, and diffusion from the centre to the edge.