Character Assessment And Planning Of Rural Landscape

In the year of2003, the Chinese central government initiated a series of policies toforge “Integrated Urban-rural Development”. In2008, a new policy document wasissued to allow the circulation of rural land contracted management right. It allows thetransfer of the right to households within and beyond the rural community via a validprocedure. This represents a major step taken for Integrated Urban-rural Development.Since then, many regions’ urban-rural planning has led to big changes in layout andfunctionality of their rural space. The modernization of agriculture, the urbanization andrecreational transition of the rural area, result in homogenization and loss of regionallandscape characters in many rural areas.Chinese rural landscape has main characters of high heterogeneity, naturalness andstrong human influence. Rather than being regarded as merely a consequence of ruraldevelopment, rural landscape should be a drive to promote rural development. Awin-win development model between traditional landscape inheritance and socialeconomic development can be established. The goal is to promote Integrated RuralDevelopment, so the rural area is economically optimized, suitable for living and fortourism, protected environmentally, and features landscapes with strong regionalcharacter and cultural heritage. To achieve Integrated Rural Development, ruraldevelopment needs to be guided by landscape planning, combining the strategies todevelop modern agriculture, rural tourism and rural settlement.After discussing some developed countries’ rural area functionality and landscapecharacters, the dissertation points out that the rural area in China should complement theurban functionality, play the role of the regional green lung, the classroom fortraditional culture and heritage, and recreational center. And its landscapes should bemultifunctional and based on regional characters. To achieve this goal, a landscapeplanning framework of “landscape character assessment-landscape policy zoning-landscape element classification-landscape planning content” can be established. Thisdissertation proposes three landscape policy zones-landscape protection zone of ruralcultural landscape, landscape improvement zone of major agricultural production area,and Landscape creation zone of urban fringe. During the process of Urban-ruralIntegration Development, the characteristics of high heterogeneity, naturalness andstrong human influence should be realized in various degrees. Finally the dissertationdiscusses each landscape policy zone’s landscape elements, which can be categorized into agricultural landscape and natural landscape elements, gives according suggestionsto policies of Land ownership, Land contracted management right, major body ofagriculture production, agriculture development pattern, agriculture technology, andcharacteristics deployment of rural tourism.This dissertation is innovative in three aspects:1.It uses the newly evolved“landscape character assessment” tool to establish the landscape planning framework.2.By analysising the functionality of China’s development priority zones, it classifiesChina’s rural area to three landscape policy zones.3. A successful rural planning shouldincorporate the planning of landscape elements, and various rural activities as well.