The Research On The Conceptual Planning Of Small-town In The Mountain Area Of Northern Guangdong

After more than thirty years’ development since the Economy Reform in China,the PRD (Pearl River Delta) area has become an area with strong economic growth.In ontrast, the nearby Mountain area of Northern Guangdong in contrast was entitledas the ‘cold pole near golden delta’. However, due to the unique conditions of thesmall towns and cities in Mountain area of Northern Guangdong, and in addition theconstraints of traditionally statutory planning in terms of planning procedures,planning context and approving process, the plans cannot deal with the newproblems in the rapid developing process of the small towns and cities in Mountainarea of Northern Guangdong. Two tough difficulties are identified in such process:(1) The identification and status is difficult to be set accurately.(2) There are difficulties to implement its strategic planning into spatialdevelopment.From the year2000, the initiative of conceptual planning has been promotedwidely in China. This planning idea is favored not only because it has strong timelyfeatture, flexible context, high level of comprehensiveness and high standard offeasibility, but also it can focus on the problems in the small towns and cities inMountain area of Northern Guangdong.However, since the difference between spatial scales and characters of thesesmall towns and cities, and traditional large and medium size cities in terms ofconceptual planning, there should be special requirements to define the context andmethods in conceptual planning. Thereby, the unique requirements of the smalltowns and cities in Mountain area of Northern Guangdong can be met with.In response, the thesis firstly points out that the context of conceptual plans ofthe small towns and cities in Mountain area of Northern Guangdong have their ownspecial features. Secondly, there are two focuses regarding to its objective, on theone hand, the conceptual plan should provide more clear and vis ible goals for thesesmall towns and cities, on the other hand, important lands and projects should beaddressed by implementation of the spatial strategy. In addition, detailed design andcomprehensive action scheme should be provided. Therefore, the clear feature ofcomprehensiveness and feasibility could be identified.Therefore, the thesis takes the Sanjiang Town in Liannan in GuangdongProvince as a case study. It develops the research into two areas: firstly, through thefeatures of small towns and cities, the thesis raises the methods and principles in theconceptual planning. It also utilizes the methods of analysis of difference and SWOTto discuss the challenges and situations of Sanjiang. By identifying the core advantages, the thesis further identifies its future development and scale, and finally,comes to the strategy ‘Eastern Slow Valley’.Secondly, after ensuring the methods and principles of spatial strategy of thelocal small towns and cities, and also on the basis of analysing the spatial feature andits implementation, comparisons are conducted among several spatial distributionand scenario simulation. Finally, the conclusions are made for the land use type andconsequently, it comes to the assumptions of important projects and theirimple mentation.