Research On Logical Framework Analysis (LFA) Based Village Planning Methodology

Village planning is a sophisticated planning since it is aimed at improving the overall development concerning human settlement, society, environment and economy. As a crucial index of balancing urban-rural development, the role of village planning took on an added importance. Under the long-term influence of the urban-rural dualistic structure, village planning has always lagged behind city planning. Besides, village planning was impacted by the city planning with a great extent, which always led to lots of plan faults because of using city planning mode indiscriminately, like occupying large area of farmland for new village construction and boosting economy blindly by introducing contaminative factory. There is a close relationship between those obvious problems and the traditional "Top-down" planning mode. What lacks in the "Top-down" planning mode were stakeholders’participatory, accurate village problems understanding and village development objectives formulation. These village planning problems has not only affected villagers’normal life and work but also restricted the village sustainable development.In this research, a systematic approach called Logical Framework Approach (LFA) was applied in two villages planning projects. Different tools of LFA were used into different stages, like adopted Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and stakeholder analysis in history investigation and present situation investigation. Based on the investigation results, built problem trees and objective trees according to problem analysis and objective analysis. Then established the village planning objective-system by strategy analysis. Finally, based on the objective-system, used Logical Framework Analysis (LFA) to make village planning content. All of these stages combined with the wishes and aspirations of all the stakeholders. The research showed that: (1) PRA and stakeholder analysis allowed the villagers to clear their role in the village planning which promoted them to improve their own life quality and participate into the village planning actively. PRA improved the communication between planners and villagers which helped planners dig the indigenous knowledge that deep in the villagers’memory and their exact cognition of the village. These two methods not only could get accurate information on the circumstances of study area, but also could restore plenty of historical information which could be changed into scientific data. The results of PRA and stakeholder analysis were investigation base of the later Problem Tree Analysis (PTA) and Objective Tree Analysis (OTA).(2) Using PTA and OTA into the village planning, complicated village problems could be classified into different categories such as infrastructure, land use and landscape construction. Different categories of problem trees and objective trees were established. Stakeholders could directly understand the various problems and the core problems in the village though problem trees, also, gained a clear idea of the development direction though objective trees. According to strategy analysis, the village planning objective-system was established. The objective-system was the analysis base in the later Logical Framework Analysis (LFA).(3) According to LFA, the village development objectives were converted into village planning measures which meat the objectives would be converted into practical actions. Under the higher level village planning requirements, these village planning measures were flexibly arranged into different village planning contents. The village planning based on LFA clarified the inner relationship between village problems, development objectives and village planning contents which ensured the village planning a logical planning. Besides, the village planning methodology based on LFA combined multilevel village planning like the general planning, the specific planning and the planning design into one planning which made the planning methodology in village level comprehensive and simple.After the research in those three stages, this thesis established a village planning methodology based on LFA. The application of LFA broke the traditional "Top-down" village planning mode. It took village history and status into account, which made village planning more reachable and executable. This methodology laid stress on investigation and analysis of the whole village planning process, every step in which was open and democratic. Public participation and rationality-planning were also in the every step. Village planning based on LFA methodology has strong logicality and future-orientation. In this way, we want to implement our methodology in future village planning system establish and mechanism perfection.