Predicaments and Landscape Changes in Traditional Village Transformational Development - A Case Study of Chongqing, China

Abstract

The protection of traditional villages plays an important role in the strategy of inheriting Chinese outstanding history and culture, and it is also an important type for the transformation and development of traditional farming civilization to modern ecological civilization. In this paper, it is held that, currently, traditional village transformation and development follow the laws of policy orientation attracting capital intervention, capital intervention promoting village development, and village development supporting policy orientation in turn with actual internal forces, realizing a ternary integrated development path for the country, market, and village. Based on the logic inference and deduction on the three-dimensional path driven by departmental policy capital, urban industrial and commercial capital as well as rural community and owned capital, a series of typical cases of Chongqing are selected for demonstration. Studies show: (1) At this stage, traditional village transformation and development will inevitably be driven by both internal and external forces, since the driving power of one single force is limited. Only by conforming to external driving forces such as policies and capital and internal endowments of village resources, culture and economic foundation, can the predicament in traditional village transformation and development be overcome; (2) The key to realizing rural transformation and development lies in stimulating internal driving forces of villages. Economic reconstruction with industry cultivation as its core is the most active factor in rural development, and it plays a leading role in social and landscape reconstruction; (3) Historical rural landscape is an important resource for the transformation and development of villages. Therefore, both macro policies and regulations and capital intervention should be based on a full understanding of the value of historical landscape, and a thorough and true cognition and evaluation on the composition and characteristics of historical landscape.