Toward a Resilient Landscape: The Eco-Cultural Redevelopment in Rural Chengdu Plain

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2015Rural issues have formed the main contradiction in Chinese development since China’s reform and opening up in 1978. In the last decade, catalyzed by the general background of industrialization, globalization and especially Chinese urbanization, rural issues have increasingly brought challenges into areas of food security, cultural preservation, and ecological infrastructure. In rural Chengdu plain, the traditional agriculture pattern—Linpan has been recognized as the most productive and eco-resilient landscape. But it is under the threat of being urbanized by the government’s rural concentration plan. Based on the study of agricultural landscape of Linpan, the thesis tries to set up indicators to evaluate possible planning scenarios by different economic ideas in the future. Then proposed plans are presented based on infrastructures in irrigation and transportation. Under the general scheme, designs have been generated in different scales to resonate with the key purposes of food productivity and ecological resilience