Nine Paradigms for Sustainable Rural Development

14/05/2019

​barrysays 

China's modernisation transformation has been at the expense of rural areas. Long term social transformation has brought a crisis to the countryside: land loss and environmental pollution; disintegration of ethical order; and a collapse of belief values and social standards. 

A village named Qingtian in Shunde, at the heart of the Guangdong industrialisation process, has managed to push back against the strong impacts of urbanisation, maintaining its unique rural form and regional style.
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A series of works initiated by the Village Housing Conservation Foundation have demonstrated an exemplary use of mass stakeholder involvement to activate local cultural values, educate youth and promote unique cultural industry in the semi-rural area.

Last December I was pleased to be able to participate in a panel discussion on this case study and evaluate the restoration and revitalisation process of the village.

This full interview was first published in The Magazine of Urbanisation. 

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Qingtian Village. Image:Shundexiangcun

​At the 10th International China Urbanisation Summit, the Qingtian Village case study discussions outlined the importance of village residents understanding the benefits of cultural heritage protection and restoration as well as actively contributing time and labour to the restoration works. ​​But what does the ideal rural Chinese development consist of?

Ms Chen Biyun from Rongshutou Village Housing Conservation Foundation. Image: CIUDSRC

TRANSCRIPTION /

The case studies started with focusing on an economic model, followed with a wonderful environmental model and the Qintain study finished with a perfect social model. The three paradigms of sustainable development were showcased, each one perfect in its way. But the super rural communities that I think we need to conceive, are a balanced amalgam of all of these facets of development.

​It's that ability for a rural community to have diversity and an economic future all of its own, to be in balance and harmony with the environment in which it sits, and the means by which it farms and produces its agriculture. Then it has the spirit whereby the residents take pride in their heritage and in their culture, are stakeholders in its development and are able to invest in that future.

Qingtian village is surrounded by fishing ponds. Image: Google Earth

Image: CIUDSRC

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​If you can combine all the three together I think we have the perfect village. But you were talking about that being a rural community, and I know this town and I know the other 300 towns in in Shunde, to me they're urban communities. They were rural, but now they're part of the 'villages within that large city' and is this perhaps where we've been talking about the balance between urban and rural, it's not so black and white at all. In fact if you look at European communities and urbanisation in Europe is over 70% now, but two-thirds of those communities are in towns under half a million people.

Nine paradigms for rural development of Qingtian Village. Image: CIUDSRC

​So people do like to live in small towns; they do like to live in small villages; they will commute to the big towns. But in the future I think we're going to see new modes of work we're going to see new industries that are footloose. When I say footloose, I think technology now means that we don't have to be in the building where we working. We can work on the internet, we can sell on the internet, we can create on the internet. What's more, those key factors that draw you to live where you are - I think that there are two, one is health, and one is education - so can you get education where you want to live? Good education? And can you get good health care? These two factors are about to be liberated through technological change.

Active Ageing Award for HKIUD

Image: CIUDSRC

​We're going to see complete changes in the way people behave, people live and I think this is something that is alluding to what Nicolai was talking about earlier, we're going into a future world that is open to so many new opportunities that we can't quite predict at the moment. So for me the project is a perfect case study of heritage preservation and how we should go about it, absolutely perfect, the nine paradigms cover everything, but there's one paradigm that's missing and that's about the future and how we can predict
where it's going to go and none of us quite know the answers to that, but we're going to have to predict them anyway, because of the need for resiliency under climate change and to meet our climate goals.

Qingtian village exhibits its rural characteristics within urban environment. Image: Google Earth

Image: CIUDSRC

​I think we have to have some idea of what the vision, our vision of the future, needs to be. What does that community want to be like in 20 years time? How do people want to be living and working? And then we've got to make map out a plan of how to get there, Now that's not going to be easy, and in the past it was much easier, we could follow demographics and population change and see nice linear progressions, but now we've got no idea, we've got no idea in five years really where we're going to be, except we can anticipate these tech changes. We can understand that travel is going to be completely different, we're going to have all this automation. So can we visualize new lifestyles？

Back to the Future

The location of Qingtian Village in Shunde, Foshan. Image:Google Map

​I look at your village there and think that's somewhere I'd really like to live in 20 years because it's going to have culture, it sits in a beautiful environment
and I can compare that to my home village which is now seen as a very affluent place to live. People who have moved out of the city, to the edge of the city, will be delighted to live in heritage buildings, pay a fortune to do it, be they the landlord or be they the tenant.
So later we'll find that your landlords of today are going to be the wealthy landlords of tomorrow, they don't realize it yet, but I think there's enough international case study, to show us that it will be. If we can preserve it now and get them to not remove things they're really investing in their future, so this is very exciting.

​Last week I went to listen to Jack Ma.  Jack Ma is very interesting for me now because he is a visionary, he doesn't rely on planning so much with what's gone behind, he's trying to anticipate a future and move to it. His belief is quite simply that we have to be flexible, completely flexible and adaptable, and if we can give our children these skills to adapt, they're going to be resilient in the future and cope with what ever is thrown at them.

The round table session of CIUDSRC conference. Image: CIUDSRC

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​So, I think we have to look at that in all our planning nowadays. A master plan - and one of the things I loved here was you didn't show me a master plan - because a master plan is not a drawing, it's a series of decisions, and I think you've looked here at all the things that go together to make your thinking, and it's very comprehensive, and then you can make choices along the way and you're going to have to change them as you go. Because the world is going to change but as long as you can get your stakeholders invested and committed with a strong vision that they believe in I think you can go forward.

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​To set your goal even higher, I'd like to see your community have a target of being carbon free, carbon zero. Could we make sure that all the aquaculture that's going on there is organic? Could we look at using solar power or wind power to produce the electricity for the settlement to drive the water pumps that keep the economy going? Could we look at all sorts of micro industries that can attract people to want to live there？Can we look at online learning to attract young people to want to stay there and learn? How can we make a really diverse, intergenerational community in your village?​

Qingtian, Shunde is located in the Guangdong Province. Image: BWPI

I think we can. I think it's perfect, but it takes bigger vision. One that puts together all three of the case studies that we've seen today. I'm very excited, I think China is the place that is going to do this. Don't look at international studies so much, they're all in the past, China is looking at the future, it's trying new things. Some things go wrong along the way but we can change them and this is why we have to be flexible. So I'm very, very positive about what I've heard in this room today and all the wonderful messages and case studies that we've heard. I really think that we're heading to a great thing here in China.

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The purpose of China International Urbanization Development Strategy Research Committee or CIUDSRC is under the guidance of the Science & Technology Commission attached to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, P. R. China or MOHURD. It has been initiated by government officials, research institutes, academic communities, city planners & designers, entrepreneurs from different sectors, financial institutions, and organizations for integrated sales as well as media partners. It aims at enhancing strategic research and collaboration in the field of urbanization.

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