Rethinking the socio-ecological resilience of linpan rural landscape under the threat of COVID-19

This item is part of: Boarin, P., Haarhoff, E., Manfredini, M., Mohammadzadeh, M., Premier, A., (2021). Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub PhD Symposium, Future Cities Research Hub, School of Architecture and Planning of the University of Auckland. ISBN: 978-0-473-53616-9

ABSTRACT

The rapid expansion of COVID-19 is incurring the rethinking of human society's capacity for coping with major public health events. While "big data" have been widely used to analyze the impact of COVID-19, very limited study was found in rural areas where such kinds of "data" are lacking. This situation will inevitably lead to an incomplete understanding of the pandemic impacts and biased decisions due to the fragmentary information. In this study, I focused on the agrarian communities in rural areas of Chengdu city where linpan system (wooded lots) characterizes as a cultural landscape. Considering COVID-19 as a threat, this study hopes to understand the socio-ecological resilience of linpan system under the external pressures both qualitatively and quantitatively, combining ethnographic interviews with geospatial analysis, landscape ecology and graph theory. It was found that the spatial pattern of linpan system managed by local communities shows a dispersed distribution pattern, which naturally maintaining a "social distance" while keeping socio-economic connections tightly through periodical rural-market systems. This indigenous knowledge and traditional practices have not been well understood and integrated into development planning, which led to a decrease of socio-ecological resilience against external shocks such as the pandemic or climate change.