Rural Community Resilience in the Chengdu Plain, China: A Comparative Study of Three Community-Scale Cases

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

Dujiangyan Irrigation District is located in the heart of the Chengdu Plain. Since ancient times, it has been the most economically developed area in the Sichuan Province and even the west of China. Historically, we created a sustainable and harmonious human settlement, especially in the rural areas, and it has shown great resilience and adaptability in dealing with natural disasters such as floods and droughts. However, with the acceleration of globalization and urbanization, the local communities in this rural area are increasingly facing different pressures of disturbance and change. This study analyses the environmental and socio-economic resilience of three communities in this area, by spatial date collection and analysis, as well as questionnaire interview. The results show that due to the centralized resettlement policy, the ecological pattern and landscape heterogeneity of some villages have been broken. Moreover, urbanization has also reduced social economic resilience of rural communities, such as household livehood, age strcture and social network, etc. At last, a strategic framework for community resilience planning is proposed in this paper. During the COVID-19 crisis, community resilience to withstand and recover from the COVID-19 outbreak has become a topical issue for addressing the pandemic, and other disturbances in society.