Planning for Resilience: A Proposed Landscape Evaluation for Redevelopment Planning In the Linpan Landscape

Abstract

University of Washington Abstract Planning for Resilience: A Proposed Landscape Evaluation for Redevelopment Planning In the <italic>Linpan</italic> Landscape Jennifer Laura Tippins Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Daniel Abramson Department of Urban Design and Planning China's countryside is rapidly changing under the New Socialist Countryside policy aimed at village and town modernization. Planning solutions often prescribe a standard concentration approach, where many believe that a dense settlement pattern is more efficient at providing social services and public amenities while attaining the necessary economies of scale for modernized living, agricultural productivity, and stability. This can be a drastic change to traditional settlement patterns. The linpan landscape of the Chengdu Plain is a useful case study, given its unusually dispersed pattern, which nevertheless supports a high population density at a large scale with interdependent social-ecological systems over a long period of time. Local planners have experimented with varying degrees of concentration to meet both national redevelopment goals as well as local planning ideals that value preservation of the landscape's traditional characteristics. This highlights conflicts between short-term planning goals focused on efficient land use and long-term goals that support adaptability and continued ecological function. This thesis illustrates the use of a resilience framework to evaluate redevelopment alternatives and focuses specifically on landscape structure (pattern) as a variable in agroecosystem resilience. A set of indicators and measures in three main categories were proposed: landscape heterogeneity, appropriate scale, and biodiversity. Three administrative villages in Pi County were tested to develop a baseline of the existing typology and compare alternatives. Results found that village sites have similarities in many indicators and measures that help form a baseline of the existing linpan landscape typology. In comparing alternative development models against this baseline, the eco-village model in Anlong best meets indicators of traditional landscape structure that support resilience. The extreme concentrated alternative model in Zhanqi deviated the most from the traditional landscape structure.