“Sustainability and sharing” call on village revival

Situated at the hinterland of Dabie Mountain, Xihewan Village, nestling in the mountain and river bend, exhibits the unique charm of a primitive ancient village with its numerous ancient architectures. Between April 7 and 8, the 2016 Forum on the Revival of Chinese Villages (Xinxian County), a grand meeting for the village development, was held here.

At the two-day forum, more than 600 participants, including renowned scholars from China, the US, Italy, France and Japan, scholars and architects from 15 provinces (municipalities, autonomous regions) engaged in village/town economy, village heritage, village management, and village cultural creation and building practice, as well as grassroots governmental officials, enterprises, welfare foundations and village leaders devoted to village construction, shared their typical practice and valuable experience on village protection, construction and development and had discussions on the revival of Chinese villages in the mode of keynote speeches.

The forum was jointly held by Beijing Urban Construction Design & Development Group Co., Limited（Beijing UCD）, School of Architecture of Tsinghua University, Beijing Green Cross, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, The Protection and Development of Ancient Village Committee and Xinxian County Cultural Reform Development Zone. It was a vivid practice of national and even global thinkers and industrial elite engaged in village construction.

“Sustainability and sharing”

The village revival forum with the theme of “sustainability and sharing” focused on reflections on problems occurred in the village protection and development, and discussions on typical cases of domestic and international village construction, offered professional explanations and possible suggestions based on village construction researches and practices of domestic and foreign academic circles, promoted effective matching among participants, helped resource sharing between different projects, between projects and funds, and between projects and makers, and strove to build a brand-new cooperation and communication platform for Chinese village builders to learn advanced international experience.

Villages are the root of a beautiful China and the garden of Chinese traditional culture. Against the backdrop of economic New Normal, the beautiful Chinese Dream of “rejuvenating village construction, creating beautiful villages, nurturing green mountains and clean water to comfort nostalgia” with new thinking and new measures will be the practice direction of governments at all levels, social circles and outstanding enterprises, said Wang Hanjun, general manager of Beijing UCD.

Opportunities and challenges

UCD’s first products for the sector, such as farm products packing and Big Data Platform, made a debut at the forum. In the future, UCD will develop and re-process more products for the industry, add modern design elements to the work and enrich the industrial design with design and planning concepts. Based on village basic database and information resource of the forum, UCD will gradually forge a Village Bid Data Platform which is open for sharing massive data. To meet village development demand, UCD will support accurate design and investment with Big Data, and green operation and ecological service with best solutions.