Strategies for the dynamic protection and utilization of traditional villages in rapidly urbanizing areas: The case of Jiangbian Village in Dongguan City of China

Abstract

In recent years, along with continuous urbanization, traditional villages in rapidly urbanizing areas have encountered difficulties like “constructive destruction,” “material decay,” imbalance of the natural environment, and loss of historical culture due to modernization. Under the requirement of “comprehensively strengthening the protection and utilization of historical and cultural heritage and coordinating the protection of historical and cultural heritage with urban and rural construction, economic development, and tourism development” in the new era, it is crucial to study the protection and development of historical and cultural heritage. Since traditional villages are a living heritage, their sustainable development while respecting history is indispensable. Coordinating the relationship between heritage conservation and socioeconomic development to achieve sustainable development is currently the biggest challenge for traditional village conservation. Taking Jiangbian village as an example, based on the cultural heritage value of the village, this paper combines the traditional village with the general direction of urban development and proposes strategies of cross-regional development, linkage, and integration of surrounding resources, complementing the shortcomings of public facilities, and utilizing unused resources, so that Jiangbian Village can be actively integrated into the development of the city, the synergistic development of the village and the city can be promoted, and the dynamic protection and utilization of traditional villages can be realized, with the goal of enriching the research on the dynamic protection and utilization of traditional villages in rapidly urbanizing areas.