Densifying Rural Territories: New Territorial Planning Tools

As they urbanize, rural territories are rapidly densifying. From this observation, architect Marlène Leroux attempts to analyze this phenomenon from a case study developed in her ongoing PhD “Densifying Rural Territories: China, from Massive Growth Patterns to more Sustainable Urban Planning”. The researcher focuses on making visible the territorial specificities and transformations of the Chengdu Plain, a major agricultural production center, based on nested maps at three different scales (national, local and micro-local).

This global vision could help to develop new planning tools suitable to the particularities of rural territories. From there, they could be classified and optimized by setting up urban development scenarios more sustainable and achievable at the regional scale, offering a more viable alternative to the generic model of large-scale urban expansion currently applied throughout China today.