How to "tailor" the community living circle in the megacities and villages

Source: Liberation Daily

Shanghai issued guidelines for the planning of rural community living circles, and Qingpu Chonggu Zhangyan Village and Pudong Huinanhai Shen Village were piloted

How to "tailor" the community living circle in the megacities and villages

Mao Guanjun, chief reporter of this newspaper

In the countryside on the outskirts of Shanghai, "circles" are taking shape. In 2016, the "Guidelines for the Planning of 15-Minute Community Life Circle in Shanghai (Trial)" was issued, which clearly stated that it should be "equipped with basic service functions and public activity spaces required for life within a 15-minute walk". Today, the concept of "community life circle" is extended to the suburbs of Shanghai – last December, the Shanghai Rural Community Life Circle Planning Guidelines (Trial) (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines") were officially released, and have been piloted in Qingpu Chongguzhangyan Village and Pudong Huinanhai Shen Village.

The countryside is a scarce resource of Shanghai as a super city, and it is a strategic space to enhance the city's energy level and core competitiveness. The construction of a community life circle in the countryside helps to activate the grass-roots "cells" of the "organic life body" of the city, making the city more vibrant and attractive. What are the similarities and differences between the newly formed "circle" in the countryside and the circle of urban community life? What are the difficulties in the build process? What changes can a "guideline" make in the countryside outside Shanghai?

Needs & Services

How to see the real countryside

Online shopping generally does not improve the convenience of rural community life circles, while small shops selling meat can

"Circle of life" refers to a space unit that takes people's life needs as the core and ensures that it can be reached at a certain time. This is not a new concept, and it was mentioned in the Shanghai 2035 general plan that it is necessary to "delineate the living circle of rural communities in accordance with the spatial range of slow travel, combined with the boundaries of administrative villages, and rationally allocate public services and production service facilities."

Providing targeted services tailored to people's needs is the key to creating a community life circle, and the countryside is no exception.

"Rural communities and urban communities are quite different in terms of spatial scale, population density, facility configuration, etc., and people's needs cannot be 'taken for granted', but can only be investigated on the ground." Tian Feng, deputy director of the Rural Department of the Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau, told reporters that the preparation of the "guidelines" began in June 2020, and in the year and a half since, the Municipal Planning and Resources Bureau, the Municipal Urban Planning and Design Research Institute and other departments have repeatedly carried out fieldwork around the keyword of "demand", and the real rural appearance of Shanghai has gradually become three-dimensional.

For example, facilities such as shops, public toilets, and public parking lots are more important to urban communities, but according to the survey, these facilities are used less frequently in rural areas, and people use medical, cultural, sports, and sewage treatment facilities more frequently. For example, in the imagination of most urban people, the villagers' call for natural ecology and green environment will be relatively high, but in fact, due to the low degree of completion of rural areas and the overall natural environment, people's satisfaction in this regard has been very high, and more than 60% of respondents believe that their village belongs to a "beautiful environment".

In addition, creating a rural community living circle is far more than just building a few beautiful activity rooms in the village. According to the survey, people living in the village prefer to move along the river, along the road and in the surrounding squares, rather than in fixed places. The frequency of use of the activity room is often not high. Tian Feng said.

There is also a "cold knowledge" that online shopping generally does not improve the convenience of the living circle of rural communities, while small shops selling meat can. Many elderly people cannot use smart phones skillfully, and vegetables can still be "produced and sold" in their own land, but they can only go to the market to buy meat to eat meat. In the survey, 37% of the elderly villagers surveyed checked "Meat and Vegetable Shop" in the "Facilities most needed" column.

Liu Pingyang, director of the Land and Resources Economic Research Center of Fudan University, believes that the proposal of the rural community living circle is a product of the integration of urban and rural areas, which is conducive to the improvement of rural public service level. "It should be noted that the promotion of the 'community life circle' in the countryside requires more problem-oriented and demand-oriented." The needs of people in rural areas are often more hidden and overlooked than in urban communities. ”

To provide refined services for real needs, there have been actions in the countryside on the outskirts of Shanghai. Located in the northwest corner of Chonggu Town, Qingpu District, Zhangyan Village is the birthplace of Shanghai's ancient culture and one of the pilot villages in Shanghai's rural community life circle. Chen Qiuyan, deputy secretary of the party branch of Zhangyan Village, told reporters that in the past, Zhangyan Village's economy was relatively weak, the level of public service facilities was not high, and the highest voice of the people was to see a doctor and to traffic, and now these two problems have been solved.

"There's a 'health cloud' machine here that can check electronic medical records!" The newly built Zhangyan Village Happiness Community Center has a total construction area of about 1,500 square meters, providing medical treatment, dining, fitness, youth activities and other functions, so that villagers can enjoy convenient services without leaving the village, which is welcomed by villagers. Xu Guanxing, 76 years old, who lives at No. 248 Zhangyan Village, basically did not leave the village group when the traffic was inconvenient in the past, and later the village road that was originally five or six meters wide in front of his home was transformed into a mountain road with a width of 30 or 40 meters, and the 45-minute Heavy Solid No. 2 bus went straight to the doorstep, and there were health centers and vegetable farms along the line. Xu Guanxing said: "Now it is very convenient to go out to see a doctor and buy meat, and you can often go to the town and the city for a ride, and life is much more moist than before." ”

Center and radius

Where is the "circle" of the countryside?

People live in a more dispersed way, and if the one-sided emphasis on "15 minutes" is emphasized, the "service concentration" will be greatly reduced

Mathematically, determining a "circle" requires only two parameters, namely the center of the circle and the radius. For the urban community living circle, these two parameters are very clear, the center of the circle is the home, the residential community itself, and the radius is a 15-minute walk. What about the countryside? In terms of radius alone, there is a literal difference between the circle of community life in the countryside and the city: the word "15 minutes" is not included in the guidelines.

"This is not an omission, but a deliberate weakening." Tian Feng told reporters that considering the city's living density, building density, and facility density, "15 minutes" is a reasonable living circle scale, but it cannot be simply applied in the countryside. At present, the average scale of administrative villages in shanghai is about 400 hectares, and the average size of natural villages is more than 20 hectares, and the village area is large. In addition, many villages in the suburbs of Shanghai are strip-like, and it often takes more than 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other. "At this scale, it is unrealistic to let people at the east end of the village go to the west of the village to enjoy public services, and rural planning should focus on doing basic services within the range of slow travel."

Shen Leiqing, director of the Office of Planning, Construction and Ecological Environment of Chonggu Town, said that people in rural areas live more scattered, and if they one-sidedly emphasize "15 minutes", the "service concentration" will be greatly reduced. However, through public transportation and even battery cars, bicycles and other modes of transportation, the radius of the rural community life circle can be greatly expanded, and villagers can enjoy the services of surrounding villages and towns, creating a multi-village linkage community life circle.

In this regard, Pudong Huinanhai Shen Village has been explored. Take The Rail Transit Line 16 to Huinan East Railway Station, not far away is the "Net Red Village" Haishen Village, one of the few villages in Shanghai that can be directly accessed by subway. At the exit of the railroad, a curved wooden wish bridge is a transitional zone from the city to the countryside, and at the other end of the bridge is parked bicycles for rent – the village is the hometown of Olympic champion Angel Zhong, and over the years the dirt path has become a spacious and smooth asphalt road, and many tourists ride in the village every day.

Huinan Town designed the "Qiaobei - Haishen - Far East" three villages linkage cycling route, through the 8 km cycling path, with Haishen as the core, north to the Far East Village Hunan Highway, south to the Qiaobei Village Dazhi River. According to the relevant planning, the three villages will be allocated for the limited rural space resources, covering administrative services, culture and leisure, medical and health, old-age childcare, production training and other fields. At present, the three villages have successfully created a number of outstanding projects for rural revitalization, such as "Shanghai Township Memory", "Flower And Grass Handmade", "House Box Coffee" and "Country Flower Workshop".

From the perspective of the center of the circle, the rural community living circle is not completely dependent on the existing farmhouses. The "guidelines" make it clear that the rural community living circle should be based on the principle of compounding and intensification, "integrating and sharing functions in time and space, encouraging the comprehensive setting of various public service facilities, and using existing buildings or sites to carry new industries and new needs as much as possible." ”

Shen Leiqing told reporters that if public services are configured purely with farmhouses as the center of the circle, many new facilities will be built, which is not in line with the principle of intensification. In most cases, the facilities should be arranged with the administrative village department and the village group center as the center of the circle. "Taking Zhangyan Village as an example, we have configured a happy community center in the village department, and the three areas of the village have been equipped with villagers' stations and introduced related service functions, so that the pattern can meet the needs of 11 villager groups and more than 2,500 permanent residents in the village." Taking into account the principle of intensification, the villagers' station near No. 243 in Zhangyan Village was converted from the old warehouse in the village.

Tian Feng said that "hierarchical allocation" is very important for the rural community living circle, that is, the allocation of public facilities according to the two village levels of administrative villages and natural villages, emphasizing flexible allocation and flexible configuration. "High-energy service facilities can be optional, and can be linked to three or four surrounding administrative villages, such as large-scale nursing homes, agricultural technology stations, etc."

Reality and future

Rural communities are more "youthful"

In the future, there will be a large-scale population flow in the countryside on the outskirts of Shanghai, and this flow should be considered to create a community life circle

Compared with mature and stable urban communities, rural communities have a more "sense of youth" and unlimited room for growth. From the perspective of time scale, rural communities are more mobile and growing than urban communities. The construction of rural community living circles should respect this mobility and growth.

Speaking of the Zhongbu Village in Zhao Lane, Qingpu, locals often mention the four words "no thief in the middle step". In terms of public safety, the high-altitude cameras set up in the village have become "sentinels" rain or shine, collecting street images in real time and transmitting them back to the smart screen of the village committee command center through the 5G network. With a simple click of the mouse, the staff can switch to the desired screen at any time for verification. The village also distributed a smart bracelet based on 5G technology to the elderly for free to help children keep abreast of the travel situation and health status of the elderly at home.

Zhongbu Village is the first 5G village in Shanghai, and 5G technology provides support for smart governance in rural areas. Smart governance is one of the eight types of community scenes with different theme functions proposed in the "Guidelines", the other seven categories are good-neighborliness and friendship, healthy pension, natural ecology, innovative production, future entrepreneurship, art and creativity, tourism and leisure.

"It can be seen that some of these scenarios are basic scenarios, such as good-neighborliness, healthy old-age care, and natural ecology; some are high-quality future scenarios, such as innovative production and smart governance." The proposal of these eight scenes reflects the diversity of the countryside on the one hand, and also takes into account the growth of the countryside on the other hand. Through the scene setting, the rural community is given a vast, poetic and evocative development space. Rural communities can determine the development path based on their own resource endowments and rely on these scenarios. Tian Feng said.

In addition, at present, some of the villages on the outskirts of Shanghai are retained and protected, and some are withdrawn and merged villages. Combined with the promotion of the relatively concentrated residence of farmers, there will be a large-scale population flow in the countryside on the outskirts of Shanghai in the future. To create a living circle in rural communities, we cannot but consider this flow in advance.

The "Guidelines" make it clear that for rural centralized consolidation points, it is necessary to ensure that the necessary facilities are in place, the area meets the standards, and the optional facilities should reflect the functional characteristics; for the rural reserved settlements, the available idle resources should be excavated, and the necessary facilities should be supplemented as much as possible, and the area should be up to the standard. For the villages that are withdrawn and merged before 2022, the existing building space should be tapped and used to meet the necessary functions, and the waste of resources caused by new expansion should not be allowed; for the villages that are withdrawn after 2022, the construction of one-stop service complexes at the doorstep should be guaranteed, and new construction areas should be allowed, and new construction land should not be added.

"Combined with the trend of dynamic renewal in rural areas, we classify and guide farmers' concentration and integration points and rural reserved settlements, and select facilities according to actual conditions." The relevant person in charge of the Municipal Planning and Resources Bureau said that for example, Qingpu Jinze Lianhu Village combined with the country park set up a tourist service center, Songjiang Sigang Waijing Village set up a rural maker space, pudong Zhangjiang Xinfeng Village set up a rural talent apartment.

Liu Pingyang said that the so-called "guidelines" are actually to guide grass-roots villages and towns to have long-term goals when making corresponding plans by depicting several types of scenes. "The 'guidelines' are to guide future planning and construction behavior, rather than setting strict standards for the specific construction behavior of the moment, let alone becoming an image project with grease and powder." Through the release of the 'Guidelines', urban and rural public services will be further equalized, and there are unlimited possibilities for the future of rural community life circles in the suburbs of Shanghai. ”