A Quantitative Method for Cultural Landscape Zoning in Traditional Chinese Villages and Its Applications: A Case Study Based on Chongqing

Abstract

In China, the traditional village is an important agricultural civilization legacy in its rural cultural landscape. Influenced by multiple factors like physical geography and human society, cultural landscape characteristics in traditional villages have obvious intraregional similarities and interregional differences within a particular space. To examine spatial differentiation in cultural landscapes in traditional villages and determine their spatial distribution characteristics and historical evolutionary paths, the cultural landscape zoning method in traditional villages was explored in this study. The goal was to facilitate systematic regional protection, development, and use of traditional villages. First, the cultural landscape factor system in traditional villages was decomposed into 21 types of cultural landscape factors. Those factors belonged to four classes: natural environment, spatial form,dwelling type, and social culture. Second, the data on cultural landscape factors were collected and analyzed. Quantitative factors were normalized by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. Third, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to quantitatively analyze the quantitative factors to extract principal components and perform hierarchical clustering. Finally, cultural landscape zoning in traditional villages was achieved with a GIS map expression method by combining the qualitative sensory impressions of descriptive factors. Also, 320 traditional villages in Chongqing City were chosen as research objects, and the proposed zoning method was empirically applied. Results demonstrated the following: (1) A systematic cultural landscape zoning method in traditional villages was formed. That method comprised factor decomposition, data acquisition and processing, principal component extraction, and hierarchical clustering-zoning. (2) Cultural landscape characteristics in traditional villages in Chongqing can be divided into four zones: a commercial culture dominant type in the west, an immigrant culture dominant type in the center, a defense-culture dominant type in the northeast, and an ethnic cultural integration type in the southeast. Chongqing was chosen as the study area, and 320 traditional villages covering the entire Chongqing City were chosen as research objects in the empirical study. Results showed that an optimized zoning method that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses of “principal component extraction combined with hierarchical clustering” was feasible and had high operability. Also, optimization of the traditional village zoning method was manifested in two main aspects. On one hand, the information retention rate of the “zoning factor” increased significantly from the traditional 20%-30% to at least 80% . This refines and enhances the dominant expression of cultural landscape characteristics and decreases the loss of “non dominant factor” information. It also decreases the subjectivity of the zoning outcome. The extracted principal factors were gained from recombining cultural landscape factors in various traditional villages according to a weight relation. Such a weight relation was calculated by the SPSS soft ware according to pure mathematical statistical relations, and reduced the subjectivity associated with weight determination in the traditional “expert scoring method.” In future studies, the migration paths of cultural landscape factors among different zones in traditional villages, their evolutionary mechanism and influencing characteristics, and the macro-, meso-, and micro-applications of zoning outcomes must be further examined.