| In 2013, the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee made a comprehensive
plan for deepening rural reform, clearly proposing to accelerate the process of urban-rural integration,
and implement the decentralization of villagers’ rights and interests. In 2017, in the report of the 19th
National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the rural revitalization strategy was proposed, and
pointed out that the issue of agriculture, rural farmers is a fundamental issue related to the national
economy and people’s livelihood. In this context, “rural development” has become a new social issue in
China, and many architects, planners, investors and government departments have carried out various
experiments and faced related development challenges.At present, most of China’s rural construction
takes economy as the main goal, which is easy to follow the policy direction or commercial trend,
ignoring the subjectivity and long-term nature of rural development. On the one hand, government
departments have the leading force and decision-making power in the planning process, and some
projects often only pursue short-term interests and economic returns, without fully investigating local
conditions, assessing the pros and cons of planning, collecting public opinions, and cultivating villagers
to build their own spatial awareness and capabilities. On the other hand, local villagers lack the
expression of the living environment for a long time, resulting in the gradual weakening of the sense of
ownership of villagers, the ability to participate in rural planning and construction projects, some even do
not care about who is planning, implementing and managing the village, eventually there is a
phenomenon of “collective aphasia”.Faced with this situation, the actual needs of rural areas have not
been fully tapped, the rich local knowledge and resources have not been fully utilized, and the
enthusiasm of villagers has not been fully mobilized. Therefore, guiding different stakeholders to
participate in the process of village planning and construction is of great significance for the sustainable
development and rural revitalization of our country. In theory, “participatory design” can be used as an
entry point to promote rural regeneration in China in the future, providing a platform for multiple social
groups and stakeholders to cooperate with each other. The participatory design theory conforms to the
Chinese government’s principles of “putting people first” and “adhering to the mass line”, and can be
combined with China’s basic national conditions to form a development model and planning system
combining “top-down” and “bottom-up”.This paper takes Ward-20, Hlaing Thar Yar Township, Yangon
City, Myanmar, as the research object, uses participatory design method to conduct a study of the local
disaster risk reduction issues, analyzes its design model, research path, research methods and operation
process, and formulates corresponding strategies and intervention measures. The specific research
content can be divided into three stages: pre-fieldwork, fieldwork and post-fieldwork. First, before the
fieldwork, the team members obtained relevant secondary data through literature and official reports to
gather Myanmar’s development history and current situation, initially discussed the research framework,
and identified two main analytical tools of risk accumulation and resilience in the field research. This
process aims to understand the process and measure in place to respond to disasters at the national level,
and to identify institutional gaps in the decision-making process and existing levels of community
participation. This is followed by the field research phase, where first-hand data is obtained through
multiple contacts with Myanmar government organizations, stakeholder third parties, and communitymembers to comprehend the local disaster risk, their perceptions and perceptions of the risk concept, community coping mechanisms, and proposed solutions. The
results of the survey contribute to realizing the operation and decision-making procedure of government agencies and the impact of expanding existing relationship
practices at the community level. By integrating the strategy of Ward-20 to Yangon City across time and spatial scales to achieve city-wide upgrading goals.In recent
years, with the continuous promotion of China’s rural revitalization strategy, an increasing number of designers, architects, artists, etc., have begun to pay attention
to rural development and actively participated in it. Participatory rural design in China has achieved certain results and experience, however, it cannot be denied that
the participation and subjectivity of villagers are frequently ignored in the participation and decision-making process. Based on the experience and deficiencies of
participatory design practice in Myanmar, including the formalism of participatory design, the inefficiency of participatory process, the immaturity of civil society,
the incomplete theme of participation and the lack of long-term tracking, this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions from the perspective of designers. In
order to provide experience and inspiration for the practice of participatory design at township level in China. |
