Understanding of the settlements with coexisting water and earth under the background of climate change—the case of Liang Village in Pingyao County, China

Abstract

AbstractGlobal climate change has caused general and serious damage to cultural heritage sites, and earthen settlements and buildings are particularly vulnerable to water-affected disasters. Thus, this paper uses Liang Village in Pingyao County, China, as a case study, linking the human–land study in the Liang Village Sino-French workshop of 2009/2010 to a disaster assessment completed after the devastating rainstorm in October 2021. We found that the village’s rain disaster resulted from the vulnerability of earthen material to rainstorms and from the earthen settlement’s evolution from a culture emphasising the coexistence of ‘water and earth’ to a technic fostering the disintegration of ‘water and earth’. The latter is the main cause of the village’s decrease in its capacity for disaster prevention and damage reduction. Therefore, in the context of global climate change, we find that the reestablishment of the harmonious relationship of water and earth is critical to both rural heritage conservation and village sustainable development. In addition to repairing their relation from the technical perspective of ‘planning and design’ by planners and architects, it is more crucial for local people to understand and enhance their contemporary appreciation for the traditional ‘coexistence of water and earth’ concept.