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Abstract

The countryside is standing at the cross of its destiny due to rapid urbanization. Influenced by the historical dual urban-rural relationship, the countryside in China was regarded as the sacrifice of regional modernization. Since the reform and opening up, a miraculous expansion of cities could be seen within the Great Bay Area (GBA). However, the price of this great leap is the broken countryside losing independence: City-oriented planning has led to increasing urban-rural disparities, which is replacing the agriculture landscape with monofunctional land use and transforming rural area into satellite areas within the poly-centric regional structure. Therefore, how to redefine the countryside and propose development patterns jumping out of the urbanization path has become an urgent problem, yet effective spatial strategies and theory-based practices are currently limited (Magel, 2019). The thesis aims to explore the potential of the modern countryside as a sustainable settlement in the GBA. Through comprehensive methodology taking the layers approach as a critical method, the project retrospects the transition from perspectives of form, function and governance in the countryside, and critiques the functional zoning planning approach which reinforces the unbalanced local development. It proposes a vision of the hybrid and productive rural system based on agricultural innovation, a flexible spatial framework that considers production, environment and livability comprehensively, and a series of possible strategies related to existing patterns. In the future, the countryside could become a development option complementary to cities and contribute to the formation of a diverse and urban-rural integrated network of this international mega-metropolitan region.