Community-led initiatives for the rehabilitation and management of vernacular settlements in Oman:a phenomenon in the making

Once abandoned for more than three decades,vernacular settlements in Oman are now being progressively reinvested in to foster the country’s heritage tourism sector.The present research focuses on the emerging phenomenon of community-led initiatives for vernacular heritage rehabilitation and adaptive reuse in Oman.Through an examination of three case studies,its aim is to describe this process and its modes of action and discuss its efects on vernacular settlement transformations.A mixed research methodology was designed to include(A)analyses of relevant primary and secondary data,(B)documented onsite observations,(C)interviews with local community representatives and key players in the operations of rehabilitation,and(D)extractions and analyses of quantitative data from a hotel booking website.The research sheds light on unsuspected interrelations within and between the projects being implemented in these settlements and their operating modes.It reveals the focal role of a local community in a kind of‘bottom-up’management of its built heritage,coupled with a‘horizontal cooperation’between the three initiatives studied in this research.Moreover,it shows that a heavily centralised and top-down policy for the feld of heritage conservation and management is among the main obstacles that hinder such initiatives.Furthermore,community-led operations of vernacular heritage rehabilitation are being undertaken under insufcient regulations in terms of land use,building restoration and adaptive reuse.In this context,the paper discusses some of the serious threats and concerns faced by such initiatives and proposes actionable solutions to mitigate these hindrances.

Interpretation of the Spatial Form of Chengdu Plain's Traditional Towns from the Vernacular Perspective

In recent years,with the rapid development of urbanization in our country,academic circles have paid more attentions to and made fruitful achievements on the research of vernacular settlement. On this basis,this paper took Chengdu Plain's traditional town spatial morphology as the research object to interpret its spatial form through its composition elements and characteristics which are influenced by nature,history,culture and other factors. And then,it took Jiezi ancient town as an example to analyze the renewal of its spatial form so as to inherit the vernacular culture and promote the conservation of cultural heritage and sustainable development of traditional town in the course of constructing urban cities with Chinese characteristics.

Historical Evolution of Vernacular Settlement in Tianshui City

Vernacular settlement is a sum of settlements that keep traditional landscapes in the process of urbanization, and its coverage coincides with that of urban community and rural settlement to some extent. It is a phenomenon of social development against the background of rapid urbanization. As a national famous historic and cultural city, Tianshui City should have had excellent traditional cultural genes as the driving force for its development, however, only fragments of some historic blocks have been left in the recent urbanization. This paper, on the basis of investigating the old urban district of Tianshui City, analyzing the historical phenomenon, summarized the root causes for the status quo of vernacular dwellings in the city, so as to raise the concerns on humanistic thought, and provide proper guidance for the sustainable development of vernacular settlement.