POST-EARTHQUAKE RECONSTRUCTION IN DAPING VILLAGE

POST-EARTHQUAKE RECONSTRUCTION IN DAPING VILLAGE RECONSTRUCTION ON ORIGINAL SITES How did the reconstruction of the original village change the built and social environment?

What does the village look like now?

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

CONTEXT

Location Located at 31°12’N 103°49’E, at an upper altitude of approximately 1300m to a lower altitude of about 850m, Daping is a village located in Pengzhou, Sichuan Province, China.

Comprised of 11 production teams, there are approximately 860 people making up over 300 households.

Study area

Upper Daping was severely affected by the May 12 2008 earthquake, with almost all housing destroyed and requiring rebuilding. In the entirety of Daping Village, not all of the villagers were able to remain in the village and were offered cash subsidies to move elsewhere or moved into unified housing provided by the government in Tongji Town or a neighboring village. However, about one third of the village (96 households) was able to remain on their original sites in the higher regions.

Approximate Village boundary

Road to Tongji Town

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

METHODOLOGY Our methodology involved first gaining an understanding of our site through mental mapping. Walking around the village, we observed that buildings were generally arranged in clusters leading us to establish a study area as being from the temple along the road southeast from the hotel to the mountain spring to the northwest.

The next step was in using the Trimble Juno GPS handheld devices with Arcpad 7.1 installed. The GPS tracking software was used to delineate roads and trails, as well as to collect data on locations of buildings, driveways, points of interest (e.g. temples), trash cans, and public bathrooms.

Shapefiles were created with associated Quickforms, which enabled quick data entry in the field. Buildings were numbered sequentially, with each building having information collected on number of residents, age (indicated by pre or post-earthquake status), and building materials. This detailed information was gathered through short informal interviews as well as through observation.

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

METHODOLOGY

Residents were also asked questions on changes to building size and location before and after the earthquake, and their relationship with their neighbors.

Photographs were also used to document each building, and keyed to their location in the village.

Notebooks were also used to provide detailed notes on buildings, with sketches of building footprints, orientation, and number of stories. Small site maps were also drawn to show relationships between buildings.

All the information gathered from the Trimble GPS units was consolidated within ArcMap 10 and then exported into a PDF basemap. Using Adobe Illustrator, the basemap was expanded upon using the details from the field notebooks to show building footprints and associated information.

GPS defined road Through contact with locals, maps were obtained showing the 11 production brigades within Daping village as well as the village boundary. By cross-referencing roads on this map with the one we created using GPS and low resolution Google Earth images, as well as conversations with our hiking guide, we had hoped to delineate the boundary of the village. However, when we tried to align the roads on the two maps to create the village boundary, we discovered large discrepancies in the path of the road, and consequently we were unable to use this map to define the village boundaries and we relied on our guide’s information.

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Handdrawn road by locals

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

OUR SITE Area under cultivation by our study area

Study area

Road to Tongji Town

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

STUDY AREA Production Team 11 The village clusters we chose to study are in Production Team 11 area, according to the map provided by the villagers. We chose this location to study because it represents a portion of the villagers that stayed in the same location, as opposed to being moved into new housing elsewhere.

In addition to new houses, it also contains pre-earthquake building remains scattered among the new houses as part of a memorial site, a new covered walkway that provides information about the earthquake, and new public buildings. It is also the uppermost section of the village, and no new buildings were built farther up the mountain where houses used to be.

Through our surveying of the study area, we determined there to be three clusters, each with its own distinct character.

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

STUDY AREA This map illustrates how most of the growth in the village clusters has occured in the second cluster in the form of new buildings being built on agricultural land and increased building heights. Also shown is a shift of the second cluster southwards, concentrating buildings there and creating a node of activity.

Most of the households in this village cluster form the members of Production Team 11, and share Xie as a family name. In clusters one and two , there are also households with the family name Liu, and cluster one also has two households with the family name Ma. For reconstruction, the government built a few storage facilities in the village and then stocked it with building materials from harvested timber in the government-owned forest. The villagers were then able to use those materials to rebuild their houses. They are also allowed to buy sections of the forest and either farm or log there, but they pay a tax on that land.

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

CULTIVATION AREA The area under cultivation by the residents of our study area extends up to the peaks of the adjacent mountains to the northeast and downhill towards the river, and includes the flatter village clusters.

On the mountainside, the areas under cultivation include: berberine, a medicinal plant that is typically gathered wild; medicinal trees; and trees for timber. Other forest products are gathered, such as blackberries and fiddlehead ferns. Our guide told us that the Department of Forestry has a policy that dictates if a tree is cut down, a replacement tree must be planted although it does not have to be the same species.

Corn

Logging by donkey Berberine

Also on the mountainside are the older mountain village houses, which are now totally abandoned. The remaining buildings are accessible only by foot or donkey, and are now used for temporary storage and resting places.

In the village area, they cultivate a variety of crops including corn, berberine, potatoes, and cucumbers.

Abandoned structure: temporary storage

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Logging by hand

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

CLUSTER ONE As the northwesternmost cluster of our study area, cluster one is farthest up the mountain. At the highest point of this cluster is the mountain spring which supplies the village with about 85 percent of its water.

Number of Houses in Use: 5 Number of Public Buildings: 0 Number of Abandoned Buildings: 1 Population: 16

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

CLUSTER TWO Cluster two is centrally located, with the public buildings near the road (as specified by the governmental earthquake reconstruction guidelines). It is a larger cluster, with the houses more spread out. The earthquake memorial covered walkway is along the road in this cluster, as well as the memorial abandoned earthquake damaged buildings. The villagers are unhappy that the public buildings were sited on arable land, as was decided

by Ms. Liao. Two of the buildings, the clinic and store, were never fully functional and now are abandoned. The guesthouse is still in use and the courtyard and meeting rooms serve as public gathering space for the villagers.

Number of Houses in Use:10 Number of Public Buildings:3 Number of Abandoned Buildings:3 Population:29

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

CLUSTER THREE Cluster three is the southeasternmost portion of our study area, adjacent to the temple. Almost all of the buildings are oriented away from the mountain and towards the road. Due to the stepped elevation of the buildings, and the denser and taller vegetation, buildings in this cluster have an increased sense of privacy from its surrounding buildings. This cluster also has a more extensive network of paths that connect the site.

Number of Houses in Use:8 Number of Public Buildings:1 Number of Abandoned Buildings:1 Population:27

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

POST-EARTHQUAKE CHANGE PHYSICAL Building Height As many families rebuilt, they enlarged their house by building a second story and keeping the building footprint the same size. One of their intents was to provide extra space for homestays, in anticipation of more tourism due to their “eco-village” status. Also, some residents wanted to have more space for visiting relatives.

Building Material The rebuilding guidelines for villages damaged by the earthquake specify that living quarters are to be built from earthquake-resistant materials that are up to seismic design standards, such as wood and insulated bamboo plywood panels, and only portions holding ancillary functions, such as bathrooms, kitchens and storage rooms can be built with materials that are easily damaged in earthquakes, such as brick, mud brick, or concrete.

Some of the rebuilt houses in Daping Village have brick or concrete sections, while the others use exclusively wood and bamboo panels.

Road Prior to the earthquake, many of the roads were unpaved, making the site difficult to access, especially after periods of rain. Now, the main road to the village is paved and takes a different route for the upper half of the village.

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

POST-EARTHQUAKE CHANGE SOCIAL-SPATIAL

Household Structure VE MO

Most houses contain nuclear families, with extended family living in a nearby household. A few houses hold extended families. After the earthquake, most of the households were able to rebuild on their original site. However, at least one of the extended families was forced to split its cluster of buildings and part of the family had to relocate further away, due to the intervention of Ms. Liao. Their damaged residence was left as part of the earthquake museum, but they did not express unhappiness at this arrangement.

Building Orientation and Arrangement UP

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25 July 2011

From our interviews, we gathered that the majority of houses were rebuilt on the same footprint and with the same orientation. The front door of the house typically faces away from the mountain for reasons of fengshui and solar gain, an important consideration in the cold mountain climate.

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University

POST-EARTHQUAKE CHANGE SOCIAL-SPATIAL

PUBLIC FACILITIES

Public Space and Nodes With the creation of the guest house, a new public gathering space was created, and appears to be used frequently by the villagers and by visitors. Part of its attraction is the visual connection from the road and some nearby houses, allowing for people-watching.

Six trash cans and two public composting toilets were also installed as part of the postearthquake reconstruction.

Almost no litter was noticed on the ground, and by talking with the village head, we learned that before trash cans were installed, all trash was burned due to the lack of facilities and villager awareness, and that trash cans are emptied as needed.

Trash cans

Eco-toilet

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25 July 2011

Daping Village

Tongji Town, Pengzhou City, Sichuan Province, China

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80

160 Meters

Virginia Werner • Joming Lau • Zeya He College of Built Environments University of Washington • Sichuan University