International Summer School on Rural Revitalization

The topic of the summer course is Rural Revitalization in China. China is experiencing the fastest and largest urbanisation in the human history i.e. the current urbanisation rate in China is over 50% and will reach over 70% in the next 2 decades with more than 300 million rural residents moving to the cities. This creates a big challenge when it comes to balancing the development of rural areas and urban areas.

The summer course will use two villages in Wuhan and Ezhou city. These two villages are located in the urban-rural integration area and are facing the heavy impacts of urbanisation. In particular, how they can not only keep their identities as rural villages, but also let the locals be a part of the social-economic integration when merging with urban territories, will be a point of interest. This has become a common challenge in China in its social and economic transformation.

The course will be hosted by NTNU and UN Habitat.