Abstract:

The six ancient water towns have attracted more and more visitors from inland and overseas based on the particular scenery features and the cultural details since they were discovered, conserved and exploited for tourism in the 1980s. The tourism has brought remarkable economic, social and cultural benefits to the water towns and formed individually the special development models. But at the same time, urbanization, industrialization, commercialization and modernization have influenced the ancient towns and become key problems for the conservation, such as over commercialization, rapid modernization etc. Based on comparative study of the tourism development models, this paper analyses the characteristics and the main problems in different development models, and the conservation strategy and exploitation mechanism are proposed for these ancient towns. As a conclusion, five countermeasures are provided for the conservation and sustainable development of ancient towns in the Southern Yangtze River Area.

Key words: ancient water towns in the Southern Yangrze River Area, regional landscape system, sustainable utilization, integrating conservation, conservation mechanism