Study on the symbiotic development path of traditional villages in the county based on the grey relation analysis: the case of Xunxian County in Henan, China

Purpose Abundance of cultural resources is a typical feature of traditional villages. It is particularly important to explore the development path of traditional villages from the perspective of cultural resources. Design/methodology/approach Based on symbiosis theory, establish a symbiotic development mechanism of traditional village characteristic cultural elements and use grey relation analysis (GRA) to evaluate the resource advantages of different cultural attributes. This paper proposes the traditional village development model of different symbiotic units in the county. An empirical study is conducted in conjunction with the national historical and cultural city of Xunxian County, Henan, China. Findings The results show that (1) according to the different attributes of humanistic cultural resources, artificial cultural resources and natural cultural resources in traditional villages, different symbiotic units can be divided, and advantageous resources can be shared through the symbiotic interface; (2) using GRA to calculate the grey relational degree between cultural resources sequence of different attributes and the sum of cultural resources sequence in the county and define as the active degree of humanistic culture, the inheritance degree of artificial culture and the integrity of natural cultural resources are shown to reflect the status of the inheritance of humanistic cultural resources, the existence of artificial cultural resources, and the protection of natural cultural resources; and (3) a comparative analysis of the active degree, inheritance, and integrity of each symbiotic unit leads to the proposal of three symbiotic models of folklore vitality, characteristic space, and natural ecology, all of which are beneficial to promote the formation of a symbiotic environment. Originality/value The main innovation of this paper is to put forward the research scale of symbiosis theory in the field of urban and rural planning at the county level, delimit the symbiosis units of traditional villages at the county level, complete the quantitatively evaluate cultural resources in different symbiotic units with GRA, revealing the symbiotic development mechanism of cultural resources characteristic elements in traditional villages.