We Cannot Lose Rural Paradises Anymore—Building New Infrastructure for Quality Residential Tourism and Three Suggestions for Guilin Towards a World-Class Tourist City

With blessed assets in natural resources, cultural legacy, and climatic conditions, a number of regions throughout China are qualified as world-class residential tourism destinations. However, for years, single-purpose tourism-oriented development modes, extensive infrastructure construction, and generic land development strategies have irreversibly destroyed a large number of vernacular natural and cultural landscapes. The author holds that with the increased urbanization level, people’s growing demand for a good life and aesthetic opportunities will boost residential tourism in the near future. To seize the opportunities in current infrastructure construction, it is necessary to plan and build a new type of infrastructure system for vast areas of China where world-class tourist and residential destinations can be created based on vernacular natural and cultural landscapes, and to develop related rural land use strategies proactively. In this essay, the author proposes Three Suggestions to Achieve a World-Class Tourist City to the Guilin Municipal Government, and advocates that in the context of the upcoming infrastructure development and the ongoing rural revitalization, it is the time to build future world-class residential tourism destinations by constructing a new type of infrastructure system. These suggestions can also provide reference for decision-makers of other areas with the same potential.