Typological differentiation and conservation-use mechanisms of traditional villages: A vitality assessment of 26 cases in Beijing, China

Heritage vitality is a critical indicator of the effectiveness of traditional village conservation. Faced with multidimensional processes of devitalization, conservation practice requires a rigorous vitality assessment that can identify typological differentiation and illuminate the mechanisms linking conservation with adaptive use, thereby enabling more targeted and context-sensitive protection. Building on living heritage approaches and China's conservation experience, this study develops an evaluation framework structured around two core dimensions: community agency and heritage continuity. Community agency reflects the combined influence of residents, markets, and government actors, while heritage continuity captures the persistence of village functions together with the intergenerational transmission of heritage elements. Applying this framework to 26 nationally designated traditional villages in Beijing, we classify villages into vitality types, diagnose their type-specific patterns of devitalization, and analyze the mechanisms by which diverse actors engage in conservation and use. Between October 2020 and May 2024, multiple rounds of in-situ fieldwork were conducted, each lasting four to seven days, combining spatial analysis, questionnaire surveys, and semi-structured interviews to generate systematically comparable data across cases. The findings are threefold. (1) Villages sort into four vitality types at the intersection of agency and continuity: high community agency - high heritage continuity (HH), high community agency-low heritage continuity (HL), low community agency - high heritage continuity (LH), low community agency - low heritage continuity (LL). (2) Each type exhibits distinctive pressures of devitalization: HH villages are most affected by market commodification that displaces everyday functions; HL villages are constrained by ruptures in functional continuity despite strong mobilization; LH villages are jointly shaped by resident action and market dynamics, resulting in uneven revitalization; and LL villages are most impacted by the erosion of intergenerational transmission of heritage elements. (3) Conservation-use mechanisms likewise vary: HH villages benefit from the alignment of political and economic objectives across governance levels, enabling networked, multi-village revitalization supported by government regulatory tools for equitable benefit-sharing. HL villages rely on consensus built around endogenous strengths, where village committees seek government support for cluster-oriented revitalization and establish equity-based revenue-sharing schemes. LH villages originate in the dual demands of livelihood improvement and enterprise profit, where firms and residents jointly pursue village-wide adaptive reuse under reciprocal benefit arrangements. LL villages, in contrast, depend primarily on directive, single-site safeguarding under government-led policies, which to date have produced limited value-added outcomes. Conceptually, the study advances the understanding of heritage vitality as an interplay between agency and continuity. Methodologically, it operationalizes vitality through transparent indicators that support typological comparison and policy monitoring. Practically, it establishes a diagnostics-to-mechanisms pathway for precision protection: diagnose the vitality type, identify the dominant pressures, and match them with feasible governance arrangements and conservation-compatible use models.