On the basis of investigations related to the existing problems about digitalization and information in the urban and rural planning, the authors analyzed the requirements of an operational platform for digital urban and rural planning. Then, an overall design and relevant modules of the foundational platform for digital urban and rural planning are proposed according to the principles of software engineering. The object-oriented programming language, Visual C++6.0, and the relational database, Visual FoxPro6.0, were selected as the common tools for developing the platform.