The Consideration of Urban Renewal
Distinguished leaders, guests, and all experts:
Good morning!
It’s my pleasure to discuss the urban renewal issues with colleagues and experts.
Urban renewal is a gradual progress to make lives better.
Cities should be an organic body with vitality and positivity, instead of an artificial and mechanical body controlled by someone. The characteristic of advance with the times should be reflected in every spatial scale, like in living space, community life, traffic ecology and city environment. Here comes the new era of the space functions: the social changes including evolution, culture, conception, system, technology, economy, delicacy, game and all other elements can not only satisfy the self-demand of development, but also resist the disaster, making a sustainable and stable growth as well.
When it comes to urban renewal, firstly we should consider about the layout which can reflect to the basic functions of urban quality. For example, the network of the roads, space activity center and logo, green space system and parks, catchment area and redundancy, pedestrian and the bikeway, the livability of residential and office buildings, municipal system, water treatment, garbage disposal, heating and gas supply and underground space should all be considered. Except the livability, the accessibility of doing business should also be an important consideration, such as providing opportunities and free choice, convenience of moving, maintaining balance and diversity, creating an attractive space, public awareness and public participations and so on.
Secondly, we should think about the adaptability to environment changes. At present, citys need to response to the global warming, reduction of biodiversity, depletion of the nature resources and environment pollution. Direct threats to human being from this ecological crisis have become the consensus of the global environment governance. Although the crisis exists, we do our utmost to make the transformation, rather than giving up. From the aspects of climate, clean energy, green travel, resource management, circular economy, landscape planting, space saving, green production and green living, we should keep a social-stable and sustainable development, and create better living environment for the people.
We should also consider the influence from the changes of modern science and technology to the lifestyle of humans, especially the information evolution in public platform, database, and application terminal, the variation of the urban growth strategy, dynamic mechanism, synergetic innovation mechanism. This kind of development is not the accumulation of technology, but a creative endogenous mechanism of urban growth in line with people's demand.
About the urban renewal we have plenty of domestic and overseas practice and exploration. Some are focusing on the daily life of the residents; some are about the rearrangement of the existing resources; some combine with the new financial system to make a pilot; some set up a new service and management system. These explorations can not only enrich the intension of the urban renewal, but also bring new patterns of metropolitan development.
In recent years, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development seriously implements the green development concept, which is people – oriented. The concept focuses on the ecological remediation and the urban renewal, old city reconstruction, community governance, transformation of urban industries and other urban renewal fields. We can give full play to take the advantages of the international cooperation platform, highlight the green development, promote the policy dialogue and the high-quality urban development in the new era. Through the urban renewal, we can effectively promote the transformation of resource- exhausted cities, improve urban ecology and public environment, improve the urban comprehensive service functions, and inherit the history and culture. There are corresponding practices all over China. For example, the “future community” project in Zhejiang, "co-construction, sharing and co-creation" project in Xiamen, and “Jinsong mode” project in Beijing.
Before the reconstruction of Jinsong in Beijing., the supporting facilities of Jinsong community was imperfect. At the same time, it was faced with the aging of community roads, landscaping and other infrastructure. There was a “mismatch” in population, fundamental infrastructure and the services. Jinsong and other social institutions researched out the innovative mode which can realize the long-term benign development of the community. As for the operation, the market- oriented way can promote renewal and continuous operation. The principle of the operation mode is: planning by the district, leading by the block, coordinating by the community, discussing in the residents and operating by the enterprises. After the renovation, the happiness of the residents was promoted. The renewed community became a harmonious place with clean environment, orderly management, mutual support and full participate.
MoHURD found out that although the carriers and the construction forms of urban renewal projects are different in developed countries, it is worth to learn and draw lessons from following aspects:
Firstly, green strategy. Under the energy transformation, sustainable development and environment protection, we put the goal of green and low- carbon development into planning management, which reflects the green strategy that focusing on climate change and highlighting efficiency, harmony and sustainability, and deepening the integration of ecological civilization with history, culture and industry. Like in Hamburg city, the city’s sustainable development plan is Hamburg’s long- term green development policy. For reducing the carbon emission, protecting the environment, Hamburg city proposes the energy transformation and promotes renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels. With maintaining the economic growth, Hamburg city also reduced carbon emission. With the priority of ecology, the high life quality was guaranteed. The integration of the employment, living and ecological environment can promote the urban sustainable development. In another example, for redeveloping the harbor and building a new ecological city with hallmark significance, Swedish government first proposed a comprehensive target on environment. Through the ecological infrastructure construction, public guidance, planning management and other methods, the harbor became the paradigm in climate protection, energy conservation and harmony development.
The second is about the urban design and overall planning. The conception is “people oriented”. We should considerate the relation between people and space from the time dimension of urban renewal, inheritance and development. We should considerate an integrate relationship in production, life and ecology. Like in Hamburg City, there is a green net system; in Hammarby (a Swedish city), the focusing points are about the energy, water system and waste system; as for the city of London, the mission is about the industrial transformation and land renewal, also with the combination of mixed- use of land, green traffic and public space building. Under this way, the history can be inherited, the special character can be maintained, more future- oriented development will be possible to implement.
The third is about the institutional and the mechanism innovation. Through the innovative policies and the decision assessment system, enterprise- oriented operation mode, extensive public participation, beautiful environment and happy life can be built by the government, enterprises, social organizations, financial institutions and the public, like the gradual development mode and the demonstration mechanism before land transfer in Hamburg City. Because the long- term operation ecological infrastructure system was invested at the beginning of the project in Hammarby, the comprehensive value system of urban development and operation was created, which not only focuses on the short- term returns, but also on the medium and long- term integrated returns. The construction cost of Hammarby was 5% higher than other real estate projects in Sweden at the same time, however, in the end the value of the project increased 25%. The corporation between private and public can lead the development mode, which can help to avoid the politic risks and property problems in land. Moreover, different types of operation modes are adopted for different projects, from which we can obtain good social and environmental benefits.
We will learn and collect more experiences from other countries, respect the initiative from public, with a long-term vision, to deal with the challenges and the changes in urban renewal, to make our cities better and more beautiful.
