The memory of water --- Conservation regulation of the old Chinese district of Shanghai, China

Ref.: 38
Key theme: 01 Physical integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 03/11/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

KAI, Zhang * (China) - Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning & Design Institute

ABSTRACT

As the most prosperity city of China, the urban landscape of the city centre of Shanghai is reputed both by the concessions of the beginning of 20th century and by the new-built areas of high rise buildings. The old Chinese district, however, with its dark streets and declined houses, has been out of the vision of people for a long time. Yet, the old Chinese district is the genesis of the city. Before the 20th century, it has been the heart of the city for more than 200 years. The urban structure of the old Chinese district was developed by its canal system, which is now covered by the street network. This precious heritage of urban landscape, which tells exactly the geographic characteristic of the region of `Jiang nan', is rarely known by people.

In 2003, for the first time in the history, a new legislation of the definition of 12 protected areas including the old Chinese district was approved by the municipality of Shanghai. During the following 2 years, we have worked on the elaboration of the protection plan and the regulation of construction of the old Chinese district of Shanghai. We started from an evaluation of the heritage value as well as the quality of the old houses. We found that the architecture of the old Chinese district may not be the most important heritage element. After the research of the historical documents, we focused on the comparison between the original canal system and the existing street network. We found that the influence of the original water system has been a fundamental element of the urban development of the old Chinese district. What's more, with the ideology of modern urban development, either the construction of the concessions or the construction of the new areas has considered the original canal system as much as that of the old Chinese district. On another word, only the old Chinese district keeps the memory of the traditional urban structure of the canal towns of `Jiang nan', which is almost unique in the city centre of Shanghai and is almost forgotten by all.

From that point of view, we considered the conservation of the memory of water as the most important issue while elaborating the protection plan of the old Chinese district. According to the ancient maps and the existing function of the streets, we tried to conserve the original structure of canals. The most difficult part of the work was the definition of the different levels of conservation of streets. The existing blocks, which were divided by the high-density street network, are often too small to be carried out the urban renewal projects. Some blocks should be combined, which is more or less paradox with the purpose of protection of the original canal system. Thus, we must make a selection of the streets to be conserved as public streets, to be conserved as semi-public paths, and to be removed. This was based on the research of the historical documents as well as the urban renewal perspective.

REFERENCES

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