By language:Urban renewal involves the corners of the city, and although it is not a grand narrative, it is a drizzle that makes people feel the changes around them. To this end, we have set up a series of "Cities, Fast and Slow" to record the ...... of cities in the process of renewal from different perspectives
Let's take a look at a few first**:
Is the scene shown in the picture close to the garden city in your mind?
This was just recently unveiledThe hill of Azabudai, a new area of the Tokyo Urban Renewal Project, covering an area of about 81 hectare, consisting of a combination of residential buildings, commercial space, a school, two temples, an art gallery, offices and a restaurant, the concept given by the developer, Mori Tower, is a "mixed-use complex and a world-class new community", which is different from the previous large-scale commercial complex development model. It is a city within a city and will accommodate about 20,000 office workers and 3,500 residents.
It is now one of the greenest areas in Tokyo, with vegetation and architecture blending into each other, and a rooftop greenway that can be walked up. The high-density spatial planning, but the way it is presented is low-density, it seems to bring a slow-paced life to the fast-paced Tokyo. Outsiders can enjoy open green public spaces with local residents, including expansive public gardens, plazas and cloud event spaces.
During the 34-year renewal of the site, Mori Building Co., Ltd. has partnered with more than 300 residents and businesses to revitalize the area. Currently, more than 90% of existing tenants and businesses have chosen to return to the new precinct.
From Roppongi Hills to Azabudai Hills, decades of urban regeneration are not yet over, and there are even larger urban regeneration projects underway nearby. For a fast-paced megacity like Tokyo, this is a slow effort, but it is a necessary journey to find a way to get along with nature from the perspective of sustainable human society.
Garden City - Harmonious coexistence between man and nature
The topic of "garden city" has been hotly discussed in China for many years. Shenzhen, Chengdu, Shanghai and other major cities are experimenting with garden city regeneration plans, and Beijing's Chaoyang District recently announced that it will create an all-age-friendly "park city demonstration area". "Garden city" has become the general trend of urban renewal in China.
The foreign architectural planning community has been exploring this for two centuries, and this concept has been germinated as early as 1817. In the face of the destruction of the human settlement environment and the natural world by the wave of Western industrialization, from the germination of utopian dreams to continuous argumentation and experimentation, in 1898, the Englishman Howard published a monograph entitled "Tomorrow's Garden City", and the "Garden City" model he proposed provided a blueprint for the later planning and construction of new cities in the West. With the failure of Leschworth Garden City and Welling Garden City near London, as well as the planning and construction of a series of new garden villages, new garden areas and garden cities in Canberra, Brisbane, the capital of Australia, the ideal of "garden city" became a reality in the 20th century.
Cities are formed by the gathering of people, and cities exist for the survival and development of human society with higher efficiency. The purpose of the Garden City is to make the city both vibrant and efficient, as well as sustainable and self-consistent ecosystems. On the basis of the improvement of urban agglomeration functions, the broken balance between man and nature will be restoredMan and nature should develop in harmony and coexist peacefully, and people can live in it and have access to the vitality of nature. From an industrial development-oriented city to a human settlement-development-oriented city, this is an "organic" urban renewal. The rigid construction of parks cannot achieve the effect of helping urban development, and has only an image, but it does not have the value of ecological optimization.
Canberra street scene.
Canberra, a garden city designed by architects, started with a blank sheet of paper and took shape over decades, and people who have been there say that it is as beautiful as an oil painting. Beauty is beautiful, but for Chinese cities with heavy historical development, how can it be possible to overturn everything and start over?I'm really looking forward to flying over and sightseeing.
London's Urban Green Ring.
London: From the initial urban "green ring" to limit the scale of urban development and protect the ecology outside the city from being violated, to the "green line, green wedge, green spot" to infiltrate the urban environment, while evacuating some urban functions. Garden City's original test field, decades of trial and error experience are really valuable. But we have different social structures, population densities, living Xi habits, and urban patterns, and China's crowded cities, is it feasible to copy homework when it affects the whole body?
Garden City Singapore.
When it comes to Garden City, everyone thinks of Singapore, but 50 years ago, it was also a representative of dirty mess, and was even disliked by Malaysia next door. Driven by the harsh government of a small country, the vigorous promotion of high-end industries and the sustainable development model, it is now a place of flowers and a place for the elderly. But the Chinese are keen"One thing a year, three years a big change"Many cities can't afford to support their economic strength, let alone take decades to ......
So, what should a Chinese-style garden city do?
It seems that if our city wants to achieve "organic" renewal and sustainable development, it really has to explore the development path of "garden city" by itself. What should a Chinese-style garden city look like?
Chinese cities have their own development characteristicsThe first- and second-tier old urban areas are crowded, the new urban areas are in a hurry, and there are gaps in the economic development of more cities, and the space for maneuvering is cramped.
But people really need to take a breather!One day I saw on the subway during off-peak hours that a young white-collar worker picked up ** and didn't know where he was. I really wanted to say to her: Sister, go and sit on a bench in the corner park for a while, it will only take a few minutes, and you will be fully engaged in the battle!
China is rich in green resourcesThe land is vast and abundant, and there are more native species than you can imagine. Needless to say, the Yunnan-Guizhou Forest and the Great Xing'an Mountains are mature residential communities in Shanghai, and even if they are artificially planted, there are amazing discoveries.
In the last few months without workers, residents in an ordinary neighborhood in the center of the city observed more than 80 species of native plants, all of which are wild, most of which are edible and medicinal. Some friends who love gardening said that they knew that there would be a lot, but they didn't expect there to be so many!How good it would be if these could be cultivated and promoted.
The growth of native plants has its own beauty.
If we trace the history and construction experience of our Chinese gardens, we will find the high quality of the ancient urban gardens. Since ancient times, people have been seeing beauty with eyes and hands to create beauty.
Confucianism put forward the concept of symbiosis of the unity of heaven and man, and man has four homes: heaven, earth, mind, and spirit. Not only the home of heaven and earth, but also the belonging of body, mind and spirit, and every city has its collective cultural psychology. Ancient Chinese gardens also embody these "four realms", which are the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. Because of this, Suzhou Gardens has been popular in the circle of friends all year round, and some people have to find time to revisit every year.
One of the characteristics of Chinese gardens is that Western gardens do not have, and the house architecture and the garden landscape are integrated, or each other's landscapes. The building conforms to the terrain layout, does not compete with the water system and the mountain, follows the trend, and does not aggrieved itself, different locations have different architectural appearances and functions, making full use of the benefits of the water system and topography to achieve the best living effect and the best aesthetic effect. It is an ecological relationship between man and nature. The changing scenery of Suzhou gardens and the people swimming in the paintings contain the wisdom and mystery of the ancient "city garden".
A corner of the Suzhou Museum: reproduce the fun of Suzhou gardens, and people swim in the painting.
In ancient times, gardens were the exclusive property of the upper class, and some large gardens also took into account the social functions of receiving relatives and friends. However, for the city where it is located, it is also known as the "urban garden", a high-quality lifestyle that everyone yearns for - the harmony between man and nature, and the harmonious coexistence of man and nature.
Chinese cities want to be updated into "garden cities", since it is not convenient for large-scale transformation, so you might as well learn from the ancientsStart with the "urban garden" and give city residents the opportunity to get in touch with nature at zero distanceAdvocate a high-quality "garden city" lifestyle, and drive the ecological and organic renewal of "garden city" from point to point.
Different from the ancients' "hiding in small buildings to become unified", the modern "urban garden" advocated in this paper is extroverted, an urban space shared by the whole people, a living room for residents to integrate into nature, an important part of the urban green belt system, following the concept of ecologically sustainable urban development, and a test field for the harmonious coexistence of urban humans and natural ecology.
Shanghai's Zhongshan Park reopened last year. Tearing down walls to reveal greenery, increasing experiential spaces, and opening up trampled lawns – public gardens in the heart of the city attempt to remove boundaries from the city's streets and integrate with urban living spaces. While preserving the sense of history and identity of the site, the old and new landscape elements can be harmoniously dialogued.
The park has removed all the walls and redundant buildings along the road, revealing the beauty that would otherwise be hidden behind the wall, and the park is integrated with the entire neighborhood. There are many entrances and exits at the junction of the park and the surrounding streets and buildings, and the boundary between the park and the street is blurred, and the citizens can go in and out at any time when passing by here, and the lawn can be walked through at will, directly experiencing the comfort and calmness of the urban garden.
After the walls of Gate 2 and Gate 3 on the side of Wanhangdu Road were removed, the narrow and boring street was transformed into a street square wrapped in greenery, and people from either side could naturally be introduced into the park. Because the sidewalks have also been relocated to the park, it has become a comfortable slow landscape in the Centennial Park.
The greenhouse, which was originally an internal working area, is now open to the public and has become a "citizen gardening center", where citizens can participate in public welfare horticultural training and enjoy popular science experience services such as home gardening consultation.
The reopened Zhongshan Park and the East China University of Political Science and Law across the street are also connected, integrating the style and value of the century-old park, the century-old campus, the century-old tree, the century-old bus, the century-old road and the century-old building into the urban life experienceThere is also a slow leisure urban space with temperature.
The Chinese-style "garden city" needs more "urban gardens" as trigger points.
In the next episode, we will take Shanghai as a sample to ** the logic of urban green belt renewal in China.
Author: Ben*** Contributing Writer, **Network.
Editor: Hu Shanyu.
Review: Xia Yu.