城市微更新

每年10月的北京国际设计周期间，我都很享受去大栅栏一带参观的过程。这些迷宫一样的街巷有着诸如茶儿胡同、碳儿胡同、笤帚胡同和杨梅竹斜街胡同等好听且耐人寻味的名字，舒适惬意的步行尺度，看似杂乱却充满烟火气息的杂院和平淡而亲切的市井生活。与这些形成鲜明对比的，是分布在胡同内不经意间会遇见的各类展览，和隐藏在不起眼的门扇背后的设计感十足的改造院落。这种传统与现代并存、生活与艺术共享的街区充满了独特的魅力，创造了新的公共空间和生活方式。这里不仅到处都有悠闲参观的各种专业人士和普通游客，而且随处可见来到展厅和更新院落看热闹并闲聊的大爷大妈和嬉戏的孩童。

紧挨着大栅栏，是位于北京中轴线上的前门大街，街道宽敞平整，建筑高大整齐，两侧商铺林立，然而除了外地游客，那里看不到当地居民的身影，完全是一个喧闹的布景式旅游商业服务区。虽然前门大街是一条步行街，但我每次出地铁去大栅栏一带，途中宁肯走嘈杂的城市道路，也不愿意走这条街。可谁又知道，以前这里的街道、建筑、居民与大栅栏一带并没有太多的区别，也是充满了市井生活，只是商铺老字号更多一些。自2003年开始，前门大街一带实施了“自明朝600多年来对前门大街及其毗邻街区规模最大、投入最多、最为彻底、最为全面的整治” ，传统老街经过不同程度的改造，“景观焕然一新”。事实上在这次改造中，旧建筑基本上被拆除殆尽，取而代之的是新建的仿古建筑，以往的多样性变成了现在的整齐统一。

前门大街和大栅栏采取的是2种完全不同的城市更新途径。前者是过去30年中国城市采用最多的推倒重来、拆旧建新的方式，通过这种城市更新，许多危房林立、基础设施陈旧的老街区都呈现出全新的面貌。出于资金平衡的需要，更新之后通常会引入商业项目，而原有居民不得不搬迁他处，因此，这类城市更新往往意味着用地性质的转变和以往生活的消失，环境的归属感和认同感也随之远去。与之相对照的，大栅栏街区没有进行大拆大建，而是由政府、市民和设计师共同参与，以谨慎、渐进、小规模、逐步实施的方式对建筑、院落和街巷空间进行更新。老建筑有了多种利用途径，但街巷一直保持着浓厚的生活气息和独特的魅力。同时，更新并不仅仅局限于建筑和设施的翻新改造，更多关注的是市民生活品质的提升、胡同尺度的延续、街区活力的维护以及更新的社会意义。

随着社会经济的不断发展，城市物质空间难以满足新的生活需求，通过城市更新来改善城市是一个正常的现象，也是城市发展的必然。但城市是一个复杂的有机体，各个系统之间的关系错综复杂，任何理论和研究都无法完全掌握城市系统变化的规律。大规模地改变现有城市空间和环境会带来利益格局的巨大变化，也会对人们的生活产生深刻的影响，从而引发诸多不确定的后果。而对城市空间局部的、微小的改变往往更能够激发城市自身的能动性，这种微更新的过程不仅更接近于城市自身的发展规律，而且结果也更加易于把控，因此也更容易带来积极的效益。

“二战”以后，美国的城市中心开始临肩接踵地建造高楼大厦，远处的树林、山脉甚至天空都被建筑遮蔽，城市成为钢筋混凝土的森林。为了改善城市环境，1968年纽约在高层建筑的夹缝中建造了一个390m2的袖珍公园—帕雷公园，创造了闹市中的安静绿洲和愉悦的富有人情味的空间。之后，不仅在纽约，在美国的其他大城市也相继涌现了类似的袖珍公园，它们见缝插针地分布在城市的街头巷尾，成为富有活力和人性化的场所，为高楼林立的城市带来了生动的公共空间。随后，袖珍公园成为在城市高密度地区，通过对微小空间的介入来改善城市环境的一种有效途径。

自20世纪80年代开始，巴塞罗那采用了称为“城市针灸”的城市更新途径，用类似中医针灸疗法的方式，对城市中一个个关键空间节点进行更新，在短期内就改造与新建了上百个不同类型的、富有活力和创造力的城市公共空间，并将这些小尺度的空间连成城市中一个安全、便捷，可以开展多种活动的公共空间网络，从而重新塑造了旧城环境，恢复了因机动车的影响而丧失的城市活力。

纽约的袖珍公园和巴塞罗那的公共空间，从街区尺度来看，其规模也许不能算作“微小”，但放在城市尺度上，它们确确实实都是一些微不足道的小空间，但是从对城市的整体意义来看，这些小空间的更新对城市结构和生活品质都产生了重要的积极的作用。

城市更新是一个长期而持续的过程。城市中的一些微小尺度地块的更新，看似投入少、影响范围小，但对生活环境的改善却是实质性的。这样的更新更加贴近社区生活的本身，往往伴随着社区居民的广泛参与，以普通人的视角，关注普通人的生活，更尊重城市发展的内在秩序和规律，也更容易维护街区的归属感和固有的特征。

主编：王向荣教授

2018年4月9日

PREFACE

Micro Urban Regeneration

I enjoy my every visit to Dashilan Area during the Beijing Design Week held in October. These maze-like streets have such pleasant-hearing, thought-provoking names as Tea Hutong,Charcoal Hutongs, Whisk Broom Hutong and Waxberry-bamboo Byway(Yangmeizhu Xiejie) Hutong. They have also comfortable walking scales, messy-looking but plain and intimate commoner livelihood. In conjunction to these are the various exhibitions inadvertently encountered inside the Hutongs and the renovated courtyards hidden behind inconspicuous doors. These street blocks are integrated the unique charm with old and modern, life and art,creating new public spaces and lifestyle. Apart from the wide range of professionals and ordinary tourists on leisurely visits, numerous elderlies and playful children gather in the exhibition halls and the regenerated courtyards, gossiping or having fun.

Next to the Dashilan Area lies the Qianmen Street, located on the central axis of Beijing. The spacious neat pavement, tall tidy buildings, cramped shops, clustered tourists without local residents indicate that it is a tourist-setting business service area. Although Qianmen Street is a pedestrian street, whenever I left the subway station toward Dashilan Area, I would rather make a noisy urban road detour to avoid it. However, who could ever have imagined the roads, buildings, residents of the Qianmen Street were once full of folk atmosphere of daily life with little difference from those of Dashilan Area except that Qianmen Street had more oldbranded shops. Since 2003 Qianmen Street and the neighboring blocks experienced “the largest, most heavily invested, most fundamental, most comprehensive renovation for nearly 600 years since the Ming Dynasty” when the traditional streets underwent various transformations to achieve “new looking”. In fact, in this renovation, the old buildings were basically dismantled and replaced with newly built pseudo-classic architecture so that the past diversity was transformed into current unity.

Qianmen Street and Dashilan Area adopted completely different approaches for urban renovation. The former method was widely used by Chinese cities over the past 30 years by overwhelmingly demolishing old blocks of buildings for new buildings to allow dilapidated and outdated structures refreshed with brand new look. Moreover, with the need of investment returns, after the renovation there were usually commercial programs introduced,triggering original residents’ relocation, causing the change of land use and the disappearance of past life along with the faded community identity and local affiliation. In contrast, there has not been major demolition construction in Dashilan Area. Instead, the government, citizens and designers have jointly participated in the renovation of the buildings, yards, streets and lanes in a cautious,gradual, small-scale and step-by-step manner. The old buildings turned for multiple uses and the street alleys have maintained its strong atmosphere of life and unique attractions. At the same time,the renovation was not confined to refurbishment of buildings and facilities because additional attention has been paid to improve the life quality of the citizens, scale extension of the Hutongs,maintenance of neighborhood vitality and the social significance.

With the continuous socioeconomic development, the urban space became invalid in meeting the needs of modern life so it is inevitably normal to improve the city through renovation.Nevertheless, the city is a complex organism with complicated relationships among various systems so that no theory or research has so far authentically reflected true laws of urban system changes. Large-scale transformation of the existing urban space and environment would bring about tremendous changes of the benefit structure casting profound impacts on citizen’s life with uncertain consequences. Alternatively, partial minor transitions of urban space are often more contributive in stimulating the internal dynamics of the city. This micro renovation process tends to closely follow the urban development laws producing results easier to control and more likely to bring about positive benefits.

After the World War II, closely packed high-rise buildings were constructed at downtown USA cites, so that the distant trees,mountains even the sky became invisible and cities turned into forests of reinforced concrete structures. To improve the urban environment, the 390-square-meter Parley Park was built among the gaps of the skyscrapers in New York in 1968, to create a quiet oasis and a pleasing humane space in the metropolis. Later, similar actions were taken in other parts of New York and also other large cities in USA. These pocket parks that are built along streets and alleys of the cities by making full use of interstitial spaces to produce humane venues and vigor to the public among the highrise buildings became subsequently an effective method to improve urban environment through intervention of small spaces in overpopulated areas.

Since the 1980s, Barcelona has adopted the urban renovation practice of Urban Acupuncture, which with similar method of traditional Chinese acupuncture therapy, carries out urban renovation one by one to key spatial nodes of the city. In a short term of time, hundreds of types of vibrant and creative urban public spaces were rebirthed. These small scaled spaces are connected into a safe and convenient public space network that can carry out various activities. It reshaped the urban environment of old city and restored the urban vitality that vanished due to the increasing motor vehicles.

New York’s pocket parks and Barcelona’s public spaces might not be considered “micro” in terms of the street block scale. But on the city scale they are indeed negligible small spaces. Yet to the whole city, these micro renovations to small spaces have had viable positive effect on the urban structure and life quality.

Urban renovation is a long-lasting continuous process. The focused renovation on some small-scale spaces may lead to the substantial improvement of surrounding living environment although the inputs and impact seem less impressive. Such urban renovation ties closely up with community life and widely participated by the community residents, so that it tends to observe the internal order and law of urban development with the perception of local people and to maintain the intrinsic identity of the neighborhood from perspective of the ordinary livelihood.

Translator: WANG Xi-yue

Chief Editor: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wang Xiang-rong

April 9th, 2018