Proposal Ifou Summer School 2010 in Beijing

Summer School 2010 in Beijing

Proposal IFoU Summer School 2010 in Beijing

LEARNING FROM BEIJING

– Rediscovering Urban Design in Booming Metropolitanization

Urban Design Research on the South-east Area of Beijing City

The IFoU summer school Learning from Beijing – Rediscovering Urban Design in Booming Metropolitanization will take place in July 2010 at Beijing, China. The summer school in the form of international joint design studio will be hosted and held by the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Beijing University of Technology (BJUT) in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) under the framework of International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU). Students and tutors with different cultural backgrounds will develop design proposals by researches together with the consultancy from professionals within two weeks in order to rediscover the role of urban design, as a planning strategy, in the metropolitan regions undergoing the high-speed urbanization, which is exemplified by Beijing.

Summer School 2010 in Beijing

Background

The human society is experiencing the unprecedented global urbanization today, in which the metropolitan regions with unpredictable scale have been emerging in Asia, America, Europe and other continents. The cross-national or cross-continental collaboration and competitiveness between city-regions become inevitable, from the developed to the developing countries. Thereby the comparable research on the urban phenomenon of new metropolitan regions, which is not only about their sociality or economy but also related to the spatiality, is increasingly desirable at the time of globalization. Beijing, as the capital of the emerging second largest global economy, is exactly one representative of those new global metropolises. Along with the market-oriented reform, which is timely in accordance with the latest wave of globalization, the city Beijing was tremendously booming and transforming within last 30 years. The transitional urban development are induced simultaneously by the top-town driven socio-economic reform and the following reflective market force, and accordingly present in the transformations of urban space and urban form, including the introduction of infrastructure and large urban project as well as the fast development of (gated) market housing estate. However, the society in transition also generates much uncertainty and inconsonance. It is not only the economic transformation from the centralized command to the decentralized market, but also the endless restructuring of the public-private relationship. Facing the rising argumentation for the privacy brought by the marketization, the rebuilding of the common sense of publicity, which is crucial for the urban sustainability, is a critical challenge. For instance, after the promulgation of “Property Law” (2007) finally legalized the private ownership of property, the “Law of Recycling Economy” (2008) was announced in order to ensure the long-term public interest on urban development. The uncertainty also physically presents in the disorder urban form, roughly seen as the coexistence of architectural projects under the framework of gigantic infrastructure. But those ambitious “master designs” of the city are and will be never actually implemented through the imagic blueprint and zoning plan. This chaotic situation of physical urban morphology is the presentation of the deficient planning tool preceding the growing market force on the one hand, and deeply reveals the tension between the publicity and the privacy brought by the global capitalization. In the Western context regulating privacy and publicity are two fundamentals in urban planning and design. The notion ‘public’, as opposed to ‘private’, plays a crucial role in the city. Contemporary ideas of public and private derive from the Ancient Roman distinction between ‘publicus’ and ‘privatus’, thereby making urban space public refers to the first ideas of the ‘res publica’, which simply could be translated as the public law or the public case in general. Already in Roman times some parts of the city should be kept public; open to all people to serve society as a whole. Today still, public spaces are public, because they are part of the so-called public realm. The public realm is defined as the sphere of action and speech and contrasts to the private realm of for example the household. By using a term as ‘realm’, a reference is also made to a region under the dominion of a king. In this line of thinking still

Summer School 2010 in Beijing today public space could be defined as an area controlled by the public, being ambiguously controlled both of by the people as well as the government representing these people. As soon as privacy and private ownership, both modelled to the West, were introduced in the Chinese capital, an idea on publicity and public space should have become highly relevant. Nevertheless the Chinese urban development is differentiated with the conventional top-down zoning plan or spatial blueprint and the exclusive architectural design as master piece of market force and private enterprises. In today’s city, public space is neglected. Urban design could abridge the current gap. In stead of a mere beautification of urban space, urban design could also work as area-based planning strategy starting from the “medium” scale, in which the interest of the public, thus both the local government and the local community will be particularly emphasized. Urban design has to be rediscovered not only in order to create the harmonized urban form but also as a strategic measure for coping with those societal challenges on public space. Therefore, the recovery of the dimension of urban design in the urban development of Beijing is not just limited in the appeals of academics and professionals but has started to be reemphasized by the municipal government. Under this background, a representative area of Beijing’s generic situation must be selected for the study of urban design. The south-east area of Beijing Centre City1, as an urbanized area without effective coordination on urban morphology by strategic planning, is just one of those undervalued but most “generic” cases.

1 According to the spatial structure of urban master plan, the Beijing municipal region is divided into the Centre City and the Satellite Towns (New Towns), in which the Beijing Centre City also includes the central urban area and peripheral clusters separated by the green belt.

Summer School 2010 in Beijing

Introduction

The south-east area of Beijing Centre City is administrated by Chaoyang District. It used to be one of the main industrial zones of Beijing and the fringe of central urban area in between the urbanized areas and the green belt, which separated the city centre and peripheral clusters. Accompanied with the restructuring of industrial zone as well as the urban expansion in recent years, the urban development in this area is going very fast. The presently east-oriented expansion of CBD area and the processing urban development along the eastern 3rd and 4th ring road also brought a good opportunity for the south-east area of Centre City. On the other hand, the urban problems that accumulated in the process of fast urbanization in this area started to present severely. Those opportunities and threats simultaneously reflect in the issues related to urban design. At present, there is the condition about juxtaposition of different urban morphologies in the south-east area. Those differentiated morphologies include the newly-built high-rise residential and commercial buildings nearby the CBD, the mid and-high-rise former public housing neighbourhoods that developed from the 1970s to the 1990s, the “villages in the city” enclosed by newly urbanized area, the remaining industrial zone, green belt or other waste lands and the university campus which must play a certain pole in local development. But due to the deficient harmonization in recent years, the urban form presents in disorder nowadays. The chaotic presentation of physical morphology of the city de facto is the reflection of the shortage in effective strategic planning within the fast urbanization process of China, especially in the emerging metropolises. The research of urban design on the south-east area of Beijing Centre City therefore will be a representative case for not only Beijing but also other Chinese cities. The challenge will be focused on the urban design initiatives to guide the orientation of area development and to solve the existing urban problems with urgency. Those design interventions must strategically work on answering the urban questions at not only the area but also the city/region level, i.e. the integrated urban image and the public-private relationship. It will be an opportunity to explore a new approach of sustainable urban development in Beijing. The tentative experiences can be also shared by other developing metropolitan regions.

Summer School 2010 in Beijing

Site

Location: Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

The boundary of site2: North: Jianguo Road – the extension of Chang’an Avenue; South: Jing-Jin-Tang Expressway; East: Eastern 4th Ring Road; West: Eastern 3rd Ring Road.

Figure 1 The South-east Area of Beijing Centre City

2 The research will be concentrated on the urban area in but not limited by the boundary of the site.

Summer School 2010 in Beijing

CBD Gated Market Housing Estate

Former Public Housing Area Village in the City

Urban Waste Land University Campus Figure 2 Morphological Typologies in the South-east Area

Summer School 2010 in Beijing

Sub-themes

The research and design of summer school will concentrate on 5 sub-themes:

1．Urban Form and the Integrated Urban Development As mentioned above, the fast metropolitanization and urban sprawl caused chaotic presentation of urban form in some city areas of Beijing, for which the south-east area is one of the most representative cases. In between the zoning plan based on economic indexes and the juxtaposition of normal or abnormal architectures, there is the inefficient intervention on good city form. An overview urban design strategy will be necessary to balance the top-down and the bottom-up forces. New planning tools to coordinate physical urban morphology must be explored for not only creating an impressed image of city but also contributing to the integrated urban development. This topic will concentrate on the general urban form or public space and the feasible strategy of its realization. Keywords: urban form, integrated urban image, planning dimension

2．The Urban Design of Key Public (Traffic) Node The public node, i.e. the intersection of accessibilities or the surrounding of exclusive urban program, is usually a place conditioning the formation of urban public space. According to the recent emphasis of public traffic system in Beijing, the new stops of public traffic arteries, such subway stations, are also introduced to those places and therefore reinforce their roles as urban public nodes. However, the morphology of built environment in public traffic node still ought to be redesigned in order to create an attractive public space, which must be a place of confrontation between the publicity and the privacy. Some of those new public spaces will also function at the city or even regional level. Keywords: public traffic node, urban public space, morphological dimension

3．Urban Rehabilitation and Community Space A huge numbers of former public housings still accommodate the majority of urban residents in Beijing, including most of original inhabitants in the south-east area of centre city, which used to be an important industrial zone. But those former public housing areas are gradually aging and facing the threat of decline. Without sufficient public housing investment after housing privatization, the renovation of community public space might be an effective approach to rehabilitate old neighbourhoods and to maintain social cohesion. The public space is always a condenser of local community. Keywords: housing area, community public space, social dimension

4．Urban Expansion and Village in the City The economic booming conduced to unprecedented urban expansion in Beijing. The rural area that used to be at the edge of the city was eroded by the city. In terms of the Chinese urban-rural dual system, the village encompassed by but not merged into the city

Summer School 2010 in Beijing becomes popular in urban periphery, including the south-east corner of Beijing Centre City. The urban design in the process to urbanize the village in the city will not only focus on the physical presentation but also relate to the local economic transformation and restructuring the urban tissue. Keywords: village in the city, urbanization, economic dimension

5．The Redesign of Urban Freeway In the process of fast urban development, freeway was often introduced into the city as a solution of traffic problem. Nevertheless, the endless broadening road did not solve the traffic jam but destroyed the atmosphere of pedestrian and the street life. That is evidently represented in the recent urban development of the south-east area of Beijing Centre City. Only the vein of car can not be the blood vessel of vivid local life. The revitalization of street life by urban design will be beneficial to reestablish the cultural identity of the area. Keywords: street life, local identity, cultural dimension

As a representative case, those sub-themes related to the issues on the existing situation of the south-east area of Beijing Centre City also present the discussion on the generic urban questions of Beijing and even other Chinese big cities, whatever about the good urban form, the public space or the local community. But the sub-themes are not isolated but always related to each other. Therefore the debate not only on but also between the sub-themes are expected so that the urban design proposal as strategic intervention will be developed to deal with the more generic challenges. Hereby urban design will not just focus on the in order to urban space but always relate to the community and the process of implementation.

Summer School 2010 in Beijing

Organization

The IFoU summer school 2010 in Beijing will be a joint design studio composed of 5 teams on the issues related to sub-themes. Graduate students from different countries, states and universities will work together under the guidance of tutors by being mixed in each team. The specially set up programs of summer school, including team work, lectures, mid-term review, and final presentations with debates, will encourage the cross-cultural communication and knowledge exchange on urban design. Not only academics but also professionals and will be involved in the summer school.

Organized by: International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) Beijing University of Technology (BJUT) Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)

Participating Universities/Institutes: At least 4 universities from the IFoU network

Collaborating Institutes: Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment (VROM) (proposed)

Venue: College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Beijing University of Technology

Time: 2nd – 16th July, 2010 (proposed)

Responsible professors: Prof. Dai Jian (Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, BJUT) Prof. Wen Zongyong (Head of Department of Urban Planning, BJUT; Former Vice Chief Urban Planner, Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning; President, Beijing Institute of Mapping and Surveying) Prof. Henco Bekkering (TU Delft / Tsinghua University) Prof. Jürgen Rosemann (TU Delft and Chairman of IFoU)

Coordinators: Dr. Zhao Zhifeng (BJUT) Dr. Yu Yongwan (BJUT) Ir. Maurice Harteveld (TU Delft) Ir. Hui Xiaoxi, Sebastian (TU Delft / BJUT)