每年10月的北京國(guó)際設(shè)計(jì)周期間，我都很享受去大柵欄一帶參觀的過(guò)程。這些迷宮一樣的街巷有著諸如茶兒胡同、碳兒胡同、笤帚胡同和楊梅竹斜街胡同等好聽(tīng)且耐人尋味的名字，舒適愜意的步行尺度，看似雜亂卻充滿煙火氣息的雜院和平淡而親切的市井生活。與這些形成鮮明對(duì)比的，是分布在胡同內(nèi)不經(jīng)意間會(huì)遇見(jiàn)的各類(lèi)展覽，和隱藏在不起眼的門(mén)扇背后的設(shè)計(jì)感十足的改造院落。這種傳統(tǒng)與現(xiàn)代并存、生活與藝術(shù)共享的街區(qū)充滿了獨(dú)特的魅力，創(chuàng)造了新的公共空間和生活方式。這里不僅到處都有悠閑參觀的各種專(zhuān)業(yè)人士和普通游客，而且隨處可見(jiàn)來(lái)到展廳和更新院落看熱鬧并閑聊的大爺大媽和嬉戲的孩童。

緊挨著大柵欄，是位于北京中軸線上的前門(mén)大街，街道寬敞平整，建筑高大整齊，兩側(cè)商鋪林立，然而除了外地游客，那里看不到當(dāng)?shù)鼐用竦纳碛?，完全是一個(gè)喧鬧的布景式旅游商業(yè)服務(wù)區(qū)。雖然前門(mén)大街是一條步行街，但我每次出地鐵去大柵欄一帶，途中寧肯走嘈雜的城市道路，也不愿意走這條街。可誰(shuí)又知道，以前這里的街道、建筑、居民與大柵欄一帶并沒(méi)有太多的區(qū)別，也是充滿了市井生活，只是商鋪老字號(hào)更多一些。自2003年開(kāi)始，前門(mén)大街一帶實(shí)施了“自明朝600多年來(lái)對(duì)前門(mén)大街及其毗鄰街區(qū)規(guī)模最大、投入最多、最為徹底、最為全面的整治” ，傳統(tǒng)老街經(jīng)過(guò)不同程度的改造，“景觀煥然一新”。事實(shí)上在這次改造中，舊建筑基本上被拆除殆盡，取而代之的是新建的仿古建筑，以往的多樣性變成了現(xiàn)在的整齊統(tǒng)一。

前門(mén)大街和大柵欄采取的是2種完全不同的城市更新途徑。前者是過(guò)去30年中國(guó)城市采用最多的推倒重來(lái)、拆舊建新的方式，通過(guò)這種城市更新，許多危房林立、基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施陳舊的老街區(qū)都呈現(xiàn)出全新的面貌。出于資金平衡的需要，更新之后通常會(huì)引入商業(yè)項(xiàng)目，而原有居民不得不搬遷他處，因此，這類(lèi)城市更新往往意味著用地性質(zhì)的轉(zhuǎn)變和以往生活的消失，環(huán)境的歸屬感和認(rèn)同感也隨之遠(yuǎn)去。與之相對(duì)照的，大柵欄街區(qū)沒(méi)有進(jìn)行大拆大建，而是由政府、市民和設(shè)計(jì)師共同參與，以謹(jǐn)慎、漸進(jìn)、小規(guī)模、逐步實(shí)施的方式對(duì)建筑、院落和街巷空間進(jìn)行更新。老建筑有了多種利用途徑，但街巷一直保持著濃厚的生活氣息和獨(dú)特的魅力。同時(shí)，更新并不僅僅局限于建筑和設(shè)施的翻新改造，更多關(guān)注的是市民生活品質(zhì)的提升、胡同尺度的延續(xù)、街區(qū)活力的維護(hù)以及更新的社會(huì)意義。

隨著社會(huì)經(jīng)濟(jì)的不斷發(fā)展，城市物質(zhì)空間難以滿足新的生活需求，通過(guò)城市更新來(lái)改善城市是一個(gè)正常的現(xiàn)象，也是城市發(fā)展的必然。但城市是一個(gè)復(fù)雜的有機(jī)體，各個(gè)系統(tǒng)之間的關(guān)系錯(cuò)綜復(fù)雜，任何理論和研究都無(wú)法完全掌握城市系統(tǒng)變化的規(guī)律。大規(guī)模地改變現(xiàn)有城市空間和環(huán)境會(huì)帶來(lái)利益格局的巨大變化，也會(huì)對(duì)人們的生活產(chǎn)生深刻的影響，從而引發(fā)諸多不確定的后果。而對(duì)城市空間局部的、微小的改變往往更能夠激發(fā)城市自身的能動(dòng)性，這種微更新的過(guò)程不僅更接近于城市自身的發(fā)展規(guī)律，而且結(jié)果也更加易于把控，因此也更容易帶來(lái)積極的效益。

“二戰(zhàn)”以后，美國(guó)的城市中心開(kāi)始臨肩接踵地建造高樓大廈，遠(yuǎn)處的樹(shù)林、山脈甚至天空都被建筑遮蔽，城市成為鋼筋混凝土的森林。為了改善城市環(huán)境，1968年紐約在高層建筑的夾縫中建造了一個(gè)390m2的袖珍公園—帕雷公園，創(chuàng)造了鬧市中的安靜綠洲和愉悅的富有人情味的空間。之后，不僅在紐約，在美國(guó)的其他大城市也相繼涌現(xiàn)了類(lèi)似的袖珍公園，它們見(jiàn)縫插針地分布在城市的街頭巷尾，成為富有活力和人性化的場(chǎng)所，為高樓林立的城市帶來(lái)了生動(dòng)的公共空間。隨后，袖珍公園成為在城市高密度地區(qū)，通過(guò)對(duì)微小空間的介入來(lái)改善城市環(huán)境的一種有效途徑。

自20世紀(jì)80年代開(kāi)始，巴塞羅那采用了稱(chēng)為“城市針灸”的城市更新途徑，用類(lèi)似中醫(yī)針灸療法的方式，對(duì)城市中一個(gè)個(gè)關(guān)鍵空間節(jié)點(diǎn)進(jìn)行更新，在短期內(nèi)就改造與新建了上百個(gè)不同類(lèi)型的、富有活力和創(chuàng)造力的城市公共空間，并將這些小尺度的空間連成城市中一個(gè)安全、便捷，可以開(kāi)展多種活動(dòng)的公共空間網(wǎng)絡(luò)，從而重新塑造了舊城環(huán)境，恢復(fù)了因機(jī)動(dòng)車(chē)的影響而喪失的城市活力。

紐約的袖珍公園和巴塞羅那的公共空間，從街區(qū)尺度來(lái)看，其規(guī)模也許不能算作“微小”，但放在城市尺度上，它們確確實(shí)實(shí)都是一些微不足道的小空間，但是從對(duì)城市的整體意義來(lái)看，這些小空間的更新對(duì)城市結(jié)構(gòu)和生活品質(zhì)都產(chǎn)生了重要的積極的作用。

城市更新是一個(gè)長(zhǎng)期而持續(xù)的過(guò)程。城市中的一些微小尺度地塊的更新，看似投入少、影響范圍小，但對(duì)生活環(huán)境的改善卻是實(shí)質(zhì)性的。這樣的更新更加貼近社區(qū)生活的本身，往往伴隨著社區(qū)居民的廣泛參與，以普通人的視角，關(guān)注普通人的生活，更尊重城市發(fā)展的內(nèi)在秩序和規(guī)律，也更容易維護(hù)街區(qū)的歸屬感和固有的特征。

主編：王向榮教授

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