A sustainable urbanism

City planners see the pace of development as their goal or accomplishment. In Zhuhai, the city where I used to live, there has been a drama which caused a huge reverberation from the society. In order to establish a modern and prosperous image of the city, the government decided to get rid of an area of old plants and an old park. Instead, the government decided to replace them with a small business district. This act pulled the public's nerves, especially for those original residents of that area. So people decided to fight for these old "heritages" of the city.

This dispute for the old urban heritage actually came from the protection awareness of the city residents. It is not just a simple question of removing the old trees and garden. It involves more issues such as how does a city protect its cultural heritages. The urbanization process will inevitably involve the struggle between what is considered as new and what is considered as old. No single urban city was built over night. What people should concern about is how to balance the collective culture for the urban residents and the new investment for the city.

Urban city is different from rural area. Scholars think that urban city is the product of industrialization. With the development of city, how to balance commercial business and culture? The reconstruction process should be a long-term plan with a more sustainable concern, whether it is about replacing, maintaining, or developing.

The culture heritage represents the history deposit of one city. It can be the symbol or signature of a city. However, urbanization forces people to compromise to get rid of part of the old culture. The lack of commercial element makes the culture heritage imcompatible with the modern society. As the city continues to grow, people have to sacrifice some of these old cultural symbols.

However, the problem is, some city planners get too carried away by the fast urban development. They just focus on the renovation of the city, and neglect the reservation of the original roots of the city. Surely there is no doubt that commerce and business can boost the urban development. We should prevent the commercial development of a city becoming an exploitation of the cultural heritages. The balance with the commercial development and reservation of culture heritage can achieve a Sustainable Urbanism.

The video is about Jeffrey Morgan, the Director of Real Estate Development for Historic Boston Incorporated, talking about the role of community development corporations at the intersection of micro-business development and inner-city neighborhood business district redevelopment.

Links:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Urbanism

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.113.3642&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=xkjEzYg1PwU&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DxkjEzYg1PwU