Credit: Serge Salat, Urban Morphology Institute, based on material produced by Gehl architects.

Rather than delivering master plans, this project develops initiatives with local planners – in Chongqing the city’s Planning and Design Institute. These aim to make sure the design, principles and strategies are understood and anchored in the local community. In Chongqing the main goals were to improve the quality of urban public space, revitalize street life and extend and improve the macro network of public transport with a micro network of interconnected streets and public spaces at neighbourhood level. Based on the survey findings, the team made recommendations and designed pilot projects to show that things can be done differently. These pilot projects are being implemented fast by the local planning and design teams, who are taking existing spaces and putting them to better use so people can experience change first-hand. This reading will provide insights into the multi-level approaches needed when planning holistically, trying to integrate concerns on a social, historical, and environmental level.

Introduction

Over the next 30 years, 300 million people will move to the cities of China. The streets, which have always been the core of Chinese cities and the hub of life, have been replaced from one day to the next with motorways. This implementation of 1960s modernist urban planning has had the same catastrophic effects as in the West. New high-rise neighbourhoods have been designed entirely for vehicles – in a country where 90% of the population don’t own a car. The result is megacities full of large scale, monofunctional zones devoid of human life.

Since 2008 Gehl has collaborated with the Energy Foundation on their China Sustainable Cities and Transport Programme, focusing on the links between urban development, public space, public transport and sustainability at an environmental, economic and social level. In 2010 this long-term collaboration continued in Chongqing – one of China’s biggest and fastest growing cities.

We share the Energy Foundation’s goal of facilitating change and shifting policies at a local and national level in China. Rather than delivering masterplans, we collaborate on developing initiatives for change with local planners – in Chongqing the city’s Planning and Design Institute – to make sure the design, principles and strategies are understood and anchored in the local community. We share our survey methods and results with local groups and stakeholders, and run masterclasses and workshops with our design and planning colleagues in cities worldwide.

Learning from the Past

The monolithic planning of China’s new megacities has all too often razed existing human-scale neighbourhoods that were once full of life. In Chongqing the job we shared was not only to create positive change, but also to prevent the demolition and downgrading of the many positive and humanly sustainable aspects of traditional Chinese city culture. Sustainable design is about understanding who you design for, and where they prefer to be. Our trademark Public Space/Public Life survey revealed that 150% more people were spending time in old, small streets than in the new, commercial public spaces, and 640% more people were spending time in traditional Chinese neighbourhoods with active, open facades than in streets with closed building fronts.

From Pilot Projects to Policy Change

In Chongqing the main goals were to improve the quality of urban public space, revitalize street life and extend and improve the macro network of public transport with a micro network of interconnected streets and public spaces. On the basis of our survey findings, we made recommendations & designed pilot projects to show people that things can be done differently.

These pilot projects are being implemented fast by the local planning and design team, who are taking existing spaces and putting them to better use so people can experience change first hand. One of these is Pedestrian Route 3, which we redesigned to encourage walking and social interaction in the inner city. In 2012 the route was awarded the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s sustainability prize on the basis of its contribution to the ‘human, living environment’. This represented solid political backing for the importance of the human scale of the street, and a radical shift in the urban planning mindset in China.

Towards A People-Centred Future

It also represented a clear green light for the plan we developed with the city for the entire downtown area, shifting the focus from traffic flow to a connected pedestrian network of spaces for people to be. This public space network strategy with human-scale alleys and a harbour front of interconnected recreational areas is now ready to be implemented, and with the work we’re doing we hope to influence policy makers all over China. For the first time in the nation’s urban planning history, the latest Five-Year Plan of the People’s Republic of China includes people-oriented development – a top-level acknowledgement of the positive impact and need for holistic development on a human scale for the people, the economy and the environment in Chinese cities.