As Beijing Design Week arrives, I turn my attention to the part of my project that concerns urban renewal. This week numerous exhibits in locations throughout the city present visions for how to build a better future Beijing. As the city mulls over these different trajectories for how, where and when to rebuild or restore the city, I want to take a quick look at just what we actually discuss when we talk about preservation. Further, I'd like to start the discussion about the different challenges that ultimately accompany efforts to maintain the city in a smart, effective way. It's a daunting subject, and I don't propose to have any easy answers, but given that urban renewal plays a particularly important role in my own work, I think it's a good idea to lay out the subject and consider it more fully.
Cultural preservation presents thorny challenges the world over. In many senses, Beijing is no different from Brooklyn, London, or any other major world city. The question of how improve the quality of life in a neighborhood while also protecting local cultural and economic practices hovers over both the developing and developed world alike. Need proof? Just look at the recent demonstrations in East London's Brick Lane that targeted a botique "cereal cafe". These issues aren't limited to cities like Beijing, nor are Beijing's experiences with these issues especially different from those elsewhere. However, these issues are perhaps more visible at a surface level in Beijing than they are in other cities. Why? Beijing's core still contains a lot of what might be considered heritage architecture. As the city continues to build and update its infrastructural grid at a breakneck pace, the fate of these older structures (and the people who live in them) is drawn into sharper focus. The hutong style neighborhood full of traditional siheyuan (四合院) courtyard houses provides the most visible and frequently cited example.
For those readers unfamiliar with Beijing, these houses are usually range in age between 100 and 300 years old. They comprise four single storey houses arranged in a square around a central courtyard. In the past, each of these courtyards usually belonged to a single family. However, after property redistribution that followed the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the siheyuan became subdivided, and apportioned into many smaller apartments within a single courtyard. For the last several decades they've housed far more families than originally intended. Despite aging over more than 100 years (some very badly) these houses remain emblematic of old Beijing, and continue to possess a kind of romantic charm. Increasingly, young people, especially foreigners working and living in Beijing, find these old houses to be ideal residences. In a sense, over a hundred years after they were first constructed, the houses are back in style. They look like this:
Many people (including academics, journalists, activists, artists, etc.) concerned with urban development adopt the preservation of Beijing's siheyuan as a cause celebre. Tourist and cultural commentators alike frequently identify these single storey houses as the cultural soul of Beijing. However, the number of these houses that still stand in Beijing diminishes every year as a push for newer infrastructure clears away many of them. Additionally, slow deterioration claims more and more of these homes every year. Despite the romantic and charming quality of these homes, many of them suffer from longterm neglect. In some neighborhoods, finding a courtyard with a tarp covering an enormous hole in the roof isn't uncommon. In the nicer, better maintained hutongs plumbing remains unreliable, and winter reveals other weaknesses with these houses: drafty windows, leaky roofs, questionable central heating, walls that lack insulation, etc.
Nevertheless, the question of how to protect and restore these houses remains a delicate one. Enter Beijing Design Week. The week's events, which have become an annual fixture in Beijing, feature a lot of different exhibits devoted to encouraging design, innovation and creativity in the city. It's a huge, multifaceted event. However, architecture, urban planning, and urban preservation lie at its heart. Indeed, the "Smart City" portion of the event specifically targets these issues. From the Beijing Design Week official website:
Special exhibitions, a Forum, the City Design Plaza and other events are launched to hold the spotlight on the most representative city design projects in China’s urban development process in the past decade. Through virtual interaction, experience-based presentations and other various means, these events will attract public participation to explore sustainable and top-quality city life modes for the future, and blaze a new path of city development under China’s new urbanization mode.
It's an earnest and dedicated attempt to address the challenges of an urbanizing Beijing. Focusing on the efforts at work in the neighborhood of Dashila'er provides a clearer picture of how some of these different visions of urban renewal might work in practice. There, groups like The Dashilar Project undertake the work of charting a new course for neighborhoods like theirs. This neighborhood (officially named Dazhalan 大栅栏, but referred to locally as Dashila'er 大石栏儿), sits just south of the Forbidden City, and the former Imperial Complex at Beijing's heart, and has, in recent years begun a transformation process to increase its visibility within the city, and its viability as a commerical and tourist destination. As older neighborhoods like Nanluogu Xiang, and the back-alleys near Gulou DaJie continue to experience revival and reinvigoration in recent years, so, too, does Dashilar hope to take its place on the list of the city's prime attractions. As college-aged volunteer at the information booth for Beijing Design Week's outpost in Dashila'er explained, "The exhibits want to find a way to help local residents make the neighborhood more famous and improve the quality of life here. They want to figure out how to create more revenue for the neighborhood."
So, how does Dashila'er propose to do this? Beijing Design Week offers a number of different visions for the neighborhood. On Cha'er Hutong, right next to the Qianmen Mosque in the heart of the neighborhood, a Taiwanese architectural firm offers their take.
The architect present at the exhibit explained that the firm had identified a number of issues that bogged down the neighborhood's siheyuan, including the fact that many of the courtyards were closed off by solid walls, and that courtyards frequently became cluttered with shoddily built add on, or became storage yards for miscellaneous junk. The solution? They argued in favor of installing large windows on the outer walls, and creating movable screened in areas within the courtyards that would make them multi-purpose, less cluttered, and more inviting as a public space. Each of these solutions, she explained, would allow for a revitalization of the hutong system, and would help to "build a new hutong in an old environment." To be sure, these goals are earnest and thoughtful. The architect explained that, to her, the major problem with how Beijing had renovated other areas of the city was that it didn't attempt to revive old structures, but instead built new ones wholescale. Her firm, by contrast, sought to "give the old hutongs a new life," by retrofitting and reviving the old structures.
But such developments are not wholly unproblematic. As we talked I asked her who she hoped would buy one of these new, admittedly upscale, apartments.
"In fact," she said "I had a young couple express interest in a house like this last night. They didn't want to live in a traditional courtyard, but they really liked the atmosphere of the neighborhood."
"So you think that most of the people who will be interested are young professionals?" I asked.
"Yes, I think for the most part," she said. "The challenge is intergrating them with the rest of the neighborhood and the current residents."
This is, indeed, the challenge. The neighborhood is home to mostly working class people, who are longstading in this community. Additionally, the architecture here is genuinely old. I very nearly rented a place in Peiying Hutong, just a stone's throw down the road. As I negotiated a lease agreement (one which later fell through for reasons I won't elaborate on), I was warned by the real-estate agency brokering the deal that I was not to out nails in the wall. If I did, they cautioned me quite sternly, I would "destroy China's cultural heritage." Nails were one thing. Knocking out walls? Putting in huge glass windows? Adding on movable outdoor enclosed space? For some residents, I imagine this is a bridge too far.
"Do you get resistence from locals?" I asked the architect.
"Yes, some," she said. "For instance, on the first day of working on this model unit, a man came in from the neighborhood. He was upset, and he asked, 'Is this going to be permanent? You're blocking my public toilet!' So, I think resistence is pretty common."
Herein lies the great challenge of urban renewal: finding the sweet spot that accomodates a revitalization of the community without displacing or disadvantaging the community, itself. Or without building in a lot of things the community doesn't want or need. If the houses of Cha'er Hutong are renovated to become Starbucks Coffee shops (which already has happened on the Meishi Jie front street of Dashila'er), then is urban renewal really serving the purpose of revitalizing the community, or is it being improved for somebody else. As I walked along one of the streets where many of the exhibits were, I overheard an early 30-somethings British man speaking to his girlfriend about the event, and the state of the neighborhood. "Seems like they're trying to turn Dashila'er into another Nanluogu Xiang (another trendy former hutong)" he said. "I hope they don't," he continued, "because Nanluogu Xiang is complete shit!"
To the east of town, in Shijia Hutong, another narrow-laned neighborhood with some old siheyuan still lining the streets, I sought out another part of Beijing Design Week. This area, outside of Dashila'er, was supposed to hosting sevearl exhibits on hutong preservation. When I arrived on the scene, it was almost 4pm, and it looked as if the spot where the exhibits would be hosted (The Shijia Hutong Museum), had already closed for the day. However, due to the narrowness of the streets, and the somehat imprecise nature of the map showing the location of exhibits on my phone, I couldn't be totally certain. I decided to ask one of the residents, assuming that they would know about the goings on here on their street.
"Excuse me," I approached one woman, "can you tell me where I can find the exhibits here for Beijing Design Week?" "What?" she said "I've never heard of that. I don't think that's going on here."
I showed her the map on my phone, indicating that there were, indeed, scheduled exhibits in the area. She shook her head, apologized and suggested I ask someone else.
Two other women were also convinced that the exhibits were elsewhere in the city.
"That sounds like it's put on by the City of Beijing. I don't think that there's anything over here," one said.
Further up the street, a local security officer, and the three other people who he was sitting around and talking to, all claimed no knowledge of the event. I showed him my phone, and the name of the event, and the map. He appeared puzzled. He called out to another man who happened to be walking by.
"Hey, friend, you know anything about this Beijing International... what's it called?... (reading the screen) Beijing International Design Week?"
The passerby's response, much like the others, was confusion. No, he hadn't heard of that. He recommended that I use a GPS to find the location. When I showed him the map, he confirmed that the location of the exhibits was, indeed, the museum, but he had no knowledge of the event.
The disconnect between the event's participants and the people living in the neighborhood was clear in Shijia Hutong. Whatever Beijing Design Week was, they didn't really know anything about it. The man recommended I return another day to see the event at the museum. As I walked back toward the subway stop, he walked in the same direction and continued the conversation.
"The museum is important!" he said "Around here all the houses are siheyuan. But they're all pretty old. A lot of them really need repairing."
At a recent (and as of yet, unaired) live-taping of the Sinica Podcast (which focuses on current affairs in China), host Kaiser Kuo talked about what he saw as one of the bigger challenges facing Beijing. There are frequently two, parallel conversations occurring within the city. One, in English, is held amongst foreigners and a very few Chinese associates and friends. The other, in Chinese, is held among locals, but rarely includes foreigners. The two conversations rarely converge, though they might be on similar subjects. On Shijia Hutong, these two conversations seem to be currently unfolding. The great challenge for both the residents who live in these places, and the organizers and planners of initiatives like Beijing Design Week, is how to merge these conversations. How to include the voices of both those who have visions for how to responsibly transform and revitalize the neighborhood, and also take note of the needs and desires of long-term residents who want to continue to stay in their homes. Events like the one this week start the ball rolling but keeping that momentum going after the banners and the visitors are gone remains a different challenge altogether.