Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing: A Project in the Ju'er Hutong Neighbourhood

Gary Watson is a former lecturer in Chinese studies at Queen’s University and is now a multimedia developer in Mississauga.

Modernization claims many victims, though few have suffered more than
the historically great cities of the developing world. Conservation
seldom matters in the headlong rush to provide more housing, regardless
of its quality or impact on traditional life. Such problems are starkly
evident in contemporary China, where cities like Beijing, larger than
London until the early 1800s, contain sizeable tracts of old-style
courtyard housing. Many of these disappeared steadily after 1949,
replaced by an unsystematic array of Stalinesque apartment slabs planted
among the surviving hutong districts dating from the Ming and Qing
dynasties.

Wu Liangyong, director of the Institute of Architectural and Urban
Studies at Qinghua University in Beijing, presents a persuasive argument
for redevelopment that preserves the social, cultural, and economic
fabric of high-density urban life that makes the core of Beijing
livable. The urban design that Wu promotes draws much inspiration from
the seminal writings of Jane Jacobs and her ideas about “organic
renewal.” Citing parallels between Jacobs’s concerns with the often
disastrous consequences of “urban renewal” in North America and his
own, Wu sees even greater risks for Beijing and other Chinese cities.
Rather than physical decay, the rapid social and economic change
attending China’s breakneck urban growth is the chief uncertainty
facing Beijing and its residents. Wu advocates rehabilitation of old
neighbourhoods, justifying his programs on the basis of cost reductions
relative to full-scale redevelopment. Because today’s Beijing is
functionally more complex—and crowded—than the old city, Wu
realistically places limits on the benefits of conservation. What he
envisions is a range of new buildings functionally and aesthetically
adapted to the old districts and the lives of their inhabitants.

This study provides an engrossing view of a single successful project
that may well affect the lives of millions. For social scientists,
architects, and urban planners, Wu presents a unique opportunity to
consider new solutions to old problems confronting what has historically
been among the world’s most urbanized societies.