The Central Urban Work Conference pointed out that a city should not be a "besieged city" composed of a number of closed "yards" and "walls". We should find safety precautions to adapt to modern management, try not to build closed residential quarters, and improve the permeability and microcirculation of the city.
Tianfu New District, as the "first place" of a park city, has always believed that urban blocks and roads should be human, not only to clear the way for cars, but also to provide convenience for residents to ride bicycles, go shopping, go out to restaurants to meet friends and have fun, and form a comprehensive functional block.
To build an open block, it is not enough to tear down the fence and solve the traffic problem only on the technical level. On the spiritual level, we should also pay attention to the reconstruction of block life and harmonious neighborhood relations. Then, how to build an open block, this paper puts forward some ideas from the perspective of planning and architectural design.
Xinglong Lake in Tianfu New District
In recent twenty years, with the development of new real estate, most newly-built residential quarters are isolated from the outside world with walls and gates, and some previously-built open-plan residential quarters are symbolically surrounded by iron railings. Our city is becoming isolated islands, and many articles have made in-depth analysis of various problems it brings, so I won't discuss them here.
In view of the disadvantages of urban construction in the past two decades, the central government has put forward the policy of not building closed residential areas. However, there are still different understandings about how to build an open community and what kind of open community to build. This requires starting from the problems to be solved and absorbing the theory and practice of foreign community construction and our historical experience.
0 1 Problems to be Solved in Open Community
The disadvantages brought by the walled community in the compound can solve two problems: one is technical and the other is social.
The first is the technical level. Now there are many criticized problems, such as urban traffic and the enjoyment of resources. Replacing super-large streets with dense road networks and narrow streets is a good way to solve the congestion and congestion of urban traffic capillaries. Once the block becomes smaller, the public resources in the original community will inevitably be opened to the public for road construction. There have been some attempts to solve pure technical problems before. For example, in some communities in the south, the ground floor is overhead and the garden is located on the upper floor, trying to solve the problem of smooth traffic in the bottom cities, but the upper residential areas still constitute super-large communities; As for community resources, there will be new forms of enjoyment in the Internet of Things era.
Japan City Block (Tuyuan. com)
But none of these can solve social and mental problems. The division of compound children hinders the opening and communication of society, and different compounds are easy to form different classes. For example, decades ago, people in Beijing hutongs and quadrangles were obviously different groups, with different characteristics in language and behavior, and even divided into different gangs. For example, my classmates in the middle school group and the primary school group on WeChat are friends who live in neighboring hutongs. You can still remember the scenes and stories of other students' families and neighbors and hutongs more than 40 years ago. Coupled with the old streets bearing homesickness, this memory of street life is the foundation and soul of a harmonious and stable society. With their disappearance in China for decades, our society has lost some irretrievable precious things spiritually. However, it is difficult for people living in compound units to have that kind of intimate neighborhood life. Neighborhood relations are indifferent, communication disappears, and people's self-awareness is often stronger than public awareness.
Today's closed blocks are bound to aggravate this differentiation trend, so reshaping block life and building a harmonious society should be the core of open blocks.
The reconstruction of block life is the origin of open community.
Block life is the soul of an open community, and ancient towns with profound historical accumulation all over the world are still the spiritual homes of modern people. It is common for people to wander and relax in the bustling old blocks and hurry in the deserted new cities. Many theoretical studies of urban design abroad are comparing the failure of new town construction after World War II and summarizing the characteristics of charming historical blocks in the past. New Urbanism also advocates the practice of dynamic block elements in traditional towns in modern housing planning. In those traditional streets and lanes, the old people get together to chat and bask in the sun during the day, the men in the neighborhood get together to drink tea and play cards at night, the women get together to talk about housework, and the children play by. In such a limited space with a strong sense of region, the interaction between neighbors is formed, and the intrusion of strangers is easy to be recognized.
Traditional Street Life (Tuyuan. com)
If today's community opening can't shape the space and life of the block, it will return to the previous extensive model, which can be seen in many so-called open communities that boast of the current policy. In the construction of new residential areas, we need to learn from tradition how to continue the spirit of urban blocks and rebuild our local spiritual home, not just to solve urban problems on the technical level. Those living spaces honed by years bear the civilization and tradition, harmony and order of a society, and the traditional charming streets are still our teachers.
Tianfu New District Land Rover Eco-city (Source: Land Rover Lu Fang Center)
03 Spatial system for maintaining block life
Block is the living room of city life, and an important task of open community is to shape the life of spiritual block. So, what kind of space can produce a vibrant neighborhood life? What kind of opening model is more suitable for China's national conditions? I think our open block should have the following elements.
(1) path
Most of the traditional streets and lanes are naturally formed, which is the most convenient way to contact important nodes in towns. Even in the planned towns, after years of tempering, these paths eventually evolved into the most accessible routes. In western towns, it is a walking network connecting churches, markets and stations, while in traditional settlements in China, it connects ancestral temples, temples and markets, which makes the whole town form a natural and dynamic block network full of humanity.
European traditional charming town Piensa (Tuyuan. com)
Dayuaner block has artificially changed these roads that should be convenient to pass in the city. For example, in the big community where I used to live, many people had to go to the northeast by car, but the community only had entrances and exits in the west and south directions, and they had to detour a long way every day. The feeling of being eager to hurry replaced the pleasure of taking a leisurely walk. Such a path, even with beautiful green landscape, does not conform to the characteristics of human activities, is inhuman, and it is difficult to stimulate the vitality of the block. Therefore, it is an important fulcrum to connect important living places and realize a walking network that can cross the city. Urban roads between plots and sidewalks within plots should take this into account.
(2) Sense of domain and privacy
Traditional settlements in history attach great importance to the privacy of every household. Privacy belongs to the most basic psychological needs of human beings, emphasizing that individuals and families can isolate their environment from external interference and control their environment according to their own wishes.
We find that from the southern foothills of the Alps in Europe to the Middle East, India and China, most of the traditional settlements in these countries with long history and civilized cities are made up of quadrangles, and streets and lanes have become the public domain of these quadrangles. This classification well constructs the relationship between privacy and openness. After the expansion of modern western cities, it evolved into a multi-family public courtyard group with blocks as the unit, such as the closed block in Barcelona, which is a centralized traditional courtyard model of Mediterranean expansion.
Some closed community groups built in 1950s in China also belong to the extension of this planning system. Although some native genes were introduced from the west, they transformed the ancient private courtyard into a neighborhood courtyard, which, as the next level of street space, has a sense of territory of a moderately large community. Many modern residential groups are emphasizing this sense of territory in the neighborhood.
The residential groups in Gu 'an are organized by courtyards and streets, and the residential units on both sides of a broken street form a group.
Most of the traditional houses in the northern Alps are detached houses with nomadic lifestyle or strong historical characteristics of barbarians. Turning to the United States, there are many dense road networks with one floor and one block, and there are also monotonous communities with detached houses as units. Therefore, Americans feel sad that their residential areas are as unattractive as traditional European towns, and develop the theory of new urbanism. Therefore, different geographical and cultural backgrounds have different understandings of the openness of the block. For example, some foreign architects don't even think that a block like the old city of Barcelona is an open community, and an open block must be open to every building.
Foreign countries are open to the living area of each living unit.
The opening of our community must be combined with the characteristics of our ethnic areas, grasp the "degree" of openness, to what extent it is open and private, and maintain a sense of territory and privacy while opening up, so as to form an ideal open community.
(3) Low-level high density
Humans have lived in low-rise and high-density settlements since ancient times. Many historic towns and cities at home and abroad have now become popular tourist destinations, and all of them have achieved a floor area ratio of 1 or more or even more than 2 at the height of 2-5 floors.
Considering the relatively small road area, the comprehensive plot ratio of these ancient cities is generally above 2. For example, Old Town of Lijiang in China, the ancient city of Kashgar, and the famous medieval cities in Europe and the Middle East all formed pleasant, harmonious and charming settlements with low-rise and high-density settlements.
Old Town of Lijiang (Tuyuan. com)
Low-rise and high-density communities are conducive to the realization of blocks with limited space and dynamic blocks. Its pleasant scale and home identifiability make it have a sense of belonging, and the warm atmosphere is conducive to forming a sense of community territory, facilitating neighborhood communication and establishing a harmonious community. At the same time, the good grounding of low-rise residential buildings enables residents living in them to get close to nature and realize the concept of green ecology. Moreover, low-rise residential buildings have greater advantages in architecture, technology and disaster prevention. Therefore, Europe, whose population density is close to that of China, has long advocated low-rise and high-density communities. In practice, this type of apartment is absolutely dominant, and theoretically there are many practices that emphasize neighborhood relations and community spirit. However, at present, the norms of building density and green space rate in China cannot produce low-rise and high-density residential areas, which needs to be changed.
(4) the spatial environment of the block
In addition to the above factors, the emergence of block life lies in the space environment and quality of its carrier. What kind of space can produce block life? Can those barracks-style, determinant houses, or scary high-rise residential areas produce block life just because there is no fence and no encrypted road network? The answer is obviouslyno. Looking at the fascinating streets and lanes in history and reality, most of them have the following characteristics: First, the boundaries are limited, the scale space is good, and most of them are street and lane spaces with low-rise buildings as the background, and the comfortable and simple scale of streets and lanes is easy for people to stay here; The second is to form squares at some nodes and corners to increase the "resistance" of streets and lanes, so as to further provide places for people to gather. Closed interface is the best block space; The third is to create a mixed street function. There are various commercial and activity places convenient for local residents along the street lanes, so that the streets and lanes can form a vibrant community living room.
An open community can be realized not simply by dismantling the fence to solve the traffic problem, but by reconstructing a series of social life and places. If we don't pay attention to this point in planning and construction, we will return to the original point in the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore, we advocate building an open and vibrant neighborhood in the new residential planning in combination with the current social needs, which not only provides convenience but also meets the psychological needs of privacy and safety, thus building an open, harmonious, orderly and vibrant city.
Hangzhou Modern Community Culture Creation and Development Center ☆
Hangzhou Modern Community Culture Construction Center is guided by Hangzhou Culture, Radio, Film and Television Tourism Bureau, and is committed to the service management and activation operation of community public cultural places. The center contributes to the innovation and implementation of the project of benefiting the people by specifically serving the micro-design innovation of community cultural space, the planning and supply of public cultural services, the construction and operation of community cultural colleges, and the construction and service of community media integration centers.
Brand projects: Folk Life Museum, Ke Mei Creative Life Meeting Room, Ke Mei Creative Life College.
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