Next to Wangjing Soho in Beijing, two roads over 50 meters wide, Fu'an West Road and Furong Street, intersect.

The feeling of insignificance in Beijing may have been accumulated by passing through such intersections again and again.

If you have been to Heshenghui, a shopping mall above Jiulongshan Station of the Beijing Subway, I believe you must be deeply impressed by the "21st Street" spanning the B1 and B2 floors (if you haven't been, I highly recommend you to go).

In addition to the nearly 100 delicacies gathered here, its attractive point is that its scale is very suitable for walking. The aisles between stores are less than 2 meters wide. There are also many "golden corners" and "silver edges". Every time you turn around

There are new surprises at every turn.

This reminds people of the night markets across the Taiwan Strait that once attracted countless mainland tourists.

Interior view of Block 21.

Picture: Xiaohongshu, intrusion and deletion. The scale of other parts of the shopping mall outside the "21st Block" is significantly larger. The aisles between stores are at least three to five meters wide, plus a cross-layer atrium that enhances transparency,

The bright light makes it difficult to have the same appetite and fun as in "Block 21", but it's still fun to visit.

Walking out of the shopping mall and outdoors, two roads with a planned width of nearly 100 meters intersect here. During peak hours, people and vehicles compete for the road, and few people are willing to stay on the side of the road.

What passwords are hidden in the three different scales?

It is often said that people of our generation are born "Internet people", and their living habits and thinking habits are all Internet-based.

In fact, our generation is born in the automobile age. The cities we see, no matter how big or small, are all born for cars.

When we see a narrow road three to five meters wide, if it is not an internal road of a community or compound, we will definitely think that it is in an urban village or a specially built historical district.

Wangjiangmen Zhi Street in Hangzhou before demolition, photographed by the author in 2010. In fact, the most "fun" streets are precisely these small roads, and they are colorful and functional.

For example, there are two roads from the subway station to your home. One is short and straight, but the entire roadside is wasteland, and the other side is a highway; while the other is a little farther, but full of small shops and winding roads. You must have it when you get off work.

There is a high probability of choosing the latter.

In addition to the pleasant experience of "walking around", streets with appropriate scales mean much more than that in the city.

Jacobs's "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" published in 1961 can be said to be the urban planning work that influenced a generation.

This book, which criticized the urban construction in the United States at that time, is still exuding strong vitality on the other side of the ocean 60 years later (more on this in a later article).

In her view, streets are by no means just a quantifiable element in urban planning, nor just a road connecting two places, but the face and "organ" of a city: and for the individuals who are in it, as she writes in the book

"When a child enters society, the first step is to step out of the house and onto the street."

If the streets are friendly and safe, he will have a healthy attitude towards the society; if the society is messy, crowded, polluted or even without a foothold, then he will not be friendly to the society.

Jacobs believes that the essence of a city lies in the mixing of multiple functions and flows of people. This mixing can produce diversity (Diversity) that makes 1+1>2. It is the reason why cities are different from villages and towns and can produce more materials.

and the basic conditions for spiritual wealth.

The source of diversity is streets with appropriate scale and density. Such streets can enable residents to socialize and form organizational and cultural identities; at the same time, each tiny market entity can survive and form a greater agglomeration effect.

This view can be said to be very different from the mainstream Western urban planning theories at the time: the "Garden City" headed by Howard and the "Bright City" of Le Corbusier. Although the specific plans are different, they both believe that urban functions are concentrated in one or several

A neighborhood is a kind of "chaos" from which the violence and ugliness of big cities originate.

For example, Howard proposed that the urban functions undertaken by the city center should be decentralized to the periphery of the city, and a self-sufficient town should be established, separated from the old city by fields; in the newly built town, different functions should be located on their own plots, and the size should be accurately measured.

, separated from residential areas.