3.2 Critiques on inner city rehabilitation practice Xi’an

As a municipality, urban planning and master plan is made by Xi’an Municipality Planning Bureau and legally authorized by MOHURD. Above this, the historical cities is boned with all kinds of guidelines and ordinance. In 1984, “The City Planning Ordinance”, China’s first urban planning regulation, was promulgated and enacted, creating a legal framework for the implementation of urban planning and management and so a fundamental change of the absence of guidance of urban planning\cite{Bennett_2013}. In 1990, MOHURD initiated the Old and Dilapidated Housing Redevelopment (ODHR) program in Beijing, aiming to “accelerate old and dilapidated housing renewal and provide adequate dwellings for inner-city residents” .\cite{Abramson1998Neighborhood}\cite{Leaf_1995} It’s a test trail before start housing redevelopment program country wide. Xi’an, among many historical cities in China, follows this movement. In the reality, driven by the property-led approach on the municipality level in Xi’an and the amphibious ordinance on the national level, the ODHR program basically swept out the plots of which most contains the traditional courtyard houses with wooden and bricks structure from Qing dynasty with 200-300 year history or even earlier. Instead, new built standard collective compounds stands in raw on the site and there is no clue to trace back. It was a disaster for local residence as well as the historical and culture sustainability for the historical city, especially inside the Xi’an Walled City.(Fig.9) (From 1990-1995 in 5 years, Xi’an House Management Bureau has housing in total 2181700 sq.m housing in registration, 5 years later, in the end of 1995, this figure has grown to 30420000 sq.m).