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).