Urban Revitalization in my Hometown

Since September of this year, I’ve been attending Newcastle University, and I’m currently beginning to take classes that are relevant to urban design. Even though I have only been studying urban design for ten days, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the evolution of my hometown over the years from the point of view of urban design for my very first blog post. Even though it’s only been ten days, I’ve only just begun to understand urban design on a very basic level.

My hometown, Deqing, may be found in the northern part of Zhejiang province, which is in the southeastern part of China and is close to Shanghai. It has a great history, which makes it highly interesting to learn about, as well as a gorgeous landscape and a comfortable climate, all of which combine to make it a very good location to live. I grew up in Deqing, and during that time I have seen my hometown go from a very unimportant county to the major city that it is now in just a dozen years’ time. This change has taken place right before my eyes. I believe that urban planning and design have had a significant part in this matter.

1.New Town and Old Town

Due to land constraints, the authorities moved the new city centre southeast of the abandoned old town. It’s been a decade. As a child, I wondered why different-purpose buildings were so far apart. I was young. Now I am reminded of Edward Howard’s idea of developing new urban communities independently of the crowded central city, which I read about only a few days ago. It amazes me how this level of information relates to past events. New communities bring many benefits. A new city converts rural areas into urban land. This accelerates the expansion of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) due to a rise in the value of residential and commercial real estate, as well as an increase in demand for and production of building materials and steel, which creates jobs for migrant labourers. Second, the formation of a new city protects and enhances the urban environment by distributing population and industry from the central area to the new city, avoiding or reducing a number of difficulties and conflicts generated by the overconcentration of population and industry in a large city’s core region.

My hometown in the past two years has been steadily beginning the process of renovating the historic city, one building at a time. On the one hand, it has begun the process of demolishing some structures that were constructed in the previous century, analysing the plots and re-planning and designing them. On the other hand, a number of important buildings have been renovated to make them more useful and to bring life to the area around them.

2.Health and well-being

In addition, the urban planning of my community places a significant emphasis on residents’ physical and mental well-being. As an illustration, take the “Civic Square,” which was finished being constructed around four years ago. The new Civic Square in the city centre is quite large and was designed to look more like a sprawling park than a traditional square. A sizable proportion of residents engage in physical activity by means of nighttime strolls on a daily basis. An urban revitalization project has resulted in the creation of an ecological corridor in the city’s north-eastern quadrant. The ecological corridor serves multiple purposes, including the protection of biodiversity, the filtration of pollutants, the prevention of soil erosion, the regulation of floods, and the prevention of wind and sand erosion. It gives people a place to relax and get some exercise, and it also helps protect the natural environment in cities in a big way.

Both the design of cities and my hometown are quite interesting to me. I have high hopes that throughout this year of study, not only will my community see further growth, but that I will also learn more about the principles of urban design. In addition, I believe that blogging is an effective method of education since it allows us to reflect on the lectures that we attend on a weekly basis and to articulate our own perspectives on the subject matter. Naturally, what’s even better is that we are able to observe what students from a variety of cultural backgrounds think about the same topic and make comments on each other.