Icebreaker-Opportunities and Challenges of Urban Design in China
Urban design can be understood as designing for the city. It has been an important subject of work for many spatial professionals throughout human history. However, it was not until the 1950s that a wide range of programmers began to be established in European and American universities. The profession of urban designer, and the field of urban design, became a new term and became known.
In the past, the scope of study and work was limited to the narrower aspects of architecture and urbanism. Nowadays, urban design is becoming a comprehensive and interdisciplinary discipline, as it is closely related to the knowledge and practice of municipal engineering, urban economics, urban sociology, environmental psychology, political economy, urban history, municipalism, public administration, and sustainable development. As a gathering place for human production and life, the city is a product of the life-cycle development of human civilization and an important part of the earth’s ecosystem. Personally, I am extremely interested in sustainable development. From the perspective of environmental protection, sustainable urban development is a fundamental principle that needs to be followed around the world.
In China, where I was born, Urban Design is not as rosy as I thought it would be. It has too many shortcomings. In 2011, the urbanization rate in mainland China reached 50%, although a significant portion of the population is semi-urbanized and the actual urbanisation level is below 50%, considering that China’s future urbanisation rate will always grow, roughly around this period our urbanisation enters a turning point, the arrival of the transition period, government investment efforts, development intensity and speed continue to slow down, economic development for other industries very favourable (e.g. the internet industry). The planning and design market was not as powerful as it was together, and competition in the industry intensified, a reality we had to accept. It is an undeniable fact that the planning industry has become a gradually declining industry now that the competitive pressure in the planning market has increased with the slowing down of urbanization. With the change in economic development, the high-tech industry, represented by the innovation economy, has been in a state of rapid growth. it, the internet, has enjoyed the benefits of the policy, maintaining high growth and prosperity. The planning industry is part of this declining traditional industry. The prosperity of the planning industry is closely related to the prosperity of the real estate market, and now that real estate is in decline, the decline of the planning industry is not difficult to understand.
Businesses are struggling to operate, staff incomes are falling and there is vicious competition. Such teams will not be able to afford to invest in technical innovation, and such organizations are unlikely to produce high levels of technical output, a behavior that pulls the whole industry down to low prices and low quality.
But this does not mean that Urban Design is out of the question in China either. Through innovation and change on the part of urban planners themselves, they can take on more of the work of urban and rural development in China. Breaking down closed planning and delving deeper into systems and institutions to move from doing spatial planning to doing public policy and participating in public management is what the planning profession needs to keep exploring as it moves forward in the process of supply and demand reform. Further enhancing the science of planning, from ideas and concepts to specific engineering techniques, from analysis techniques to simulation and evaluation techniques, all await in-depth research by Urban Design related workers.
