The Sustainability Assessment Of Different Models For Urban Renewal

Urban renewal is an unavoidable topic in the contemporary word city, after 30 years of rapid development, due to the scarcity of land resources, urban development and improvement are subject to constraints of the existing urban capacity, urban decay can not be inevitably occur, urban renewal is becoming a significant theme in China. Urban renewal is conducted to improve the living environment, adjust urban spatial structure, change the mode of economic development, enhance the city comprehensive competitiveness, and promote the scientific development.In Western countries, the sustainable urban renewal has become one of the core city policies, and the sustainability evaluation of urban renewal has attracted attention of many scholars. In China, many previous studies revealed the Western urban renewal from the views of urban planning and geography but failed to discuss the urban renewal sustainability and assess the sustainability of different modes integrally and comprehensively.Through comprehensive literature review, the sustainable urban renewal was clearly identified. By adopting questionnaire surveys and various statistical analyses, the evaluation index system of the sustainable urban renewal was derived from the three domains:economy, environment and society. The assessment frameworks of three models, which included reconstruction, redevelopment and conservation, were also constructed. The sustainable evaluations of six urban renewal projects in Guangzhou were studied empirically.(1) As the competition among city regions becomes increasingly harsh in the age of globalization, the sustainability has become the trend of urban renewal. Urban renewal strategy is the policy for rearrangement of spatial development patterns, which contains the overall objective based on the theory of sustainable development. The objectives of urban renewal are multi-dimensional, which are highly coordinated the goal of urban sustainable development, urban renewal is the important performance of urban sustainability.(2) Urban renewal evaluation frameworks are increasingly following an indicator-based approach. Expert opinion plays a major part in the empirical investigation which seeks to assess the measurement of urban regeneration practice in light of sustainability principles. With the help of the experts from the industry and academia, the indicators of evaluation index system from the economic, social and environmental dimension were derived, which the system composed of 26 indicators was a reliable and valuable tool to achieve the goal of producing sustainable urban renewal projects in Guangzhou.(3) The multi-dimensional objectives of urban renewal has been attached to urban renewal, the sustainability evaluation must be executed from three dimensions namely social, economic and environmental renewal, which eco-environment is an important factor of evaluation system, the people's livelihood is the foundation of urban development, economic development is a significant condition for sustainable urban development, ecology, livelihood, culture and economy are the core content of urban renewal evaluation. From the weight of three dimensions of different renewal models, the social sustainable objective is higher than the others, followed by the weight of environmental dimension, and the economic dimension is the lowest. It implied that the urban renewal should be more concerned about the sustainable development of social and environmental aspects.(4) According to the hierarchical evaluation model of urban renewal sustainability, the sustainability of six urban renewal projects of three models in Guangzhou was measured. The empirical study shows that results of the hierarchical model analysis may be inconsistent with the AHP. So the two sides should be used together, which make the results more comprehensive. Urban renewal involves many elements of sustainable development, before the implementation of urban renewal plan, the plan should be measured by adopting various methods, the technical efficiency evaluation also should be done. On a wider perspective, the application of sustainability evaluation allows policy approaches to be assessed on their ability to deliver sustainable development and assess whether the designs for urban renewal are effective. The government could update the urban renewal program based on the results of evaluation, arrange the put scales to achieve the best goals of sustainable development.