Research On Urban Heritage Conservation In The View Of People-Oriented

Since 1990s, China has been in an era that city problems frequently occurred. The extension of urban scale has exceeded the capacity of resources and environment, obviously increased social and ecological costs. A large number of agricultural populations have transferred to the cities and towns, but they could not fully integrate into the city, severely aggravated the tensing social conflict, as well as retarding the process of civic society. Urban heritage has been demolished seriously in the past twenty years. Many historic cities have to face the crisis of distinguished features.To a large number of urban heritages which have precious historical, cultural and emotional values, as Charles Dickens says,"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." On one hand, generally speaking, the awareness of cultural heritage has improved among government officials and general public. Financial, technical, talent and legal support for heritage conservation has significantly increased. Heritage conservation has been becoming an important standard of urban development. On the other hand, with numerous large-scale and benefit-oriented redevelopment projects emerged in historic cities, places for collective memory disappeared as time went on. Authentic features of culture has gradually replaced by duplicate and meaningless urban landscape. Because of the absence of humanistic caring, the existing idea and method of conservation aggravated the gentrification and isolation of urban heritages by undermining their social adaptation and traditional humanistic ecology.People-oriented path of urbanization produces development opportunities for urban heritage conservation, meanwhile, endowing urban heritage conservation with contemporary responsibilities. The current missions of urban heritage conservation include alleviating the crisis of urban identity, enhancing the competitiveness of urban culture and promoting sustainable development of urban society. This dissertation based on the view of "people-oriented" examines the importance, characteristics and practical dilemma of urban heritage conservation in China, mainly answering three questions:What is the view of people-oriented in the context of urban heritage conservation? Why urban heritage conservation need the view of people-oriented? How to realize the view of people-oriented in urban heritage conservation? Furthermore, the author gives some strategic advises to realize the balance of heritage conservation, urban construction, economic growth and livelihood improvement.This dissertation is composed of four parts.The first part is the introduction of whole research, including the subject, background, structure and method of research, literature review and innovation points.The second part expounds the necessity and inevitability of the view of people-oriented in urban heritage conservation. Above all, people-oriented is the core of social development in contemporary China, urban heritage conservation should obey the trend of social development. Secondly, because of the special urban nature and diversified value, urban heritage has become one the most important cultural resources of urban society. Appropriate conservation and utilization of heritage also become a social affair that concerns material livelihood improvement and emotional livelihood satisfaction. Thirdly, the current dilemmas of urban heritage in China actually reflect the absence of humanistic concern in prior construction and conservation of cities. Therefore, the view of people-oriented is the inevitable choice and essential approach to solve practical difficulties and harmonize the relationship between conservation and development in urban societies.The third part studies the approaches to people-oriented conservation of urban heritage. The stakeholders of urban heritage conservation include the government, enterprises, non-profit organazationsand the general public. These groups and individuals have different attitude and variable interests. In urban heritage conservation, people-oriented means respecting the dominant role and key function of citizens, satisfying the need of comprehensive development, and promoting the combination between heritage conservation and social life. Public participation can contribute to the coordination of conflicting interests among different stakeholders and realizing the dynamic balance, in order to promote the genuine conservation and inheritance of urban heritage.The last part is the conclusion part, summarizing the dissertation based on the above research. Instead of negative and isolated preservation of historic relics in urban area, people-oriented conservation of urban heritage emphasizes comprehensive conservation and rational utilization of urban heritage of different historic periods or heritage forms, as well as maintaining precious collective memory and Genius Loci in urban environment. The organic combination of heritage conservation and urban life will be an effective way to promote the sustainable capacity of social development.