Toward Multi-interest Cooperation: Researchon Chinese Old City Renewal In The Perspective Of Urban Regime Theory

In the 21st century, China is still in the process of rapid urbanization. At the same time, China is also faced with another problem—Old City Renewal.With the rapid urbanization process, the Old City Renewal is faced with enormous pressure, which has triggered a series of contradictions and conflicts. Even in some areas, these contradictions and conflicts have gradually evolved into destructive factors which will endanger the public order. Therefore, it is extremely urgent and important to clarify the root causes of conflicts and explore the suitable mode of China’s Old City Renewal.The Old City Renewalis essentially driven by the internal power structure and the interests of the city. When this kind of power structure appears out of balance and the relations of interests are difficult to coordinate, the various contradictions which are hidden in the old city renewal will appear in many different forms.The Urban Regime Theory proposed by western scholars is a theoretical model to explore the political structure and the power problem of the city, which is accorded with the practice of the Old City Renewal in China. The core issue of the Urban Regime Theory is:there are three principal force including government, private organizations and the public in the city, and resource is jointly owned by them all rather than by the main part of the monopoly. Under these conditions, it is important to discuss how to construct stable and informal relationships to realize the goal of coordination and development. This theoretical model has strong explanatory power for the analysis of the history and current situation of China’s old city renewal.This paper described the background, basic content and development of the Urban Regime Theory in detail. Then on the basis of analyzing the current situation of the old city renewal, this paper believes that the theory has strong applicability in China. This paper selects Furong Street historic district as the main case, and divides the process into four stages from the perspective of the Urban Regime Theory, such as the period of Maintenance Regime, the period of exploration of Development Regime, the period of maturity of Development Regime and the period of recession of Development Regime. After that, this paper discusses the roles and acting forces of government, investors, residents and other participants in different historical stages, and summarizes the law. Then, this paper tries to build up the innovative Cooperation Regime Model with strong explanatory power in the current city of diversification.The broader model advocates the multi participation and cooperation of government, investors and the public to clarify ideas of researchers and practitioners and to provide a new reference for the future development of China’s Old City Renewal.