Scale and composition, a strategy of redeveloping the historic area in Shanghai Old Town

Abstract

The old town of Shanghai is the cradle of Shanghai city and still at the centre of the grand urban pattern. Being an important historical and cultural area, together with its surrounding district formed the core of the city's economy, public activity and culture. The renewal of the old town will also be a crucial component of the establishment of Shanghai as a distinct global city which combines difficulties from all aspect of the economic sustainability and cultural feature and no longer can be avoided in the following development. Complicated and specific issues could be located in the renovation and design of the old town. And this study mainly hopes to discuss the realization of the cultural feature and the urban fabric in the process of redevelopment, focusing a certain area of the old town. The area selected was the block between Wangyun Road and middle Henan Road, in the centre of the old town, which significantly influenced the continuity of the urban fabric, as the object of the research. Through detailed mapping and field visits, we explored the variegated and spontaneous spatial characteristics of the town’s fabric and the unique local humanistic structure reflected in between. Searching for a way to achieve the integral development and cultural continuity in the context of local urban renewal. Through research, we found that in the old town of Shanghai which has the characteristics of Jiangnan water town landscape and Lilong Shikumen residence, scale and composition are important factors for understanding the spatial and humanistic structure of this area, corresponding to the richness of morphological texture and the anfractuous spatial network. On this basis, attempt to propose a method of typifying different scales and combinations, thus, achieve the goal of guiding the following practice of the local urban redevelopment.