Conversation on Saving Historical Communities: A Participatory Renewal and Preservation Platform

[摘要] What if stakeholders, architects, and developers/bureaucrats could be in a conversation about preservation? By comparing two preservation case studies in Hong Kong and mainland China, and their different results, based on the different levels of democratic involvement and collaboration, the problems of preserving community heritage in mainland China are obvious: lack of authority, financial support, knowledge of preservation, and requests for development. Residents, students, and citizens want to preserve the history and living environment of the community, but bureaucrats want to demolish entire communities and rebuild for economic development. Architects do not often have enough input and rarely collaborate with each other, while preservationists try to save every piece of historical heritage. Thus, a platform is proposed here, to bring together voices from all the relevant participants, to promote democratic communication between politicians and ordinary people, to create multiple architectural proposals for development reference based on crowdsourced materials. Furthermore, to establish an experienceable digital world, archived from the evidence uploaded by stakeholders of heritages marked by bureaucrats for demolition. In the end, win or lose, the stakeholders will have a digital archive and exploring tool of the (former) building.

[发布机构] MIT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge; MA; 20139-4307, United States^1

[学科分类] 土木及结构工程学

[关键词] Digital archives;Digital world;Economic development;Financial support;Historical heritages;Living environment;Mainland chinas;Ordinary people