Urban Conservation and Management Practice in China

Since the economic reform, the rapid urbanization of Chinese cities has greatly speeded up the demolition of historic urban fabric in the old cities. The relationship between conservation and development has become contradictory and competing. In recent years, urban planning in China aims to optimize the existing built environment with features of ‘small-scale and incremental’ urban renewal and heritage conservation. Nanjing as a typical historic city is chosen to elaborate the evaluation and management framework proposed by the local planning authority. Two historic urban areas, Hehuatang and Diaoyutai, are taken as an example to introduce how this framework could help evaluate building values, build up their hierarchical order and generate different conservation and redevelopment strategies accordingly.