【Hot Spot Observation】
Author: Yu Xiaozhi (Professor, School of Liberal Arts, Beijing Language and Culture University)
An urbanist once said that cities are containers of culture. In the history of urban development, cultural heritage such as archways, courtyards, streets, and old houses accumulated in different eras constitutes the basic form of urban civilization. These valuable cultural heritages are not only living traditions, but also the historical context that represents the uniqueness of the city. Taking the capital Beijing as an example, the city currently has 7 world cultural heritages, 3840 immovable cultural relics, 43 historical and cultural blocks, more than 500 historical buildings (groups), and more than 200 national and municipal intangible cultural heritages. These are all unique cultural resources in Beijing. It is precisely because of their existence that Beijing has its own unique ancient capital temperament. Protecting, inheriting and making good use of cultural heritage is conducive to activating urban vitality, shaping urban brands and increasing urban charm.
From local to holistic: activate urban life
The city is a living organism that needs to be constantly renewed. However, urban renewal faces many paradoxes, such as large-scale demolition and improper renovation and renewal will lead to the disappearance of the old city style; if the cultural heritage and historical and cultural blocks are sealed and solidified, it will lose its vitality and use value. For ancient capitals such as Beijing, the protection of cultural heritage can neither carry out large-scale transformation of the city, nor can it seal and solidify the cultural heritage, but should adopt a gradual, point-and-surface urban renewal method. Specifically, the principle of minimum intervention and maximum concealment should be followed, and under the premise of protecting the overall historical style of the city, the necessary small-scale upgrading of the old city should be carried out, and the infrastructure should be revitalized, and the old city should be renewed in the order of "point (cultural heritage building), line (historical and cultural block), and surface (living urban space)".
A bookstore converted from an old city building, photographed by Han Yeting
In recent years, the old city of Beijing, where cultural heritage is relatively concentrated, has stopped large-scale urban transformation and construction activities, and urban renewal has begun to shift from extensive incremental development to refined stock development. From the perspective of protecting cultural heritage, the renewal and renovation of the old city needs to further shift from "partial" to "holistic", that is, from the narrow sense of cultural relics protection to macroscopic landscape protection, to achieve "see this (single cultural relics) and see the other (overall landscape)".
The author suggests that the relevant departments can formulate organically updated implementation rules for the specific conditions of different cultural heritage and historical districts in Beijing, incorporate protection requirements and updated norms into the detailed planning system, and introduce a comprehensive and feasible plan for the renewal of the old city that is applicable to daily management and control. Specifically, first of all, the buildings in the area where the cultural heritage is located are classified in detail, and the statutory key cultural relics protection units, historical buildings with obvious characteristics that are worth preserving, buildings that are allowed to be demolished and reconstructed, and dangerous houses and illegal buildings that should be demolished; secondly, on the basis of fine planning, establish a city-wide spatial information platform to coordinate different elements such as housing management, streets, city appearance, municipal administration, greening, cultural tourism, and commercial investment, and promote the iteration of the full-factor spatial model; finally, The use of digital technology to build a technical system for information capture and decision-making support, combined with cloud data analysis for daily management and local transformation, comprehensively promote the development of "one axis, one city, two parks and three belts, one district and one center" key work.
Located in a corner of the Ming City Wall within beijing's West Second Ring Road, photographed by Han Yeting
From static to active: to achieve the integration of cultural heritage and the lives of the masses
In the process of urbanization in the past few decades, there are three tendencies in urban change: first, the old buildings in the historical district are torn down and a considerable number of high-rise buildings are rebuilt, the consequence of which is that the original style of the city is changed and the cultural atmosphere of the ancient capital is lost; the second is that the residents of the historical district build privately, resulting in extremely dense houses, too strong commercial atmosphere, excessive population density, and squeezed green space and leisure space; third, the reshaping of the historical and cultural urban area does not fully consider the cultural value carried by the artifacts and buildings, and adopts "static protection" The method of simply sealing it away, resulting in the separation of cultural heritage from the lives of citizens. The author believes that the protection and utilization of cultural heritage and historical and cultural blocks should focus on four basic dimensions: the economic dimension of improving regional functions, the social dimension of paying attention to the lives of the people, the cultural dimension of preserving the historical context, and the morphological dimension of focusing on urban characteristics.
Culture is a factor that should be paid special attention to in the protection and utilization of cultural heritage and historical and cultural districts. When urban renewal, the "preserved" culture should not exist merely as a static rhetorical "architecture". Taking the commercial transformation of Nanluoguxiang in Beijing as an example, the old houses in Nanluoguxiang have not been demolished, and the culture with architectural symbols as the carrier has been retained, but the users of the houses have changed from residents to merchants, the original community culture has been cut off, the social integration between residents and tourists, residents and merchants has been highlighted, and the culture has been alienated into a hollow symbol and become an ornament in the process of conspicuous consumption.
Taierzhuang Ancient City Photo by Han Yeting
In order to make cultural heritage a living culture, it is not possible to carry out museum-style protection of cultural heritage, but must rely on people for living inheritance, that is, natural inheritance in the daily life of the people. For example, experimental stage interaction and activity spaces can be set up in the protected area (cultural core area) to stimulate the cultural consciousness of community residents in the way of "government guidance and enterprise operation"; specific cultural spaces can also be micro-transformed, such as adding community art galleries, art galleries, creative bookstores, ecological green spaces, etc., to achieve the living integration of cultural heritage, historical and cultural blocks and people's lives.
From things to people: focus on the lives of people in historic districts
The purpose of urban renewal, in the final analysis, is to maintain the vitality of the city and continue the vitality of the city, and the vitality and vitality of the city, in addition to the hardware, lies in culture and history. The protection of the city's cultural heritage is to preserve the memory of the city and preserve the history and culture of the city.
When describing his view of the historic city of Paris, the writer Feng Jicai once said that the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame in Paris are only "several dazzling top symbols of history", while the real sense of history of Paris is expressed in the old streets and old houses in the city, because there is living history in these former spaces, flesh and blood, vivid and real.
Historical buildings and historic districts are static cultures, and the people who live in them are always mobile, and their living habits are passed down from generation to generation, forming a vivid and warm folk culture, which is very worth discovering, remembering and preserving. Therefore, the best urban memory not only exists in the landmark buildings of the city, but also in the details of the life and people's livelihood stories of urban residents. The vivid people's livelihood stories that have occurred or are happening in the city's historical and cultural blocks, like the invisible capillaries of the block, connect the lives and emotions of urban residents, and are also the best portrayal of a certain section of urban history and a certain aspect of urban culture.
Therefore, in the process of exploring the protection of cultural heritage and historical and cultural blocks, it is not only necessary to operate from the perspective of protecting cultural relics, the perspective of pursuing history, and the perspective of artistic aesthetics, but also from the perspective of caring for people and understanding people, caring for the living conditions of ordinary people living in the historical district at present, continuing the original social structure and cultural ecology of the historical district as much as possible, and establishing communities with residence as the main form such as the "Old Beijing Cultural Living Museum". Make cultural heritage and historical and cultural neighborhoods no longer a lifeless hardware display.
From Stock to Flow: Advancing the Digitization of Cultural Heritage
To revitalize and utilize cultural heritage, it is necessary to increase social interaction through cultural heritage, break through the time and space restrictions of dissemination, and build a new mode of communication. The digitization, digitization and Internet of Things of cultural heritage are effective means to achieve these goals.
The value of cultural heritage can not be separated from its original social system, in the digital dissemination of cultural heritage, not only should we pay attention to the media's information presentation and symbolic expression at the artifact level of cultural heritage, but also use the communication advantages of new media to explain the symbolic meaning and meaning of cultural heritage. The dissemination of cultural heritage is the process of adding value to cultural heritage. Therefore, cultural heritage cannot be regarded as a stock, for example, cultural heritage should be regarded as cultural relics, relics, non-animals, obsolete objects, etc., but should be regarded as dynamic traffic - with the application of multimedia, Internet, AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality) and other technologies in the cultural field, the appeal, dissemination and influence of cultural heritage will be unprecedentedly enhanced.
In addition, we should also promote the dataization and Internet of Things of cultural heritage, that is, establish a data system for the virtual and real interaction of cultural heritage and a database of cultural heritage visitors, conduct cultural heritage visit recommendation based on data comparison analysis, and accurately promote cultural heritage or brand unified promotion. The digitization, digitization and Internet of Things of cultural heritage can, on the one hand, build a platform for the linkage display of intangible cultural heritage and tangible cultural heritage, and on the other hand, it is conducive to the brand building of cultural heritage in cyberspace.
In general, the use of modern technological means to revitalize and utilize cultural heritage can not only bring economic benefits, but also produce social benefits, but also have cultural benefits that highlight the cultural characteristics of the city, and can enhance the charm and international influence of the city.
(This paper is the result of the Beijing Tangible Cultural Heritage Activation and Utilization Countermeasures [21JCB016] of the Beijing Social Science Foundation Decision-making Consulting Project)
Guangming Daily ( 2022-03-02 13th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily