Tag Archives: historic preservation

Jilong Village ruins

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In the ongoing rush to raze urban villages, vestiges of the actual old villages have suddenly assumed an almost mythic aura and handshakes seem classically urbane. The latest example? Remnants of Jilong Village, one of the four neighborhood/ villages that constitute Huanggang (the other three are Shangwei, Xiawei, and Huanggang New Villages) are currently being renovated in the shaded grove next to Huanggang Plaza and now flicker with ancient promise. As close as half a year ago, migrant workers rented these decaying row houses; now, visions of a Huanggang Xintiande dance in my head. A few pictures, below.

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Thinking conservation: whose lives matter?

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Thursday last (Feb 16), the Hong Kong version of the bi-city biennale opened and then on Friday afternoon, Shenzhen began its closing events with a series of roundtable panels. Along with moderator Juan DU, architect Ben Wood, and urban planner Michael Gallagher, I participated in panel #2, contemporary perspectives on preservation.

We agreed that history should serve living people and thus conservation was not a question of saving old buildings for their own sake. Rather, what is conserved are patterns of human relation and environments that support those relationships. In this sense, any act of conservation entails a value judgment; whose lives do we wish to strengthen and deepen by creating sites that reference the past?

Not unexpectedly, it was at this moment of making value judgements that our differences became clear precisely because history serves different purposes in different social groups. Continue reading →

Awkward Encounters: Urban Planning, Historic Preservation, and the Persistence of Rural Forms in Shenzhen

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I participated in the “Learning from Shenzhen” Symposium on Dec 10, 2011, which was part of the biennale. For the curious, I’ve uploaded o’donnell-awkward encounters, a pdf file of images and arguments from the paper I gave.

Impressions of the differences between Nantou and neighboring villages

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Guankou and Yijia Villages are located just outside the Nantou Old Town Arch and revamped walking museumon by way othe Shennan Road – Nanxin Road pedestrian overpass. The villages abut each other along the old, narrow road, which used to run parallel to Yuehai Bay and connected Nantou to Shekou. Guankou and Yijia are slated for renovation at some point in the future. In the meantime, they are “just places where poor people live” as someone said to me, indicating disapproval of my photo-walk through the two neighborhoods.

Guankou and Yijia interest me because the village architecture is actually older than much found in the Nantou Old Town walking museum. Many Nantou residents built handshake buildings before the area was designated for historic preservation. Consequently, what remains in Nantou are handshake and factory buildings from the early 1990s, as well as particular buildings that had been designated historic landmarks. In contrast, the old centers of Guankou and Yijia were untouched during the 1990s village building spree and littered (and I use the word deliberately) with all sorts of old and interesting buildings.

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Now, inquiring minds may wonder: why is Nantou, the imperial capital of the area with a 1,000 year history gutted of historical architecture (except in the renovating) and Guankou and Yijia not? Continue reading →