Neighborhood ribbon integrated with local provision and public-shared space

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, new urbanization has become an irresistible trend in China. Significant portions of the country's rural areas have become new urban communities of China's transformation. Generally, the so-called `enclosed' residential compound represents the typical prototype living environment in the urban areas. Most of these compounds are fenced and inward focused to distinguish the private courtyards and public streets. Within these residential compounds, the quality of individual apartment units has improved significantly compared with the housing types decades ago. However, the isolated local service provision is insufficient to support the new large scale residential areas; moreover, the shared public spaces between the individual residential compounds are under utilized, mainly because they are lack activity spaces. Outside of the residential compound, the retail storefronts and community centers are highly commercialized, but the adjacent pedestrian zones and landscape areas are underdeveloped. The newly developed residential compounds in Chinese cities are disconnected from the existing urban context, and in fact, they remain isolated housing developments separated by the urban infrastructure such as highways, subways and ring roads. Therefore, the new Chinese communities require considerable new investment in new community infrastructure. This thesis will engage the existing urban issue at a neighborhood scale, and attempt to develop an armature to improve the service network across multiple neighborhoods. New services will help to reshape the residential community by activating the boundary of enclosed residential compounds to provide diverse facilities and extend the vivid living environment towards the new urban context. The making of community is an active social process in which people consciously engage. It is not something that happens once, but something that is continually being constructed and is evolving like a natural environment. The proposed community hub will serve as an active ribbon to bridge two different urban scales: neighborhood and urban infrastructure. On one hand, the ribbon opens several adjacent `enclosed' residential compounds, different functions merge into the isolated residential blocks, and connect together to create a better shared-living neighborhood. On the other hand, the local community hub will join the city's infrastructure to improve accessibility and enable the neighborhood supply on a large scale.