Sustainable Development and the Rehabilitation of a Historic Urban District - Social Sustainability in the Case of Tianzifang in Shanghai

Abstract

Conservation of historic buildings and streets through rehabilitation is growing rapidly in many countries. The extent to which this approach is conducive to the aims of social sustainability has yet to be investigated. This study examines the attributes and factors that contribute to socially sustainable development in the rehabilitation of historic districts. A historic district in Shanghai, China, is used as a case study. The study area, Tianzifang, is a community‐initiated rehabilitation, which has conserved traditional residential houses and old factories and transformed them into a community for creative industry. Site observations, personal interviews and questionnaire surveys of public opinion were conducted to examine the contributing factors. Through a literature review, fieldwork and a pilot study, 21 factors were identified as contributing social sustainability to the rehabilitation of historic districts and form the basis of the analysis of the case study and the opinion survey exercise. Through factor analysis, the underlying social sustainability factors that embrace the 21 attributes were derived. In order of importance, the social sustainability factors are ‘Maintain good physical condition to fulfill educational role’, ‘Provide public involvement opportunities’, ‘Enhance sense of place and local culture’, ‘Enhance cultural identity and collective memory’ and ‘Retain significant meanings and associations to the community’. This study presents a framework to understand the underlying factors for socially sustainable rehabilitation of historic districts, which provides insights for professionals and communities to design and implement rehabilitation strategies. The framework also provides a reference to examine other complex heritage sites worldwide. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Stakeholders’ Expectations in Urban Renewal Projects in China: A Key Step towards Sustainability

“…Levine and Forrence [103] state that to define public interest, it is crucial to assess the scenarios concerning relevant public, demands, and restraints, etc. Understanding and providing the basic needs of affected residents are key elements of social sustainability in urban renewal [47]. If the affected residents cannot really benefit from the achievement of public interest, urban renewal will never meet the expectation of sustainability.…”

“…The key aspects of social sustainability in urban development include distribution of power and resources, participation in decision making, justice and equity in public issues, and provision of basic needs (e.g., housing, education, employment, etc.) [45][46][47][48][49]. However, the urban system is involved in performing social-economic functions [50].…”

Urban Social Sustainability Trends in Research Literature

“…Different aspects in reviewing social sustainability in relation to urban studies include social equity (highlighted in almost every references), satisfaction of human need (Littig & Griessler, 2005;Gates & Lee, 2005;Ancell & Thompson-Fawcett, 2008), well-being (Barron & Gauntlett, 2002;Chiu,2003;Castillo et al, 2007;Hancock, 2009;Magis & Shinn, 2009), quality of life (Yiftachel & Hedgcock, 1993;Polese & Stren, 2000;Enyedi, 2002;McKenzie, 2004;Colantonio, 2010), social interaction, cohesion and inclusion (Yiftachel & Hedgcock, 1993 of community (Barron & Gauntlett, 2002 ;Castillo et al, 2007;Colantonio, 2010;Landorf, 2011, Woodcraft, Hackett & Caistor-arendar, 2011) and sense of place (Chan & Lee, 2008;Colantonio & Dixon, 2011;Yung, Chan & Xu, 2011;Yung & Chan, 2012).…”

“…Discussions on urban social sustainability have been scoped from macro level-regional (Spangenberg & Omann, 2006) and city (Barron & Gauntlett, 2002), to micro level urban units-urban district (Yung, Chan & Xu, 2011), neighborhood Chiu, 2003), project (Enyedi, 2002) and building (Bollo, 2012). Studies on the first three urban units, were brought in Table 5.…”

“…Any sustainability discussions originate from the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development (UNCED) report, Our Common Future -known as "the Brundtland report" (Partridge, 2005). Since the late 1990's, sustainability has come to be the pervasive goal of urban planning, (Yung, Chan & Xu, 2011) and due to the growing urban population, cities play imperative roles in sustainable development . Among the three stated pillars, social aspect of sustainability is the least studied and, only has been seriously considered after the year 2000.…”