Green Spaces and the Spontaneous Renewal of Historic Neighborhoods: A Case Study of Beijing’s Dashilar Community

Abstract

Renewal projects dealing with public spaces in Chinese historic neighborhoods were mainly dominated by government entities and experts, but their increasing commercialization and standardization did not fully meet the residents’ needs. In this context, resident-driven regeneration practices centered on small-scale gardening are becoming more popular as an alternative. However, few studies focused on the strengths and intentions of these informal gardens and the implications for the renewal of public space in historical communities. A case study was carried out in the Dashilar area, a historical community with numerous informal gardens. Specifically, resident-led community gardens were first sampled and investigated. Second, the components of these gardens were identified and classified with multiple indicators. Third, agglomerative hierarchical clustering was applied to distinguish the different types and the resident needs behind them, and two kinds of renewal projects were compared. The results show that the spontaneous actions and participation of residents, drawing on local knowledge, are critical to the popularity of informal community gardens among local residents, which is also supplementary to the current organizational mechanisms of public space renewal in historical communities. Our research is expected to enrich the research contents of urban green spaces and provide theoretical support for the sustainable development and renewal of historic neighborhoods.