Imitation, Reference, and Exploration—Development Path to Urban Renewal in China (1985-2017)

Abstract

In China, the field of urban renewal is one of the core concepts within the disciplines of urbanism and architecture. After decades of economic growth, many issues have been added to the field of urban development, which has diversified significantly. To comprehensively understand the developmental context of urban renewal in China, this paper starts from the urban and architectural disciplines, combined with the international background of urban regeneration, and systematically analyzes the progress of urban renewal in China from 1985 to 2017. Four major research themes are summarized and divided into three stages of development with the aim of chronologically sorting the contexts and trends of urban renewal in the thirty years since China’s “Open Door Policy.”