The Twilight of Shenzhens Great Urban Village: Renovation of Baishizhou to Sustain Local Vitality and Improve Living Conditions

Abstract

This paper examines the ongoing demolition of Shenzhens largest urban village, Baizhizhou, where poor living conditions and local vitality coexist. We focus on peoples attitudes towards the demolition project and investigate how to renovate Baishizhou to enhance living conditions and sustain local vitality simultaneously. By conducting field research through surveys and interviews with current residents of Baishizhou, we find that people are concerned about their displacement and the disappearance of community culture. Also, people reckon natural lighting and overcrowdedness are the main needed-for-improvement aspects of their current living conditions. In discussion, we propose our replan of Baishizhou in zoning and architectural design to solve the issues we found. We believe that the renovation of Baishizhou should be both human-oriented and practicality centered, which would have multiple implications for the redevelopment of urban villages in modern China.