2001 — Positioning Our City (Part 3)
3. After lengthy reflection, the author believes our city should be positioned as: a landscape ecological tourism city with distinctive regional culture and ethnic characteristics. The basis and rationale for this positioning. (1) Individuality: the foundation of urban positioning. Cities need individuality. Individuality is a tourism resource. In my humble opinion, an individualized city is what Premier Zhu Rongji referred to as
This article has been compiled from historical materials in the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com · City Overview section). Some administrative divisions, population, socioeconomic data, and policy information may be outdated and are for reference only; for the latest situation, please refer to official releases by the local government and scenic areas.
III. After a relatively long period of reflection, the author believes that our city's positioning should be: a landscape ecological tourism city with distinctive regional culture and ethnic characteristics. The basis and reasons for this positioning.
(1) Individuality: the foundation of urban positioning.
Cities need individuality. Individuality is tourism resource.
In my humble opinion, an individualized city is what Premier Zhu Rongji meant by "craftsmanship."
In today's Chinese cities, as Mr. Li Xiaoshan said, there is now a desperate expansion and swelling, allowing the foam of quantity to cover the beauty of quality, and it seems there is no time to pay attention to individuality and unique appearance. As a result, urban construction generally tends toward a single model, and the planning and positioning of the vast majority of cities have lost or are losing local characteristics. Therefore, placing our city's positioning on the basis of individuality, making it unique and outstanding among the Chinese cities that all look the same, and making people look at it with new eyes, is truly a crucial link.
Mcharg of the University of Pennsylvania in the United States was the first to propose using the concept of landscape ecological design to plan cities. Mr. Liu Jiali once wrote an article discussing the five principles distilled and summarized in the process of using this design principle to guide the planning and construction of Changsha City, namely the principle of nature first, the principle of overall design, the principle of comprehensive design, the people-oriented principle, and the principle of local characteristics. The author deeply agrees. Moreover, Changsha is the capital of our province, and we are relatively familiar with its geographical environment, historical evolution, development trajectory, resource conditions, and so on. Through comparative study of their urban positioning process, the author feels it is very worth our city's planning and construction departments learning from and drawing on. Some of their practices and views, to a large extent, influenced the author's proposal of the theme words for our city's positioning.
(2) On "landscape."
According to the principle of nature first, they preserved such precious natural resources as Changsha's Yuelu Mountain, Tianma Mountain, Gushan, the Xiang River, the Liuyang River, Juzhou Island, and the dense large and small lakes and suburban fields inside and outside the city in their original appearance and natural charm, so as to highlight the urban substance of "mountains, water, islets, and city" as the foundation and premise for building an ecological landscape city. Obviously, this conception is very wise. As Mr. Liu Jiali says, the natural environment of a region is the most basic embodiment of local characteristics. In the huge living entity that is a city, natural ecology becomes the most basic and most powerful guarantee sustaining the city's life functions, so when carrying out urban planning, one should naturally attach great importance and at least minimal respect to the natural environment of the urban area.
According to this principle, when we compare it with our city, we immediately find the shining points: the mountains surrounding the city, represented by Tianmen Mountain, and the Lishui River passing through the city. Changsha has the Xiang River with the beauty of a young married woman; we have the Lishui River with the beauty of a village girl—in this item we are evenly matched. But the quality of our mountains is much higher. Yuelu Mountain obviously cannot compare with our Tianmen Mountain. Tianmen Mountain is majestic and imposing in its mountain forms, with an indescribably beautiful skyline, just like a huge natural screen. Not only in Changsha, but among all tourism cities in China, probably only Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in Lijiang, Yunnan, in relation to the Lijiang urban area can compare with our Tianmen Mountain in relation to the urban area. Therefore, how to fully understand and examine this basic natural environment is likewise the foundation and premise for positioning our city.
In the near term, with "culture in the west, commerce in the east" as its framework, Changsha is making bold efforts to build the scenic belts on the east and west banks of the Xiang River into Changsha's "Manhattan" and "Washington." Just as the author was writing this article, Hunan TV reported that provincial leaders including Yang Zhengwu took a boat to inspect the Xiang River scenic belt linking the three cities. It can be foreseen that with the acceleration of the integration process of "Changsha, Zhuzhou, and Xiangtan," once the Xiang River scenic belts of Changsha, Zhuzhou, and Xiangtan are planned and built as a whole, it will produce extraordinary influence throughout the world.
From this we can gain sufficient inspiration: first, incorporate the surrounding mountain bodies represented by Tianmen Mountain National Forest Park into the city's overall plan and carry out planning and design for them as a whole; second, take the Lishui River passing through the city as the axis and make the article of the scenic belts on the north and south banks full and lively; third, according to the views of Mr. Qian Xuesen and Mr. Chen Congzhou, while making full use of natural terrain such as being near mountains and by water, introduce forests into the city, introduce animals into the city, introduce classical gardens into the city, and introduce lakes into the city, and through man-made landscapes, plan and build the city into a higher-level landscape city. There are many landscape cities, such as Changsha and Guilin. But when it comes to a specific city, its particular natural environment has a "singularity" that no other landscape can duplicate or replace; fully bringing it out will highlight individuality.
This is the reason and original intention for the author's prefixing the term "landscape" before "ecological tourism city."
(3) On "regional culture and ethnic characteristics."
A city's cultural taste directly affects the city's image.
A city lacking culture is an anemic city.
"Urban culture includes such basic elements as urban architectural culture, natural culture, historical culture, ethnic culture, urban-area culture, and spiritual culture, and these elements need to be fully embodied through urban planning. That is, the urban master plan is the soul through which these urban cultural elements are fully embodied, while the urban master plan and its construction in turn depend on these urban cultural elements to be displayed completely" (words of Qu Feng). Take architectural culture as an example: the Miao people's stilted ganlan-style buildings, the Bouyei people's stone-slab houses, the Dong people's drum towers and wind-and-rain bridges, the Hui people's mosques, the Gelao people's trailing-tail buildings, the Tujia people's daoxiang and erfang buildings, and so on. If they can be planned and built with exceptional craftsmanship, they will construct a vividly different "cultural history" and scroll after scroll of colorful "folk-custom paintings," which can both refract rich cultural information and become highly attractive tourism resources. For example, Suzhou deliberately preserved and restored a large area of Jiangnan-style traditional architecture with blue tiles and white walls in the old city; Lijiang, merely on the strength of the large expanse of Naxi dwellings in the Old Town of Dayan, was actually included in the World Cultural Heritage list; there is also the ancient city of Pingyao, the Wang Family Compound, and Fenghuang in Xiangxi...
The predecessor of our city was once an ancient garrison town. After careful development during the Ming and Qing dynasties, its city walls, streets and alleys, temples, guild halls, memorial archways, ancestral halls, as well as ancient buildings such as the riverside stone-slab street and the riverside clusters of stilted houses, presented a magnificent sight, thus leaving behind the reputation of "Little Nanjing." Unfortunately, half a century of "reconstruction and development" has basically razed them all.
We know that a city's direct impression comes from its spatial experience; streets, buildings, transportation, greening, and so on are all divisions and uses of space. But our current urban architecture is basically all plain "run-of-the-mill goods," with no characteristics or individuality to speak of, and no one who sees it is satisfied. Then, how should existing buildings be packaged? What style should future buildings be standardized into? How should urban architecture in urban planning embody regional culture and ethnic characteristics? These are issues before us that must be solved. Jianghua Yao Autonomous County in Hunan positioned its county seat as "China's No. 1 Yao City," and with the Panwang Hall as the main body, planned and built a Yao-flavored cultural building complex including the stilted-building corridor, Panwang City, Yao Village, Yao Pond, Shangwubao Yao dwellings, and a Yao customs performance hall, supported the development of Yao song-and-dance art troupes, and supported manufacturers processing Yao home-style cooked foods, local specialties, and clothing, and so on. Although it is still in the initial stage, this positioning and line of thinking are on the right track. In fact, its planning and architecture have already reached into many fields such as architectural culture, food culture, clothing culture, religious culture, ethnic art, and urban-area culture. Can our urban planning and construction draw some inspiration from this?
Someone suggested that, taking advantage of the opportunity of building flood-control dikes and renovating the riverside street, a row of stilted buildings several thousand meters long be built along the embankment, and an antique-style street fully embodying regional culture and ethnic characteristics be built, to recreate the series of ancient cultural buildings and Tujia customs, practices, charms, and features that the old garrison town has lost. The author thinks this is not a bad option worth considering. Just imagine: with the railway station relocated to Guanliping, and the Guanyin Bridge connecting the north and south of Lingyuan Road becoming a throat passage that tourists must pass through, the visual impact created by the stilted-building cluster and antique-style street, once they reach scale and momentum, will surely become an excitement point and brand for this city.
This theme slogan the author gives to the city's positioning is a modifier-head phrase. The reason for adding the modifier "with distinctive regional culture and ethnic characteristics" before "landscape ecological tourism city" is precisely to hold firmly to individuality and characteristics.
(4) On "ecology."
Urban planning must include a chapter on urban ecological planning. The word "ecology" that the author gives to the city's positioning should contain two aspects: first, natural ecology marked by greening and gardenization, so that as soon as people get off the plane or train they feel they have entered a scenic area, setting off the mountain-top forest sightseeing ecological tourism and producing the effect of strengthening Zhangjiajie's tourism image; second, a three-dimensional ecosystem including society, economy, and nature, so that every aspect of citizens' life and work embodies a good ecological environment, and every aspect of tourists' eating, lodging, traveling, touring, and shopping embodies the charm of "ecology."