2004—Planning the City with Cultural Concepts (Part 2)
II. Comprehensively plan the urban area's tourism destination development with cultural concepts. Planning a city with cultural concepts first means taking a macro, overall view—devising and determining a city's basic style, layout, and direction. Then it means letting culture permeate every detail of the city and cover all areas of both hardware and software construction, so that cultural landscapes and facilities...
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 Some administrative divisions, population, socioeconomic data, and policy information may be outdated and are for reference only; for the latest situation, please refer to official releases by the local government and scenic areas.
Second, comprehensively plan the construction of the tourist destination in the urban area with cultural concepts.
To plan a city with cultural concepts, the first step is to take a macro-level overall view of the whole situation, plan and determine a city's basic style, layout, and direction; the next is to let culture permeate every detail of the city and cover every field of both the city's hardware construction and software construction, so that cultural landscapes and facilities make tourists linger and forget to return. (1) Highlight characteristics and accurately position our city.
The key to positioning a city's image lies in finding and highlighting the characteristics that distinguish this city from others. Characteristics mean cultural taste; characteristics mean visibility; characteristics mean the reason and charm by which this city stands out and rises above the crowd; characteristics mean "selling points." Where are the potential characteristics of our city? What kind of city do we actually want to build? What exactly should be the accurate image positioning for our city? In recent years, slogans such as "international tourism new city," "garden city," "ecological city," "forest city," and "landscape city with ethnic characteristics" have been proposed one after another. Now is the time to carefully sort out and refine them and make them clear.
(2) The urgent task is to transform the city's visual image.
Urban visual image refers to the city's external appearance, mainly including the city's spatial layout, the shapes, styles, and colors of buildings, as well as material carriers such as roads, squares, parks, sculptures, streetlights, railings, road signs, and advertisements. While strengthening urban management, reshaping and creating the city's external appearance is the urgent task of our city's urban construction.
1. Establish and implement the landscape principle in urban construction.
From the entire city down to a single street, a river embankment, a landmark building, the color of a row of streetlights, the shape of a trash bin, the pattern on a stone carving... whether the landscape principle is implemented makes the results completely different. The watershed lies in whether it is governed by cultural concepts.
Culture seems intangible, but in fact it is very tangible. Changde's simultaneous construction of a poetry wall on its flood-control embankment illustrates this very well: a flood-control embankment in the pure sense naturally has nothing cultural to speak of; but the comrades in Changde used the embankment as a carrier to create a cultural landscape recognized as a "Guinness World Record," and they kept making the cake bigger. Using the poetry wall as a carrier, they organized a poetry festival with considerable influence. It can be seen that whether culture serves as a guiding concept determines the quality and taste of a city's external image.
2. Establish and implement an urban architectural style with ethnic characteristics.
A distinctive city is marked by architecture with striking characteristics. Therefore, the city's architectural style should be established as soon as possible, so that buildings yet to be constructed have rules to follow, and existing buildings that need "dressing up" also have rules to follow. From our research, we learned that in our city's bidding, design, and approval of urban buildings, the responsibilities of the planning and design departments are not clearly defined. Therefore, responsibilities must be clarified, and an accountability system must be implemented. Once the architectural style and architectural colors are established, they should be enforced in the same way as the mandatory regulations on green space area for urban buildings, so as to prevent the breeding of garbage-type architecture.
Fortunately, some visionary, quality-minded, and responsible property owners and developers in our city have begun to adopt architectural styles with ethnic characteristics. Take the Nanzhuangping area as an example: commercial and residential communities such as Century Garden, all in a uniform ethnic style, give a very good impression; another example is the Municipal Tourism Bureau office building set within a courtyard, which looks very comfortable because it adopts the architectural elements and symbols of stilted houses. This October, the CPPCC organized members of the publicity and theory group to inspect western Hubei, and found that Hubei University for Nationalities in Enshi City has all its buildings in the same ethnic style, which left a deep impression on our delegation. Three things can be drawn from this for reference: first, the architectural style was determined at the very beginning of the institution's founding; second, once the architectural style was determined, successive leadership teams carried it through without compromise; third, what it determined was an architectural style with ethnic characteristics. Regarding urban architectural style, Secretary Liu Liwei said that we definitely cannot outdo others in building high-rises, but we are fully confident in pursuing ethnic style. We feel this sets the tone for the architectural style of the city's urban area. This is the product of cultural concepts acting upon urban architectural style.
As mentioned earlier, distinctiveness is the "selling point." Lijiang in Yunnan, relying on a large area of Naxi dwellings and Dongba culture, is located in a remote corner of the southwest, yet attracts so many Chinese and foreign tourists every year! The same is true of Zhouzhuang and Wuzhen; what first attracts people is their distinctive architecture, so different from the "matchboxes" of modern cities. Of course, when we use ethnic style today to guide urban architecture, it is by no means revivalism or a return to the old in any simplistic sense. Some comrades, upon hearing the words "ethnic style," think it means copying the stilted houses of the past, which is undoubtedly a rather thoughtless misunderstanding.
3. Use the construction of the Lishui Scenic Belt as a breakthrough point to create a highlight in the city's exterior image.
In shaping the exterior image of our city, we must by no means neglect Tianmen Mountain and the Lishui River, the soul of the mountains and the spirit of the waters. The Lishui River, which runs through the city, connects the old and new urban districts and mirrors the majestic posture of Tianmen. It is a place travelers must pass through when entering and leaving the airport, railway station, and bus station, and also a gathering place for residents' leisure. Therefore, taking the construction of the Lishui Scenic Belt as the entry point and breakthrough to create a highlight in the city's exterior image is probably the last card the old urban area has left in our hands.
However, if we do not carefully plan it with cultural concepts and vision, we will certainly lose this last card in our hands. In the city's tourism industry development plan compiled by the Municipal Planning Commission, there is a plan to build a covered pedestrian wind-and-rain bridge over the river outside Nanmenkou. The Municipal Transportation Investment Co., Ltd. accordingly prepared a feasibility study report, and at the review meeting chaired by the Municipal Planning Bureau, two senior professors from Tongji University and several other experts in principle affirmed it. At the same time, they pointed out that building a wind-and-rain bridge in isolation would definitely be inadvisable; but if this is taken as an opportunity to plan carefully, unify the style of the buildings on both banks with that of the wind-and-rain bridge, and carry out unified planning and construction of the scenic belts on both banks from Yueliang Island upstream to Laoyuanzi downstream, then the aesthetic pleasure and visual impact created at that time will unquestionably become a major highlight and point of excitement for this city!
Imagine: the world's longest sightseeing cableway, the world's longest covered wind-and-rain bridge (also functioning as a sightseeing, leisure, and pedestrian street), plus scenic belts on both banks dominated by architecture with ethnic characteristics and a shimmering calm lake—what a beautiful picture it would be! This is the central area of the city's urban district, and also a place travelers must pass through when entering and leaving the airport, railway station, and bus station. If implemented according to this planning approach, this area could very well become Zhangjiajie's "Bund" and "Qinhuai River"!
(3) Integrate resources and first complete several key projects well.
It is suggested to first concentrate efforts on carefully completing the following three key projects that can affect the layout of the city's urban area and enhance its quality.
1. Ethnic and Folk Museum.
It is suggested to choose a site along the Zhangqing Highway from Dayong Bridge (formerly Maoyan Distillery) to Reshuikeng, a section capable of producing a strong visual impact, integrating a specialized museum with a themed park, and integrating distinctive building clusters with landmark structures, as a model project for our city's cultural facility construction. In this way, it can also be linked with Dayong Bridge Park and the newly built Zhangjiajie Agricultural Sightseeing Park.
2. Covered Wind-and-Rain Bridge.
It is suggested to carefully plan, carefully design, and carefully construct it in conjunction with the architectural style of both banks and the overall planning layout of the Lishui Scenic Belt, so that it echoes the Tianmen Mountain cableway and becomes a landmark building of the city's urban area. In this way, it can also drive the construction of the Lishui Scenic Belt.
3. A high-grade performance program oriented to the tourist market.
Lijiang and Jiuzhaigou have accumulated successful experience in this regard, both showcasing their own ethnic customs and regional customs to visitors and gradually becoming local tourism cultural brands because of their relatively high artistic quality, thereby being included as must-see content in visitors' itineraries. Take Lijiang's "Lishui Jinsha" as an example: it now performs three shows a day, and every show is packed, truly achieving a win-win in both economic and social benefits. The company intends to come to our city to invest in and develop the performance market; the existing Shengtang International Tourism Culture Co., Ltd. is currently building a performance center, preparing to invest seven or eight million yuan in stage design, lighting, and sound alone, and it is suggested that key support be given. Once this long-awaited premium program appears, it will greatly enhance our city's tourism cultural quality and enrich the tourism content for visitors during their stay in the city's urban area.
(4) Apply both "soft" and "hard" measures and implement three major cultural projects in a supporting manner.
"Soft" refers to software development, and "hard" refers to hardware development. Building the city's urban area into a tourism destination is a huge systematic project, but the following three aspects must be done promptly and well:
1. Project for cultivating the quality of citizens.
In view of the three key elements of citizen quality (first, ideological and moral cultivation; second, scientific and educational level; third, awareness of democracy and the rule of law), it is suggested:
(1) Devote efforts to cultivating a city spirit, making it the common spiritual pillar of citizens, and gradually externalizing it into ways of behavior and customs, reflecting lifestyle taste and cultural quality.
(2) With the Municipal Civilization Office taking the lead, all walks of life should form a society-wide coordinated effort, and through a series of activities make the "Citizen Code" truly become the code of conduct in citizens' daily lives.
(3) Formulate and implement a "learning city" strategy, vigorously develop degree education, non-degree education, and lifelong education: gradually form a certain scale of institutions of higher learning, research institutions, and artistic groups; use opportunities when various celebrities and talents come to our city for tourism, inspection, or academic exchange to organize various report meetings, academic lectures, and seminar activities; advocate activities among citizens such as learning foreign languages and speaking Putonghua, and so on.
(4) With communities as the carrier, promote joint creation and co-construction between communities and units within their jurisdictions, so that the project for cultivating the quality of citizens is truly implemented at the grassroots level and put into practice. Mobilize all means to create a rich cultural atmosphere, such as square culture, street culture, shop culture, campus culture, elderly culture, festival culture, and so on; use the media to regularly publish and broadcast civilized public-service advertisements, hang civilized public-service publicity boards in residential building corridors, add public newspaper reading boards and science popularization and legal publicity boards on major streets, and so on, in order to improve citizens' cultural taste, scientific literacy, and aesthetic sensibility.
2. Ethnic culture protection project.
Our city is an ethnic minority area and possesses uniquely favorable ethnic cultural resources. The urgent task is to take measures to protect them; only after protection is done well can development and utilization even be discussed.
(1) For the surviving architecture with ethnic characteristics and cultural relics and historic sites in the city's urban area and throughout the city, first, conduct a general survey and register them; second, formulate protection plans; third, implement protection measures.
(2) Organize forces to promptly rescue folk art heritage that is highly likely to disappear. For example, the Buddhist opera and Daotong opera of Liaojia Village in Sangzhi, as well as the Tujia-language ballads still circulating in a very few remote areas, and so on.
(3) Organize forces to explore Soviet-area culture and Tusi culture, and to explore the architectural culture, food culture, costume culture, festival culture, recreational culture, shamanistic Nuo culture, folk art, folk handicrafts, and so on of the Tujia, Bai, and Miao peoples.
(4) Compile local teaching materials for use by the city's universities, middle schools, and primary schools, so that young people can understand and love their native ethnic culture.
(5) The media should establish a sense of responsibility and mission, formulate long-, medium-, and short-term plans, and publicize and promote native ethnic culture from multiple angles and without interruption.
3. Cultural brand-building project.
Urban civilization needs cultural brands. Possessing a considerable number of well-known cultural brands is both a sign of a city's cultural prosperity and an effective means of enhancing a city's visibility. The reasons for the formation of cultural brands differ greatly, but they share one common point: they need to be built. Our city has several things that can absolutely be built into cultural brands:
(1) Sangzhi folk songs. They have high value and strong distinctive features; with modern concepts and methods to integrate and package them, they can absolutely go global.
(2) Zhangjiajie tourism etiquette and customs songs (21 songs). Using songs to run through and permeate the entire process of tourism reception and systematically display our city's customs and etiquette is still a first in the country. The main task now is promotion; as long as promotion continues persistently, it will surely become distinctive, gain momentum, and become a brand.
(3) Junsheng paste painting. This painting type is a local original creation and already has a certain reputation; the next step is how to make it bigger and stronger and help it become a leading enterprise with scale effects.
(4) Covered wind-and-rain bridge. The wind-and-rain bridge in the design will, once completed, be the world's longest and tallest of its kind. Such a covered bridge set amid lake and mountain scenery and also functioning as a sightseeing, leisure, and pedestrian street will, with its distinctive ethnic characteristics and strong visual impact, become a cultural brand in urban architecture.
(5) Forest Protection Festival. Lasting thirteen years and already held for eight consecutive sessions, the Forest Protection Festival is a unique product nationwide and has had a positive impact on our city's development. The potential of the Forest Protection Festival has by no means been fully tapped. We should earnestly solve the problem of "cramming at the last minute" in the process of holding the festival, regard it as a specialized project, and plan and operate it carefully; its brand effect will be immeasurable.
(6) The Lantern Festival flower lanterns of Yongding District. In recent years, Yongding District has carried out this traditional folk cultural activity impressively. The shortcoming is a lack of long-term planning awareness, remaining in a state of holding activities for the sake of activities. Every effort should be made to turn it into a brand of large-scale mass cultural activity with a very strong folk flavor and constantly renewed forms.
(7) The "Five Ones" project. That is, the project proposed by the current Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government: one song, one theatrical performance, one film, one TV drama series, and one good book.