2004—Planning the City with Cultural Concepts (Part 1)
Plan the city with cultural concepts and build the urban area into a supporting tourism destination. Culture is the soul of a city, and the city is the vessel of culture. In today's world where cities compete on culture, determining a city's cultural development strategy is equivalent to determining its direction of development. By strengthening cultural development to shape the city's image and showcase the city...
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 Some administrative divisions, population, socioeconomic data, and policy information may be outdated and are for reference only; for the latest situation, please refer to official releases by the local government and scenic areas.
Plan the city with cultural concepts and build the city's urban area in a supporting manner into a tourism destination.
Culture is the soul of a city, and a city is the vessel of culture. In today's world, where cities are judged by their culture, determining a city's cultural development strategy is equivalent to determining its direction of development. Shaping a city's image and showcasing its brand through strengthening cultural development, and uniting citizens and driving urban development by fostering a cultural atmosphere, have become successful practices in the construction and management of many cities. London, New York, Paris, and other "World's Ten Best Cities" of the 20th century, besides having sound infrastructure and developed commerce and finance, all possess their own unique character, a fine humanistic environment, and a distinctive cultural style. Only by building the city with a cultural vision can Zhangjiajie truly become a charming tourist city.
I. Adjust our approach and plan and build the urban area as a tourist destination.
Build the urban area of Zhangjiajie into a tourist destination. There are three reasons:
(1) It is an objective requirement of our city's tourism development.
Our city is the city where a world-class scenic area is located, a city closely linked with a world-class scenic area. Therefore, the quality of the city's appearance directly affects Zhangjiajie's image. If we carefully plan, design, build, and manage the urban area together with the core scenic area as a tourist destination, we will not only enrich Zhangjiajie's tourism content as a whole but also leave visitors with a perfect overall impression of their Zhangjiajie trip. From the perspective of economic benefit, with the opening of the Changsha-Zhangjiajie Expressway and further improvements in transportation, if we do not accelerate the building of the urban area as a tourist destination, the urban area will forever remain just a "place to pass through." Under our "tourism-driven" strategy, "tourism" will forever remain sightseeing tourism and will be unable to upgrade its quality toward leisure tourism and business tourism; the article on "driving" will have no way to begin. Therefore, planning and building the urban area as a tourist destination is an objective requirement of our city's economic development and social progress.
(2) The urban area possesses relatively rich cultural resources and has the necessary conditions and foundation to be built into a tourist destination.
Within the city, there are Puguang Zen Temple, the Tujia Customs Park, Xiuhua Mountain Hall, Junsheng Painting Academy, the Old Courtyard, the Soviet Memorial Hall, the Martyrs' Cemetery, the Christian Church, as well as the historical culture, religious culture, and mysterious culture of Tianmen Mountain National Forest Park; in the suburbs, there are the stone carving group of Liu Mingdeng's Tomb, Yuhuang Cave Grottoes, the Tomb of Huandou, the Tomb of King Nan, and so on. Add to these the yet-to-be-built Ethnic and Folk Customs Museum and Liu Mingdeng Stone City, and the resources should be considered quite considerable. If we position the urban area as a small town with distinctive ethnic and local characteristics, and incorporate the above cultural resources into a grand framework of integration and development, forming humanistic landscapes of corresponding scale and quality that complement the purely natural scenery of the core scenic area on the mountain, they will precisely satisfy visitors' aesthetic needs.
(3) The time is now ripe to propose building the urban area as a supporting tourist destination.
This is first of all thanks to the tourism development of Tianmen Mountain, including the construction of the sightseeing cable car. Known as the "Soul of Wuling," Tianmen Mountain, with its majestic and vast mountain body and its ever-changing clouds and mist, is in itself a superb natural screen for the urban area, unmatched by any city, large or small, in China. Its cable car extending into the urban area is not only a visually striking sight but also greatly expands the shared space of the urban area. After the cable car is completed this year, riding this, the world's longest sightseeing cable car at present, it will take only just over 20 minutes to go from the bustling downtown up to the "primitive aerial garden" at an altitude of 1,500 meters—again something unmatched by any city, large or small, in China. Moreover, the natural and cultural landscapes on the mountain, such as Tianmen Cave, Guigu Cave, the primitive secondary forest, Tianmen Mountain Temple, the Four Great Ancient Mysteries, and the world road wonder—the tourist mountain road—are all enough to constitute an attraction for visitors.
Judging the situation, we suggest the following for building the urban area as a tourist destination: take the tourism development of Tianmen Mountain as the lead, take the construction of the Lishui River Scenic Belt as the entry point (because with the Hongbiyan Power Station under construction, the construction of the Lishui River Scenic Belt running through the city will also enter a substantive stage), take establishing and promoting an urban architectural style with ethnic and local characteristics as the highlight, take the gradual integration and development of a series of cultural landscapes as the chain, and take planning and guiding the construction of the urban area with a cultural vision as the starting point and ultimate goal. By then, the urban area and the core scenic area will be like the ancient city of Lijiang itself and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and Lugu Lake outside the city, like the ancient city of Xi'an itself and the Terracotta Warriors and Huaqing Pool outside the city, like the city of Dali itself and Cangshan Mountain and Erhai Lake outside the city—the two mutually complementing and supporting each other, both being interdependent tourist destinations.