| What brings about this study is the writer’s witness of a series of small town planning andquality reconstruction activities held in the surrounding areas of the city of Changsha in mygraduate years. Previously, these small towns have done the planning; but now they had toface the fate of reinventing the wheel all the same. In order to find a solution to this problem,the writer takes the city planning and quality promotion of Qiaokou Town as example.The second chapter first gives a general survey of the development of Qiaokou Town,then analyzes its advantages in regional environment, resources, spatial pattern and waterbody, and finally illustrates the difficulties confronting its development: the states of theeconomy and the infrastructure plus the style and feature of architecture.As the core of the article, the third chapter majors in the part of the planning of QiaokouTown in which the author has taken part. This part first exposes some problems caused by theformer round of city planning of this town: filling the watery areas and fields at the expense ofthe original ecosystems; disrupting former residents’ ordinary life by irresponsible landreplacement; building roads and bridges without consideration of current terrain; andexpanding the construction land at the cost of economic development and industrial supports.It then elaborates on the concept and research focus of the new round of planning processwith special attention paid to the aims of promoting income and employment, improvingtourist-oriented services, protecting natural environments, and preserving historical heritages.What on earth is the importance of the popular practising of quality-improvingtransformation on small cities and towns? What are the methods? The writer makes aprofound analysis of the quality reconstruction of Qiaokou Town. In so doing, three mainreasons come into people’s sight, namely, reforming, telling stories and rewriting history andhave gained some achievements. The benefits of reforming the old lie mainly in three aspects:first, enhancing the image of Qiaokou with a minimum of price and within a shortest periodof time; second, as a kind of aesthetics guidance and education, making the residents beginto understand the principles of unity and harmony for formal beauty; and third, providing amodel for architecture construction, and gradually achieving a real sense of architecturalbeauty. The importances of telling stories and rewriting history fall into two aspects: first, notonly identifying with the history for the purpose of evoking people’s memories to make themfeel that the planning and transformation is full of historical contents, but also signifying theprogress of the times as well as creating and spreading a unique image of the town.; second,reflecting the architect’s innovative spirit and a positive attempt towards vernaculararchitecture in China.The author has visited Qiaokou Town for five times altogether, adopting a combinationof interviews and questionnaires to investigate the effects of this round of planning and transformation to do field research. From these observations, the author knows that the livingenvironment, the business climate, and the local landscape have all been improved and thatthe local people are satisfied with the results of this round of planning and transformation ingeneral. In addition, through interviews with government officials, the writer learns the reasonfor the quick implementation of this plan.Finally, the goal and significance of pursuing a new round of small town planning andquality reconstruction on a large scale can be worked out by way of making a conclusiveanalysis of this new round of planning and transformation of Qiaokou Town: to achieveeconomic development and narrow the gap between urban and rural areas; to continue to livein dignity and improve the quality of life; and to promote the Beautiful Town Movement andaesthetic education as well as designers’ active investigation into countryside for morecreative works of Chinese Vernacular Architecture. |
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