Speaker
Description
Over the past decades, large-scale urban construction has conflicted with collective memory, causing the decline of urban collective memory, especially in China. This trend of decline is manifested in the hollowing out of historic communities, mono-functionality, and spatial homogenization after regeneration (Chu, Xie and Chang, 2019). However, current perspectives dealing with these problems primarily focus on citizens, governments and markets, each of which has its limitations (Chen, Ye and Liu, 2023; Wang, Zhang and Wu, 2022). Relatively little attention has been paid to designers’ perspective. To fill this gap, we choose the Tongxing community in Chongqing, China, which has a history of more than 400 years, as a typical case study. To revitalize this community, a team of urban designers organized a series of activities to address the decline of collective memory, which is an emerging and significant pattern of historic community regeneration. Based on this, we investigate the impact of designer-led regeneration practices on the collective memory of historic community and the challenges encountered during regeneration.
Designers are crucial to the regeneration process of historic community. On one hand, as hands-on practitioners of place regeneration, they usually possess a comprehensive understanding of the natural, historical, and cultural context of the historic community before the practice. On the other hand, designers usually negotiate with relevant stakeholders and play a role of coordinator, who strive to explore the regeneration potential of historic community and meet the needs and demands of multiple stakeholders.
To this end, we start from conceptualizing collective memory in historic community, which refers to the shared memories of members concerning past events within a certain community. It emphasizes common experiences, cultural identity, and the dynamic transmission of the memory within a social group (Halbwachs, 2020; Connerton, 1989; Türkoğlu and Günay, 2018). In this way, we build a conceptual framework of collective memory, classifying it into three aspects, communicative memory, cultural memory, and media memory (Assmann and Czaplicka, 1995; Neiger, Mayers and Zandberg, 2011; Van Dijck, 2007).
On the basis, we first analyze the spatialization of these collective memories in the Tongxing community. Second, we summarize designer-led regeneration practices through field research and interviews. Third, we organize workshops involving different groups of people to analyze the impact of these designer-led regeneration practices on the collective memory of the Tongxing community, and their significance and future potential. Finally, we assess the practical challenges faced by the designer team through return visits and interviews.
In Tongxing community, collective memory is mainly reflected in public spaces, iconic nodes, and monumental sites. We classify designer-led regeneration practices into three categories: environmental beautification, cultural inheritance, and community building. These designer-led regeneration practices have had a significant impact on collective memory. Regarding communicative memory, they have facilitated communication within and outside the community. Regarding cultural memory, they have strengthened residents’ sense of identity. Regarding media memory, they have expanded the external influence of the Tongxing community. Additionally, regarding spatial improvement, they enhance the environment quality of residents’ life and the vitality of the space. Designer-led regeneration practices have effectively addressed the decline in community cultural activities, weakened communication, and spatial decay. More importantly, they have revitalized residents’ mindset, offering valuable insights for future spontaneous community building. Nonetheless, the designer team also faced challenges such as difficulties in securing funding, and conflicts with the local government’s preservation guidelines. Our study reveals a new paradigm for driving the development of historic spaces and urban transformation, which contributes to the reshaping of the collective memory of the area and provides suggestions for urban regeneration and heritage conservation practices in contemporary China as well as in international contexts.
References
Assmann, J. and Czaplicka, J. (1995) Collective Memory and Cultural Identity, New German critique, 65(65), pp. 125–133.
Chen, W., Ye, C. and Liu, Y. (2023) From the arrival cities to affordable cities in China: Seeing through the practices of rural migrants’ participation in Guangzhou’s urban village regeneration, Habitat international, 138, p. 102872.
Chu, H., Xie, D. X., and Chang, J. (2019) The Relationship Between Place Development Residents’ Sense of Place: A Case Study of Li Zhi wan Historic District, Hum. Geogr, 34, pp. 54-62.
Connerton, P. (1989) How societies remember. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dijck, J. van (2007) Mediated memories in the digital age. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Halbwachs, M. (2020) On collective memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Neiger, M., Mayers, O. and Zandberg, E. (2011) On media memor: collective memory in a new media age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Türkoğlu, S. and Günay, Z. (2018) Spatial Codes of Social Memory: Place Names in Bomonti, Turkey Urban Morphology Network. Turkey, (II. Urban Morphology Symposium Proceedings Book, Istanbul), pp. 827–835.
Wang, M., Zhang, F. and Wu, F. (2022) Governing urban redevelopment: A case study of Yongqingfang in Guangzhou, China, Cities, 120, p. 103420.
| Keywords | Collective memory decline; designer; historic community; lived heritage; workshop |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
