Transformation of the historical town of WuZhen, China

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Name	Transformation of the historical town
Place	WuZhen
Country	China
Author(s)	Chengkang Ye, Yiting Wei
Project start	enter the date of the project start
Completion	enter the date of completion
World Heritage	enter the year of listing
Client	enter the client
Project costs	enter the costs (if known)
<googlemap version="0.9" lat="30.768979" lon="120.486374" type="map" zoom="9" width="400" height="300" controls="small">30.734163, 120.495987The historical town of WUZHEN</googlemap>

Rationale: Why is the case study interesting?

An experimental approach to preserving a historical town in East China.

Though the preservation of this traditional water town scenery was not only a simple desire to remain and improve a regional landscape, it was with an aspiration to achieve economic profits, the program did improve the visual scenery , and did help to raise the awareness of cultural landscape. By the mean time, problems produced by the whole program make us to rethink the planning method, e.g. the inadequate concern of the balance of inhabitants’ daily life and the tourism.

Author's perspective

We hope we can learn following issues from this case study: one of possible approaches to preserve a historical town; thinking about how to improve the function for this town, and at the same time, to preserve a traditonal view of the fansy street scape and the attractive building-street-river space.

Cultural landscape context

Biogeography, cultural features, overall landscape character, history and dynamics

Biogeography: The Wuzhen Town is in subtropical monsoon climate, and geologically lies on a alluvial plain, with the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal on the west side of the town.

Cultural features: Wuzhen presents a typical format of water-town citizen life, which involves vivid daily life in the streets, on the bridges, and with the boats and rivers.

Overall landscape: As the key element, water organizes the highly featured local landscape system: interlaced rivers form the basic texture of an area landscape; and streets which are connected with rivers encourage unique commercial activities, inhabitation and transportation.

History and dynamics: The name of the town “Wu” means a dark color, presenting the ooze produced by this alluvial plain. The first civilization on this alluvial plan can be dated back to Neolithic age. During the long history of feudalism, the town of Wuzhen and QingZhen were separately governed. Until 1950, Wuzhen and QingZhen were merged as one town, using the name “Wuzhen Town”. From 1999, Wuzhen Town has undergone a series of changes: repaired streets and houses, wandering visitors, newly occurred jobs inspired by tourism, and inhabitants moving outside. Now the town is still on its way to the transformation, hoping to be more attractive and less controversial in next process. Wuzhen Town has been included by UNESCO in the reserve list of world cultural heritages, and in 2003, gained the “2003 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award”.

Socio-political context

Brief explanation of political economy, legal framework

Illustration: Bullet points, image, background notes

Back to top Wuzhen Town is in the vigorous economic region of east china. However, before 1998,Wuzhen Town was still a declining and unknown town. Young people had left their hometown, with the town's old house in ruins. In the protection and development of this ancient town, there exist various problems, such as illegal structures, chaotic overhead line, indiscriminate discharge of sewage. Luckily, most of the ancient building and living facilities are maintained the antique style, as the cultural wealth of Wuzhen Town.

In 1998, the local authority of Wuzhen Town committed Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning & Design Institute to finish the “Preservation and Planning of Wuzhen Historical Town”. In the planning, it pointed out the general orientation of preserving program and tourism exploitation. According to the planning, the town should be compartmentalized by four protecting levels, ranging from regulatory protecting to absolute protecting, and thus brought different protecting measures. The result of the protecting program is an area of preserving zone and buffer zone covering 198 hectares.

In 1999, after considerate research on the east part, “The First Phase of General Plan for Wuzhen Town” was issued, as well as detailed plans for improvement and rectification. In the same year, the protecting project of the east part started its way to implementation. The achievement of the first phase protection was obvious. It successfully preserved a historic view and precious legacy, and simultaneously brought vitality to Wuzhen Town’s economy. Though the success was quite remarkable, the area that the first phase of the program covered was only a quarter of the whole town. There were still needs to repair large amount of historic buildings, and to offer better service for tourists. So from 2003, Wuzhen Town had started the second phase of the protecting program, concentrating on the west part of the town, involving a billion investment.