Micro-renewal in historic districts is a small-scale, low-cost and short-cycle urban renewal mechanism which is oriented towards a limited number of people and relatively easy to be carried out. It is an exploratory experiment for cities in China as they are experiencing great transformation. The purpose of Micro-renewal is to make “micro changes” in citizens’ ways of living, promote society-based participatory design and cultivate their awareness to participate in urban design.

Micro-renewal changes a city from the micro perspective just like re-creating a living creature right from its cells. With macroscopic control and intervention by the authorities, higher education institutions and design institutes can find pieces of small renovatable land in historic districts to launch some pilot projects. In these projects, local people can witness that incongruous buildings begin to blend in their life again after reconstruction, and local government can see new possibilities of how to renovate historic districts.

Authors: Liu Tingting