WareHousing | Mixing for continuation

WARE.HOUSING mixing for continuation

National Technical University of Athens, 2015

WARE.HOUSING mixing for continuation

Essay for the Schindler Award 2015 Competition: ÂŤAccess to Urbanity Designing the City as a ResourceÂť Shenzhen, China

Team: Dimitris Zampopoulos Ioannes Koufopoulos George Papamattheakis Consultants: Antonis Papadakis (CivEng Transport) Lida Papamattheaki (Cultural Anthropology) Supervisors: Ariadni Vozani Andreas Kourkoulas Thanos Pagonis Dpt. Architectural Design NTUAthens, January 2015

CONTENTS Foreword

4

Research Immobilization

6

Territory

10

The New City System

11

End Of An Era

12

A Glorious Mission

14

A Freight Gateway

18

The City As A Real Resource

19

Proposal The Conveyor

20

4+1 Points for SQ

21

The New Typology

26

3

FOREWORD

« […] architecture requires continuity: we have to continue what others have done before us […]

»

Eduardo Souto de Moura, 2013

Nowadays China is undergoing an urban revolution of unprecedented scale and complex dimensions. Only a few years after the world’ s urban population exceeded the rural -a historic watershed crystallizing our urban age, more than half the population of China will live in cities. The projected urban population of 700 million is far larger than that of any country other than India. The homogeneous, traditional -even after the tenyear Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong- introvert and somehow obscure China started giving way to an increasingly open and ever faster moving New China.

China’ s cities turn away from state socialism around 1980, and the government’ s selection of four cities (Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen) on the south-east coast as special economic zones by granting them favourable policies and an administrative autonomy that enabled them to attract foreign investment and to experiment with market reforms, were the two basic factors of China’ s transition into globalization through urbanization. Under these c i r c u m s ta n ce s , C h i n e s e c i t i e s h a v e e x p e r i e n ce d a d e e p transformation from its state- planned form to become a locus of increasingly differentiated economic, social and territorial conditions.

All these Chinese endeavors have only been possible due to the prevalent autocratic, administrative model and the adequately skilled and minimally compensated work force at its disposal. In China, a new large-scale urban design, coupled with the development of ambitious transit systems, complicates the hybrid urban space further by stretching the metropolitan boundary.

Architecture and urban design, as happened numerous times

in

history before, were strategically selected evenly in China to play a

4

Image 1: Chinese Cities under Transformation; they must find balances on their own.

major role in this process of structural mutation and its required intense visualization.

Despite the challenges of dealing with growing inequality and other problems already entrenched in the “transforming� city, it is too late to turn back to more egalitarian and controlled socialistic city, regardless of its legacies. The city must find its balances on its own.

5

IMMOBILIZATION

Images 2&3: Propaganda through various media is reshaping the individual’ s perception, belief and bodily practises. From One Child Policy to Western ethics and habits, the government’ s will towards a modern citizen is being promoted.

As of the beginning of the '80s, an effort to remake the Chinese is being made. The peasant should be turned into a proper citizen, with the attributes of a modern person (images 2&3). Propaganda through various media is reshaping the individual’ s perception, belief and bodily practises. In the dominant discourse of modernization in today’ s China, mobility in various forms (migration, tourism, etc.) has an exceptionally important role by aiding economic growth, linked to the goal of modernizing the countryside, “civilizing” its population and as an attribute of modern (Western) societies; the modern Chinese should be flexible 1.

It is quite controversial though that the hereditary household registration system, widely known as Hukou, is preventing citizens from moving freely around the state. As a result, in cities such as Shenzhen, the population of migrant workers with rural Hukou far outstrips those with an urban one (figures 1&2).

and mobile 1 . 'The New Immigrant is a symbolic figure of a globally modern and yet authentically national (even racial) way of being Chinese.' (Nyíri, 2010, p.5).

Since its creation, Shenzhen carries a pioneering and exploration spirit, which combines the qualities of the modern Chinese person.

Thus, a city of possibilities, Shenzhen, is the place to be (Bach).

People have started settling down, creating what we could call an arrival city, «welcoming» more and more internal young immigrants

Figure 1 (left): Actual urban population and population with an urban Hukou in China in 100 millions Figure 2 (right): Population with a Shenzhen Hukou and population without a Shenzhen Hukou in Shenzhen in millions. Note that the city’ s population starts from nearly zero

6

5 12

4

10

3

8 6

2

4

1

2

1970

1990

2010

Actual urban population Population with urban Hukou

1981

1991

2001

People without Shenzhen Hukou People with Shenzhen Hukou

2011

12

40

10 8 6

20

4

%

mil

Figure 3 (left): Shenzhen Population Growth 1970

1980

1990

2000

Population (left-hand scale) Average annual growth

2010

15-64 0-14 65

(88.4%) (9.84%) (1.76%)

Figure 4 (right): Age Composition of the population of Shenzhen in 2010

with their families (figures 1&2). These people do not consider themselves to be in any way «rural»; the majority of them have no relation with rural areas or agricultural training. It is very strange though, that the people do not even consider themselves urban residents. When asked where they are from, children often adopt their parents’ hometown identity (Reynolds, 2013).

Apart from the Hukou system, which makes everything more difficult, it is also the contemporary city that seems to prevent theses people from feeling at home. The city is now evolving in a way that Koolhaas would call generic; being in a constant state of transition, regenerating each and every part of it, the citizens are unable to setup their reference points. We would refer to this kind of city as something «anosto», stemming from the word nostalgia, meaning ones disability to encode past, present or expected experiences and convert them to memory parts (Seremetakis, 1994) 2 . And this is because the past and the present experiences of the Shenzhen citizen tend to change in favor of constant urban regeneration.

2.

The term «anosto» refers to food of no good taste in Greek language. The explanation provided in the text is first used by Seremetaki in her book The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity.

Many proposals of the previous competition for SungangQuinshuihe (SQ), as well as the winning one (image 4), were suggesting such a regeneration. The particular characteristics generated by the special uses of the area, are thought of as declining, not profitable and detrimental to the urban core and thus are being replaced. Even the train itself, the most prominent of all the elements of the competition’ s area is no more a part of the visual environment of the residents in and around SQ. Time is a relative element. Thirty years may not be many for Rome, Athens or Beijing, but in Shenzhen’ s case, this is its whole past. In

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Image 4: Sungang-Quinshuihe area in Shenzhen, former great logistics park to be transformed into a creative gateway for the city. The train, the most prominent of the elements structuring the neighbourhood has disappeared.

these thirty years, SQ has been a City within the city. A capsule of logistics and warehouses with its own street layout and with its own community taking life from the passing train. Shenzhen has now based its economy on exports because of its geographical location in the hinge between Hong Kong and China. SQ Logistics Park has been serving this rise and development from the very beginning making great contribution to the foreign trading, exports and imports of the whole Country. In the governmental website of Luohu district we read: By the development and construction for over two decades, it has become a public warehouse area developed the earliest in Shenzhen and with the biggest scale and is well-known for the biggest multi-functional business warehouse area of China and the first export supervised warehouse area with the maximum cargo output between 4,000,000 – 5,000,000 tons, and is called the Biggest Warehouse in the Country. It is the past that defines our future.

With our proposal we do not intend to cling to the past, rather to act as proper gardeners; conserving the healthy and healing the unhealthy. We do not intend to conserve a specific site, or a sample of the built environment, rather to deliver a set of experiences to the descendants; stimulate the sensory in a similar way to what has happened a few years ago. The special characteristics of a place packed with freight, furious people passing by, packages of all sizes going back and forth, a productive fever.

8

TERRITORY

Observing the satellite view of the Pearl River Delta, one can hardly tell cities from one another. Urban tissue scattered around the landscape, with no specific formation or cohesion. Cities of millions, all very close to each other, try to reach the water of the Pearl River or its delta. In most cases, the infrastructure, the airports, the harbours, and the rails point the way. Natural elements seem to be the only limitation, although they too are overpassed and manipulated.

Image 5: A satellite image of the Pearl River Delta.

Various cities around gathered near the river and its Delta accumulate a total population of more than 100 million, of which the 50% live in cities.

This seems to be even more intense on the east banks, where the city of Shenzhen lies. It is really hard to point the exact borderline between the two prefecture level cities of the area, namely Dongguang and Shenzhen. It is also impossible to say if smaller towns of 500,000 and 700,000 people around Dongguang, Shenzhen and Guangzhou can be actually considered as independent systems or if they are outer suburbs of the greater cities near them.

Similar confusion also exists as far as the production and the economy is concerned. The different cities around the Pearl River do not have a clear strategy towards their economy. As a result, in many cases their interests collide.

10

As continuously more people are coming in the cities from the

THE NEW CITY

countryside, these urban regions are growing bigger in an effort to

SYSTEM

service this influx. Different urban formations tend to get together, to unite; cities expand towards one another, transforming the scale and the way we perceive urban space. A new kind of City is emerging. It is not a megacity, neither a megalopolis. It is not about one city. It is a whole complex system of big cities, smaller towns, extra-urban spaces and rural areas, all merged in one unity.

What

is now projected as a mega-region is actually a New City

System.

Diameter 100km Diameter 200km

Figure 5: Agglomeration of various cities as depicted in the satellite view. All graphs are of the same scale. From left to right, upper row are Paris, London and New York; below are the Pearl River Delta and Greater Tokyo.

It is obvious that the PRD has a different structure than the other examples. There is not one center but various; Thats why city sprawling does not have a clear reference.

This New City System, looks like no other urban formation (figure 5). Being a little bigger than greater Greater Tokyo, it has 4 times its population. Instead of an extreme dense center with the city sprawling around, there are many smaller central locations with respectively high density and built environment spreading all around till it collides with another center. The NeCiS is a clever way of the Chinese territorial planning to respond to the increasing urbanization of the population. However, for this System to work, it is essential that the different parts cooperate smoothly.

On the contrary, different regions at this time seem to rival each other; this was the reason they were invented in first place!

Shenzhen SEZ, planned to act as a counterweight to Hong Kong, has been absorbing part of its economy for years.

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END OF AN ERA

As depicted in Map 1, Hong Kong and Shenzhen have the biggest ports and airports in the whole PRD, despite their geographical proximity. A great share of the exported goods from Shenzhen, pass through Hong Kong, just to be reexported to the rest of the world (figure 7).

Map 1: The Pearl River Delta Facts and Tendencies. Shenzhen SEZ and Hong Kong - Macau as primary rivals. Note the ports on the east side are all under Shenzhen’s control apart from this of Hong Kong, which is the biggest in terms of freight handling and profit.

Port

Population Density >16

Airport

Population Density 5,5-15

City Main road Bridge Sea way

Ν

Population Density 4,5-5,5 Population Density 2,5-4,5 Population Density 1-2,5

Thus, the city of Shenzhen has a very strong Logistics corporate potential and infrastructure. Shenzhen was among the first which introduced «modern logistics» and employed it as an essential part of its industrial economy backbone (Yimin). With three logistics parks running on ports, there are 23.3 million TEUs handled in 2013, almost 0.7 million more than in 2011, bringing Shenzehn’ s ports in 2nd place just behind Shanghai (figure 6). The airport of Shenzhen is constantly growing bigger, competing those of the rest PRD, while a new railway, between the two already existing, is being constructed.

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Figure 7: Export Shares in the PRD

18

mil

Figure 6: Top Chinese Ports in TEUs handling in 2013

1. Shanghai 2. Shenzhen 3. Hong Kong 4. Ningbo 5. Qingdao 6. Guangzhou 7. Tianjin 8. Dalian 9. Xiamen 1

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2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

PRD excluding SHZ Shenzhen Exports to HK

Map 2: Shenzhen Urban Area. Five strategically placed Logistics parks form a half-ring defining much of the region’ s urban landscape. SQ Logistics park, although not well connected to the basic infrastructure, nevertheless found on the center of this formation and very close to the urban core.

The circle has a radious of circa 25km, showing the distance of the logistics zone from the center of the city.

Industry

Î?

Train

Transportation

Borders

Warehouses

Sea way /Air way

Urban villages

Urban fabric

Commericial center

Comments

Since Shenzhen SEZ invention, the Chinese government has been promoting and boosting it, so as to survive in its competitive environment. The Pearl River Delta represented by Shenzhen stood out as the pioneer of the reform and the opening-up of the economy. Serving the experimental field of the reform, the PRD achieved the highest marketization level among all other regions of the nation 3 .

However, the past years, the cities within the Pearl River Delta are

3.

From the forward note on the Outline of the Plan for the Reform of the Pearl River Delta.

facing serious financial issues. The Pearl River Delta is having a serious downturn as far as the exports and the foreign investment are concerned, leading no more China’s export market. At the same time, Shenzhen, the pioneer of all experimentation and reform is becoming less competitive than Hong Kong or Singapure, hindering its place in ASEAn economy.

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A GLORIOUS MISSION

In the closing segment of the Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta, the authors realise that the upcoming period will be one of great reforms, «a glorious mission, a challenging task and a great responsibility» (OPRDPRD, page 117).

Map 3: The Pearl River Delta City System Proposed Strategies. The PRD as an economic unity; Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macao working cooperatively with Shenzhen being the main coordination center for the export market of the region.

Port

Population Density >16

Airport

Population Density 5,5-15

City Main road Bridge Sea way

Population Density 4,5-5,5

Ν

Population Density 2,5-4,5 Population Density 1-2,5

The most dominant point that this Outline Text is making is that the cities of the Pearl River Delta should get working in cooperation. Kong Kong is also thought as part of the whole system, probably looking forward to the Hong Kong-ShenzhenMacao political Unification planned to happen within the next thirty years.

Within this sea of urban formations, it is essential that a common ground is found.

According to the Plan for Reform, one of the priorities of the cities within the Pearl River Delta should be to build a modern Information network. Extremely important is the formation of a public information platform for the modern logistics in South China developing what is named after «the logistics Internet».

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Map 4: Shenzhen Strategies. The city ’s growing importance in the logistics network will enhance all transport infrastructure. SQ is becoming the HQ of South China’ s logistics platform Industry

Train

Transportation

Borders

Warehouses

Sea way /Air way

Urban villages

Urban fabric

Commericial center

Comments

As a matter of fact, our area of focus, Sungang-Quinshuihe, placed in the central circle of Map 4, is no more functioning as a competitive large freight logistics park, as it used. However, the traces of commerce are deeply inscribed in the DNA of the area.

The layout of the city as well as the present built environment do prove so. The relation to the railway, as well as the traces of two urban villages, placed there to house logistics workers twenty five years ago, are elements that should not be overlooked.

Image 6: Shezhen city Layout around SQ. The area of study as a capsule. Heavy black lines depict the perceptual or real borders of this capsule.

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Thus, considering the past and the present conditions, there could be no better position for the Headquarters of the logistics platform the Chinese Government is planning to fund in the Pearl River Delta, than the area of Sungang - Quinshuihe. Strengthening its former identity as a logistics center of nationwide importance, the new way to development and reform is following the tracks of the previous. At the same spot were everything begun for the Special Economic Zones, at the very place where the experimentation widened China’ s horizons.

Furthermore, this argument seems to be supported by the Municipal Government’ s plans. Firstly, the Shenzhen Municipal Government is about to orient the development of the city towards a regional logistic center (Yimin). Secondly, as Luohu’ s government’ s website stresses, SQ Logistics Park has the possibility to be an International Logistics Headquarters base, also satisfying the need for an information platform.

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A FREIGHT GATEWAY

The New City System’ s ever growing towns, tend to push disturbing uses like logistics away from the city center. At first reading this seems reasonable; such kind of uses are threatening urbanity. But how does this practise really affects the modern megacities?

Urban economies are evolving rapidly towards a high level of material intensiveness. A city is dependent on a variety of supply chains servicing a wide array of economic activities such as grocery stores, retail, restaurants, office supplies, raw materials and parts,

4.

Many argue that the rise of 3D printing would reduce the dependency of the cities to the logistics sector. However, raw material for the printers would still need to be imported.

construction materials and waste 4 (Redrigue, Dablanc). Ecommerce is flourishing and in a city like Shenzhen, thousands of products are being exported every day through electronic platforms. Moreover, home delivery services are being used more than ever, while urban goods account for up to 20% of all the vehicles movement, making urban freight transportation a big challenge.

Logistics zones, handling mainly containers and large quantities of mass-producted elements have already taken places on the peripheries of the agglomerations of big cities. In the case of Shenzhen, the peripheral logistics zone consisting of Yantian, Pinghu, Qianhaiwan, Dachan Bay and the airport’ s logistics parks, is on a half-ring of 25-30 km radious (see also map 2 on page 13).

As one can clearly distinguish in map 2, urban villages in Greater Shenzhen have been structured around industries and logistics parks, with their own commercial centers, creating cities within the city but far away from its center and the desired urbanity.

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Achieving urbanity in specific parts of the city is actually ignoring

THE CITY AS A REAL

the entirety of the problem. Driving disturbing uses out of the main

RESOURCE

city core is sweeping it under the carpet, if not enlarging it.

Conceiving the city as a resource is about understanding its mechanisms and finally overcoming the problems occurring.

Apart from the really heavy operations taking place in large logistics parks, there is an amount of activities that do not require special and heavy equipment to take place. Such are the procedures of repackaging, product assembling or slight transformation. A micro-logistics park with basic infrastructure can undertake such activities. Furthermore, logistics procedures can get better distributed throughout the urban fabric, introducing a second lighter micro-logistic zone as a counterweight to the heavy one. At the same time these micro-logistics parks can serve as urban consolidation centers providing a bundled and coordinated last-mile delivery service throughout the city center 5 (Allen, Thorne, Browne).

Nevertheless it is clear that these micro-logistics parks are called to attend all drawbacks arising.

5.

An Urban Consolidation Center is a logistics facility located close to the city center from which consolidated deliveries are carried out, and which provides a range of other value-added logistics services (Allen, Thorne, Browne, Good Practice Guide on Urban Freight, 2007)

The small quantities a micro-logistics park will handle, are going to be transported via heavy trucks. Apart from the noise pollution, there are also traffic congestion problems appearing. In fact congestions are a serious problem for the logistics services, for which schedule is extremely important. Time and space restrictions for heavy traffic is also a matter of concern; infrastructure to serve this kind of transport is expensive to build and maintain.

Additionally, as a matter of fact, urban freight distribution is on average twice as polluting than intercity freight transport, particularly because of vehicle ageing, size, as well as slow operating speeds and idling.

Moreover, such activities demand large parcels and free land, which are difficult to be found near the city centers and are inevitably more expensive.

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THE CONVEYOR

Image 7: Conveyors used in Giali island in eastern Aegean to extract pumice and pearlite.

Logistics concerns a large scope, covers a wide area, and have complex procedures. Logistics parks’ planning is a systematic procedure. It should adapt to the space arrangements of the urban industries as well as to the development strategy of the city. Its success depends on the coordination of all relevant parts. And in our case, one of these parts is the city itself; the public spaces, the commercial streets, the civil transportation as well as the residential buildings. So, planning a micro-logistics park inside the urban core means solving the aforementioned problems, the main of which is the truck movement.

As a solution to the everyday cargo mobility which will be surrounding the citizens of SQ, we suggest the establishment of conveyor networks providing intelligent factory automation, software and logistics solutions. Automation integrates and streamlines warehouse processes and makes them more flexible and predictable. It can help maintain competitiveness by improving overall efficiency, profitability and ultimately customer experience, by reducing picking errors, improve product and process traceability, efficient replenishment of stock and reduction of occupational health issues. It enables businesses to make the most of their space and improve productivity and customer service. But most importantly the conveyor system alleviates the problems appearing from the constant movement of heavyweight cargo vehicles also providing a solution to environmental issues associated with air pollution and energy consumption.

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4+1 POINTS FOR SQ

Map 5: The transport systems and infrastructure in our area of focus. Purple hatched areas are solely filled with warehouses either in use, abandoned or in new life.

Train Roads Overpass Metro Station Metro Line

SQ is made out of two different neighborhoods. Sungang, south of the Ring Road which marks the city limits, has relatively new street infrastructure, with many shops already on the ground floor. On the other hand, Quinshuihe is not as developed as Sungang and much heavy logistics activity still takes place on its streets. Moreover, Sungang is also much better connected to the rest of the city than Quinshuihe. As depicted on map 5, two metro stations as well as various bus lines going through serve the neighborhood. On the contrary Quinshuihe is being served by one metro station opposite the railway and a few bus lines which do not enter the neighborhood. With three limit lines around (the hills, the western part of the highway and the railway), Quinshuihe seems more isolated and introvert.

Both S and Q lack in public spaces, while the two hills in the middle of the area are fully occupied by infrastructural electricity networks making it impossible to visit.

The urban villages, points of entry for the immigrants, are packed with people and buildings whereas the residential slabs, scattered in zones among the area, have low percentages of actual users.

23

With our strong belief that everything is finally linked to the local individual resident of the area, we tried to tone down the global pressures while preserving the local qualities. In relation to all of our previous reasonings, we propose a series of four plus one interconnected interventions in a masterplan level.

Map 7 (right): The conveyor network of SQ. Three feeding means, the train, the truck and light traffic structure the network entrance points.

Map 6 (left): Strategic map of interventions in SQ. The freight movements in purple, the residential tendencies in yellow as well as the main transportation movement in red can be distinguished.

S-Q connection (people mover)

Train

Housing expancion

Roads

Global/Local Uses

Overpass

Global center

Metro Station Metro Line "%&

!""

#""

$""

Local center

Intervention 0: The Conveyor.

As analysed in previous pages, a network of conveyors serving product pallettes is introduced to the area. Since freight movement was the past of SQ but will also mark the future, this network will make it visible for the outside world. This simple in terms of understanding, yet hi-tech automation, is a piece of infrastructure adaptable enough to serve the current area layout. A functional substitute to the rails of the trains previously entering SQ to transfer goods, the conveyor will also remake the image of the neighborhood, disclosing its special characteristics.

Intervention 1: The public spaces.

Realising the lack of open spaces for the residents of the two neighborhoods, we suggest two interventions which will establish free space for public use taking advantage of the current dwelling conditions and the special layout of SQ. Both interventions are

24

made in relation to the urban villages and the projections of their future conditions. Starting from the northern part of Quinshuihe and realising the current residential pressures, we suggest a plazalike open space under the current head of the «Λ» shape formed.

This strategic position is able to serve the current needs of the residents of the Quinshuihe urban village, as well as future south residential expansions, also proposed in this approach. On the other hand, Sungang is treated differently; In an effort to connect the present urban village with our residential proposal described later on, a network of open or roofed public spaces is proposed.

Taking advantage of the existing built environment, abandoned warehouses and courtyards are transformed and used as multiactivity plazas, public sport facilities or open space available for commercial stalls.

Intervention 2: The Info-center.

Responding to the logistics tendencies of the area, we propose a site of development of third-sector uses, also housing the logistics information center of the PRD. Private enterprises related to logistics will be encouraged to move in after establishing two key Buildings: The governmental South China Logistic’s Platform and the School for Logistics and Freight Transportation of China. Apart from offices and logistics-specialized services, other uses like exposition areas or education hubs will flourish. Furthermore, students at the school of Logistics will have the best possibilities to intern in any of the nearby logistic companies, or even start their own business, generating some kind of incubator for logisticrelated professions. In this area, special building regulations exist, making it possible for higher buildings to show up and densify the day’ s population of the area.

Intervention 3: The Museum At the col, between the hills, the largest public space of SQ, an open plaza is positioned. This concerns a dynamic blank space in the urban fabric, where various activities can be accommodated.

Being defined by high rise buildings as well as topography this is the very place where the “museum of economy of Shenzhen” is to be introduced. The museum is there to narrate Shenzhen’ s history through the evolution of its manufacturing sector and constitutes a

25

trace of memory that links the past to the present.

Image 8: The conveyor becomes an integrated part in the city restructuring the image of Sungang-Quinshuihe neighborhoods.

Intervention 4: The link The Museum plaza and the Info center, while functioning as features of special interest, are connected to each other by a railway transit system, an Automated People Mover (APM). In addition, the APM is proposed in order to address the transportation needs of the area, namely the connection of Sungang and Qingshuihe, which lack a direct public transport connection. APM systems consist of automated, electric powered, driverless vehicles operated on steel or concrete tracks. Also these systems provide a high quality of service and are capable of moving between 2,000 to 25,000 passengers per hour per direction.

Its technology has been extensively used for circulation service in airports, recreational parks, central business districts and as a transit services in urban environment. It offers convenience comparing to modern elevators, exceptional ride quality, travels at speeds up to 90 km/hr and operates on demand mode during off peak hours to minimize energy consumption or maintain good frequency to reduce passengers waiting time. Besides APM has kept an excellent record of reliability and safety. Collectively APM systems have perhaps the best level of service compared to all other track-based means. The People mover network is suggested to be positioned longitudal in SQ, bridging the two areas, overpassing the highway which crosses SQ, moving

26

parallel to the railway, thus effectively connecting directly the citizens of Sungang and Qingshuihe. It is also suggested to place the two origin-destination stations of the APM, at a walking distance up to 10 min from the metro stations which exist in each area.

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THE NEW TYPOLOGY

With the population of Shenzhen rising continuously, we should not underestimate the possibilities of SQ, especially after the aforementioned interventions, which will bring new investments and will broaden the transportation network of the neighborhoods, connecting them better to the rest of the city. The demand for housing expected in the area combined with our will of preserving this infrastructural identity of the place, turned this project in the big challenge of bringing together these two qualities.

Of course, in terms of urban design, this is only possible in a framework level. Hollisitc approaches and complete building proposals in this scale, destroy the inexpectancy of the city and create repeated out-of-scale forms unable to house the complexity of a city. Keeping the above in mind, we try to act as planners, suggesting a complete list of regulations which finally shape the functional capabilities of this part of the city as well as its image.

Image 9: The three types of blocks in the future SQ.

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The general strategy is to cover the large blind facades of the warehouses with a layer of mixed uses. On top of the (existing) warehouse buildings, residential space is proposed. The overall aim is to lower the scale of the existing block and provide heterogeneity to the city by dividing the existing into smaller parcels. Considering the existing warehouse typologies, three different types of mixed blocks arise (image 9). Each of the different types is treated in a special way, both in the ground floor and the upper floors levels.

The complete list of regulations can be found in the next two pages.

Image 10: The strategic framework depicted in axonometric diagram. In the ground floor, a mixed-uses zone of 5-15 meters is added while the existing warehouses keep their position. The streets are getting narrowed while a variety of activities taking place provide vividity and liveliness. The conveyor structures the image and the identity of the neighborhood, working on the functional traces of the train once feeding the warehouses. On the upper floors, housing in small parcels is being realised. Urban life is about heterogeneity and inexpectancy, as an effort is being made to encourage both. The patio in the middle of the blocks, works as a binding point for the residents of the block, providing free space for multiple activities to take place.

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« […] Demolishing and rebuilding is an important element of Chinese tradition. This period of time, they intend to demolish everything Wang Shu

»

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- Shenzhen’ S Luohu District Governmental Website. Web. 19 Apr. 2015. <(http://www.szlh.gov.cn/main/english/54059.shtml)>.

- Souto De Moura, Eduardo. Royal Academy of Arts Magazine no121. 2013. Print.

- The Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta (2008-2020). National Development and Reform Commission, 2008. Print.

IMAGE CREDITS & SOURCES

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- Front and back cover images: Photographs of the Proposal model made by the authors - Image 1: Cover photograph of the book «Transforming Chinese cities», edited by Mark Y. Wang, Pookong Kee, Jia Gao, published

by Routledge, 2014 - Image 2: «Less births, better births, to develop China vigorously» (少⽣生优⽣生振兴中华), Designer unknown, 1987, Landsberger collection, chineseposters.net.

- Image 3: «Youthful dancesteps» (⻘青春舞步), Wang Bingkun (⺩王 炳坤), 1986, Landsberger collection, chineseposters.net.

- Image 4: «Creative gateway», KCAP Architects, Masterplan render for the Sungang-Quinshuihe competition, 2011, http:// www.kcap.eu/en/.

- Image 5: Screenshot from Apple Maps Software.

- Image 6: Created and edited by the authors.

- Image 7: Screenshot from Apple Maps Software.

- Image 8: Created and edited by the authors.

- Image 9: Created and edited by the authors.

- Image 10: Created and edited by the authors.

- Figure 1: Kam Wing, «Crossing the 50 percent population

FIGURES SOURCES

rubicon: Can China urbanize to prosperity?», 2012, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Vol.53, No1, pp.63-86 - Figure 2: Mary Ann O’ Donnell, «Shenzhen Population Statistics 1979-2012», 2011, article in blog «Shenzhen noted», http:// shenzhennoted.com - Figure 3: United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: the 2009 Revision. For more see Keiichiro Oizumi, «The Emergence of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone» - Figure 4: Statistics Bureau of Shenzhen. For more see Shenzhen Departement of Education.

- Figure 5: Self edited maps showing the agglomeration of different cities. Alla data retrieved from Google Maps and Apple Maps and redrew.

- Figure 6: Chinese Port authorities, government monostries and terminal operators.

- Figure 7: Keiichiro Oizumi, «The Emergence of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone», 2011, Pacific Business and Industries, Vol. XI

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