Environmental Renewal of Street Spaces in the Southern Section of Xi'an Mingcheng District

Zhang Weiping, Wu Qingyu, Han Peizhi (Xi'an University of Architecture and Design)

Xi'an is the most famous ancient capital city of China for 13 dynasties. The existing city wall was built in the Ming Dynasty; the area inside of this city wall is called Xi'an Mingcheng District. It is more than 700 years old.

The southern section of this district is our research site. We are classifying and analyzing the different street spaces in this area, with considering streets’ various functions such as the traffic for vehicles and people, the presence of residential and commercial uses and as well as other multiple functions. Our sources of data include: review of previous studies, field observations, and case studies for typical streets. With our concern for addressing people’s needs, our objective is to understand the relationships between street spaces, history, culture, and various contemporary needs arising from people's diverse social lives for street spaces. At the same time, we consider several environmental problems such as: insufficient public space, limited greening facilities and lack of a humanistic spirit.

To conduct our analysis we chose 4 typical streets and made a detailed analysis of them, and we put forward some recommendations for them. Based on our analysis, a renovation proposal is made for the East-mutou Street. We hope our study will provide inspirations for creating a more pleasant, higher quality street spaces with better facilities in other historic areas.

Key words: public space, street design, renewal, street functions, people-oriented design, China