Implementable "Micro-redevelopment": A Strategy for Activating Historic Districts

As an important part of urban heritage, historic districts are the core elements for shaping the city’s characteristics and showing its unique features, as well as the important support to release development potential and enhance urban quality. In the era of inventory planning, the preservation and redevelopment of historic districts have received widely social attention. In China, there has been plenty of theoretical and practical researches on the development of urban historic districts in the past three decades, but still some constraints existed in the process. Taking the activation of historic districts as a clue and summarizing the practical cases, this paper analyzes the roots and logic of the activation methods and driving forces of historic districts in the context of dual attributes, and further takes the Guangzhou city as an example, expounds that the current development of historic districts is facing the dilemmas of material obsolescence, complex property rights, and lack of motivation. Finally, guided by implementation and combined with "micro-redevelopment" method, this paper puts forwards some strategies that the activation of historic districts should be based on preservation, supported by the participation of multi-subjects, equipped by property rights through some micro-redevelopment projects. This paper aims to improve the living environment for the residents and to provide some suggestions for future practices.