Conversation on saving a historical community : a participatory renewal and preservation platform

Abstract

What if stakeholders, architects, and developers/bureaucrats could be in a conversation about preservation? Community heritage in China is in great danger because of the lack of authority, financial support, knowledge of preservation, and requests for development. Local residents, students, and citizens want to preserve the history and living environment of the community but bureaucrats want to demolish entire communities and rebuild for economic development. Architects do not often have enough input and rarely collaborate, while preservationists try to save every piece of historical heritage. Thus, a platform is proposed, here, to bring together voices from all the relevant participants, to democratically communicate between politicians and ordinary people, to create multiple architectural proposals for development reference based on crowd sourced materials. Furthermore, to establish also an experienceable digital world, archived from the evidence uploaded by stakeholders of heritages that are marked by bureaucrats for demolition. In the end, win or lose, the stakeholders will have a digital archive and exploring tool of the former building.