Densification as a Design Tool for Sustainable Regeneration – Research on Residential Communities in Suzhou

This research explores the meaning, goals, and strategies of densification in the context of Chinese new urbanisation. The research investigates densification as a tool for promoting urban regeneration and sustainability, with special attention to social sustainability. The research originates from the empirical observation of the resettlement communities built since the opening-up of China at the end of the ‘70s and it is inspired by the 14th Five-Year Plan of China, which promotes a people-oriented urban regeneration movement, and focuses on the residential communities built before 2000. The study is about Suzhou city, which was selected by the national government as one of the first pilot cities for urban regeneration. With the support of extensive reading of the critical literature and empirical exercises in some relevant case studies, the research proposes a nexus between sustainable densification and people-oriented community regeneration. The research starts from some hypothesis: the usual approach to regeneration should be discussed in the scale – the research shifts the observation from the city scale to the communities' scale – and in the governance – the regeneration should not be dominated by the local government and spatial design but should define a systematic regeneration framework and support people-oriented decision-making. To address the nexus between densification and regeneration, the thesis has developed three main parts: (1) the theoretical discussion. The first part of the thesis investigates the main research topics from a theoretical point of view, i.e., regeneration and densification and their role in the general frame of increasing the sustainability of Chinese new kind of urbanisation. This investigation highlights how the actions of densification are recurrent in urbanisation and should be context-driven. (2) the empirical case studies. The empirical studies are in Suzhou and investigate specific issues of regeneration with densification in specific places: the spatial vitality and its quantitative assessment in the residential community of Nanhuan before and after its regeneration with densification; the satisfaction of residents and its evaluation in the communities of Nanhuan and Daoqian with a comparison between the two. The regeneration with densification proposal presented to the urban design competition in Kunshan. (3) the Appendixes. Some studies that are complementary to the main research were carried on and can be found in the Appendixes; they were drafted contemporarily to the main parts of the research and are important in clarifying some trends and some basic concepts. The thesis concludes that actions of densification needed for intensifying the use of the urbanized land can produce regeneration and enhance the quality of the built environment mostly improving the public spaces and strengthening socio-cultural empowerment. Densification should focus on sustainable use of the resources, and combine spatial quality, neighbourhood interaction space and community governance. The thesis argues that densification with regeneration should adopt a socially sustainable perspective and the project-based spatial design should shift its focus towards a people-oriented participatory process