Role of Public Spaces Between Built Heritage and Living City: the case of Changle Gate in Zhengding, China

For historic cities in contemporary China, urban public spaces are not only essential to residents' everyday life but are also entitled to the power of shaping and manifesting local identity. Public spaces, heritages, and their urban context should constitute a correlated entirety that can be read as a unique historic urban landscape (HUL). However, it is now a global phenomenon that heritage-related public spaces are regarded as resources for tourism. Capital and policies, the two primary forces affecting public spaces in China, tend to selectively manipulate history and public life in favor of mass tourism, which could potentially cause spatial injustice in public spaces. Changle Gate, dating back to the Ming Dynasty (1449 A.D.), is the south gate of Zhengding, China. It was listed as a "Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level" in 2013 when a series of urban redevelopment projects aimed at boosting tourism was launched and produced many new public spaces around the gate. From different stakeholders' perspectives, including the tourism business, local community, local government, and heritage preservation authority, this paper analyzed the quality of these new public spaces around Changle Gate on their spatial form, dimension, function, and relationship with the city. The aim was to examine whether these public spaces, in addition to their roles in mass tourism, are equally adequate to provide the local community with suitable conditions for public life and to manifest and preserve the local identity through HUL. The paper found that these themed public spaces put too much emphasis on mass tourism and policy agendas. The selective interpretation of history and urban form, which lacked in-depth typo-morphological studies and public involvement, has led to estranged and simple forms and functions in these public spaces, weakening their roles in diversified local public life and HUL. As a result, these public spaces subtracted the heritage from the living city instead of being an integration medium.