The Culture-Oriented Urban Regeneration: Place Narrative in the Case of the Inner City of Haiyan (Zhejiang, China)

Abstract

Recent decades have seen an increasing interest in the urban regeneration of inner-city areas in China. As urban areas take shape based on cultural aspects as much as on physical aspects, this paper employs the theory of place narrative to explore the strategies involved in culture-oriented urban regeneration. Initially, this paper sets out the basic theory of place narrative, which is relevant not only for the way in which a particular regenerated urban area is presented to the general public, but also for the way in which the hidden cultural information of the city translates into concrete urban developments. It also examines the urban regeneration of Haiyan (Zhejiang), an ongoing case, by applying methods and concepts of narrative theory. The main idea of urban regeneration is illustrated, based on the use of ‘culture’ as the revitalizing mechanism. Firstly, the method of place narrative is used to sort out and interpret the cultural information, which is commonly attached to the cultural resources in the context of urban space. Secondly, based on the idea of narrative structures, cultural resources can be integrated into the urban system connotationally and physically as well. Thirdly, cultural events are organized in the urban space to promote the experience of the place. The greatest contribution of this research is to provide a new approach, i.e., place narrative, to culture-oriented urban regeneration and for its sustainable development as well.

1. Introduction

The process of urban modernization in many developing countries over the past few decades has neglected the construction of cultural identity in inner-city areas [1]. During this process, cultural resources in the inner city continued to be scattered and disappear, with little underpinning left where urban culture can take root. This phenomenon not only leads to a weakening of the cultural identity of the city, but also makes it difficult to maintain the city’s cultural context, which partly causes the inner city to become a forgotten site.

The post-war urban renewal theory has undergone a process of continuous upgrading according to the background of the times. Before the 1960s, urban renewal mainly focused on shanty towns in cities, to solve the urban poverty problem. After that, market-oriented urban redevelopment occupied a dominant position in urban development, and stimulating the economic vitality of the inner city was the primary purpose at that time [2]. By the end of the last century, sustainable urban regeneration, which attached importance to the conservation of historical and cultural values and the maintenance of social texture, gradually became mainstream.

In this study, we will explore a new sustainable urban regeneration method using place narrative, taking into account both the improvement of physical space and the inheritance of cultural meaning in the city, and in regard to their linked relationship as the cornerstone of urban development.

1.1. Culture-Oriented Urban Regeneration

Culture-oriented urban regeneration has its origins broadly in the guidance of C.I.A.M.’s “Athens Charter”, i.e., the concept of “conservation of historic monuments” [3]. This was gradually accepted by governments of various countries. Before the Venice Charter, the targets of conservation were often limited to “objects”, i.e., “all the physical material of the place, including elements, fixtures, contents etc.” [4].

It is worth noting that these conservations of a limited number of historical and cultural resources occurred in the background of post-war large-scale urban reconstruction. The heritage conservation-based plans, however, emphasized urban reconstruction in material form and still influenced a large number of cities in developing countries at the end of the last century.

The Venice Charter of 1964 further proposed the concept of “condition of integrity”. As an addition to buildings and structures, the urban or rural setting in which is found the evidence of a particular civilization, a significant development or a historic event is equally worthy of protection [5]. In this phase, the focus of conservation begins to involve the “field”, i.e., an identifiable area of land including buildings and the immediate surrounds as required for conservation, and any natural features of historical significance. The birth of the Venice Charter was accompanied by the reflection of the architects of the time on the disregard for the existence of environment and place in the creation of modernist architecture. This includes the varied urban theories proposed by Kevin Lynch and other contextualist theorists. In Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City theory, he believes that the experience of residents in the urban environment is important for the context of the city [6]. The production of environmental images is influenced by a two-way process between the observer and the observed, which also means that good places are noted and remembered.

Focusing on the relationship between architecture and its surroundings, the theory of contextualism attempts to reconcile modern urbanism with traditional cities [7], to connect the human history of the city in time, and to consider continuity and integrity in space. This includes Aldo Rossi’s research. He points out that the uniqueness of architecture in the city comes not only from the spatial dimension, but also from the temporal dimension [8]. Another representative figure of contextualism, Colin Rowe, emphasizes that the context of the city is a product of different time spheres, and that urban fabrics from different times are important collage materials for urban spatial forms [9]. (see

Table 1. Culture-related charters and urban design theories.

	Architects/Organizations	Time	Focus
Athens Charter	C I A M	1930s	Historic buildings
Venice Charter	ICOMOS	1960s	Buildings and surroundings
The Image of the City	Kevin Lynch	1960s	Human experience and identity of the city
The Architecture of the City	Aldo Rossi	1960s	Spatio-temporal context
Collage City	Colin Rowe	1970s	Historic urban fabrics

).

The research on contextualism has provided new approaches and strategies for the construction of existing urban contexts from different perspectives, but the diachronic factors of urban space are still difficult to be fully represented in spatial places, [10] and the understanding of urban context is ultimately limited to the physical space of the city. In fact, urban space should be understood both physically and culturally [11]. In Jan Assmann’s discussion of cultural memory, we can see a way for society to reconstruct its own cultural identity, that is, through the transmission of cultural memory from generation to generation [12]. We can reshape urban traditions by salvaging memories, preserving cultural resources in every corner of the city, and then realizing the “bridge between heritage and other contemporary issues, such as sustainability, competitiveness and creativity” [4] in urban regeneration. With this trend, urban space has become the experimental field for a large number of urban theorists to maintain urban culture. Researches have shown that although the goal of urban regeneration includes increases in people’s income, preservation of natural resources etc., the key idea of regeneration is to “balance the current rapid development in urban areas through the conserving [of] urban identity, culture and traditions” [13].

Culture-oriented urban regeneration provides new ideas for addressing the problem of degradation of inner-city areas. The early practices of inner-city regeneration were accompanied by inner-city degradation and the structural recession of the urban economy faced by western countries in the 1980s [2]. The focus of urban regeneration at that time was on the economic level. However, the idea of boosting the urban economy by building large-scale commercial facilities in the inner city has destroyed the original texture and context of the city.

Later, when the important role of culture in urban development began to emerge, the regeneration of the inner city was gradually integrated with culture. The wave of culture-oriented urban regeneration regarded cultural policies that promote urban development as the cornerstone of regeneration. Cultural arts, including large-scale cultural events, important cultural facilities, and cultural industries, are regarded as direct uses of economic planning. This urban development model that emphasizes the promotion of urban regeneration by cultural policy has had an impact on the development of Asian cities since the 1990s, such as the practice in Singapore and Hong Kong [2]. In recent years, such cultural policies have been increasingly criticized [14,15]. This kind of cultural-led urban regeneration, aiming at increasing the attractiveness of cities and promoting the development of tourism, is usually only applicable to large cities, but not suitable for small and medium-sized cities. Moreover, such cultural policies are not closely related to the daily life of local residents. In addition, most of the cultural resources favored by city administration are either at national level or of great significance, while less attention is paid to the cultural resources that are closely related to the daily life of residents and located in the communities. Thus, this kind of regeneration approach is not conducive to the construction of local residents’ cultural identity in the current opinion of many academics [2].

Today, there is a dramatic transition in the way in which economic and social values are produced and culture is playing a new role in this process. Some scholars believe that culture should no longer be seen as a marginal sector of the economy, but rather as one of the potential engines of the emerging experiential economy [16]. New forms of economy that encourage experiential consumption are demanding a new connotation and quality of urban space, which allows culture to play an even more important role in contemporary society.

1.2. “Cultural” Degradation in Haiyan’s Inner City

Haiyan’s inner-city area, currently under regeneration, is part of a grand overhaul of Haiyan’s historical waterfront. The former walled city is located on the west side of Hangzhou Bay. The ring-shaped moat, which has been preserved so far, makes the city a representative case of various county-level former walled cities in eastern coastal China. As part of the government’s ambitious development plan for the Yangtze River Delta, the county is now facing unprecedented development opportunities. According to the local gazetteers, the city moved to its present location in the second half of the 14th century. The building of the city wall and the excavation of the moat happened at the same time, in order to resist the attack of pirates from the sea [17,18]. With its long history, the city moat is currently the oldest artificial remains in the city. The urban area within the moat and the waterfront of the moat formed the Haiyan inner-city area (See Figure 1).

Over the past 200 years, the city has experienced a dramatic development (See Figure 2). The war in the 1940s caused the buildings in the inner city to be completely destroyed. In the following decades, the old city was gradually filled with built-up areas. Due to the limitation of land use, the focus of urban development has shifted to the outside of the inner city in the past 20 years. During this period, a number of existing cultural resources in the inner city are facing the challenges of overdevelopment. Fortunately, the city managed to retain the ring shape of the moat.

After the field investigation, the research team found that most of the relics in the city, including the previous government infrastructure, schools, gardens and bus stations, were successively destroyed by war or urban reconstruction and only six officially listed historical relics remained in the inner city. The cultural information contained in the inner city attracted no more attention from city administration in the development of the city. Rapidly, the inner city became a forgotten site of the city after experiencing cultural degradation.

Based on field research, questionnaire design was carried out to understand residents’ perceptions of Haiyan inner city culture and expectations for the inner-city urban regeneration. The questionnaire was published through the local social media platform. 1516 valid questionnaires were collected.

The answers obtained from the respondents highlighted both the cultural and the ecological value of the Haiyan inner-city area. Among them, nearly 90% of the respondents agreed that history and culture were the most important values in this area (see Figure 3a). Nonetheless, respondents felt that the most impressive plot in the inner city was the park in the east of the inner city, an area with relatively few cultural resources. It is also worth noting that residents have relatively little activity in this area, especially at the waterfront. More than 80%of residents take a wander here, but other activities are relatively rare (see Figure 3b).

At the end of the questionnaire, an open-ended question asked for the local residents’ opinions on the current situation of the inner city and their expectations for its regeneration. The culture and history of the city and the cultural resources in the city were confirmed in a large proportion by the local residents as an important advantage of the city. However, the cultural information of the city is rapidly disappearing in the urban overdevelopment. Thus, the following ideas in terms of culture emerge from the answers: in the urban regeneration, the cultural information and cultural resources of the city should be fully considered in the scheme. Local characteristics should be reflected through urban stories and heritages, and the cultural identity of local residents should be cultivated (see

Table 2. The Expectation of the Urban Regeneration of Haiyan’s Inner-City Area.

Answers
“(It represents) the memory of a city, I hope it will become one of Haiyan’s business cards in the future.” (R15) 1
“(The inner city should) keep the traditional Jiangnan style.” (R70)
“(The government should) vigorously develop the inner city, combining classical and modern styles to create a different city brand.” (R147)
“The facilities and buildings (at moat waterfront) are outdated and the accessibility is inconvenient. Many residents no longer know the name of this river.” (R224)
“It is hoped that the historical and cultural heritage of Haiyan will be implanted into the urban regeneration, and the characteristics of Haiyan’s “millennium ancient county” will be truly experienced!” (R238)
“(Urban regeneration) should reflect local characteristics, with stories and inheritance.” (R380)
“Not every local resident understands its culture. … It is hoped that in the urban regeneration, residents can have a deeper understanding and feelings of this historical and cultural heritage.” (R1069)

¹ Answers are associated in the text with the number of each respondent: e.g., R1.

).

According to the field research and the questionnaires, the problems of cultural degradation faced by the inner city of Haiyan can be summarized into the following three aspects:

• Unintelligibility of cultural information: In the Haiyan’s inner city, besides the six listed historical sites, there are still a number of scattered cultural resources, including cultural facilities, industrial plants, etc., which were built in the second half of the last century and certainly carry the collective memory of generations of Haiyan residents in the inner city. However, in the urban development, the cultural resources were not fully valued, and the cultural information behind them was gradually submerged under the new buildings and become fragmented, which made the urban culture difficult to inherit. (See Figure 4a).
• Inaccessibility of cultural places: The accessibility of places with cultural information is poor, and the inner-city historical and cultural corridors are incoherent. The cultural places in the Haiyan inner city have not been effectively integrated (See Figure 4b).
• Non-utilization of cultural resources: The negligence of cultural information is also accompanied by poor utilization of cultural resources. The cultural facilities and public buildings built in the 1970s and 1980s have inherited the collective memory of several generations of Haiyan. However, a large number of dismantled cultural resources in the city have encountered the problem of regeneration. The old functions cannot attract residents in the current situation, which leads to the non-utilization of cultural resources. (See Figure 4c).

For many cities, the most valuable places in their environment are those with the largest amount of cultural information, where content is easily accessible and consumed. In this context, the city administration of Haiyan County hopes to use the cultural regeneration to carry out a culture-oriented urban revitalization in the inner city. We accomplish a framework for urban regeneration with some guiding suggestions for subsequent work as the initial phase of the whole plan.

In the next part of this paper, a new urban regeneration method based on place narrative theory will be introduced. Through this interdisciplinary method, the cultural resources in the city will be integrated into the new urban settings and functional requirements and their cultural significance will be highlighted to achieve a sustainable urban regeneration.

2. Methods

Narrative has a history almost as long as human beings. As early as in ancient Greece, Aristotle already had a discussion of narrative [19]. In the view of historians, to organize the material in chronological order and concentrate the content into a continuous story can be regarded as narrative [20].

Narratological research, which gradually reached a theoretical maturity in the late 1960s, was introduced into the field of spatial design theory a few decades later [21,22]. The spatial narrative theory can combine the physical space structure with its social and cultural significance, thereby consolidating the characteristic urban context, making up for the disadvantage of traditional urban design methods to effectively connect physical places with urban memory, and to highlight social, cultural, and historical significance.

Since the early 1990s, researchers have begun to concentrate on the role of narrative in urban design and urban planning [23]. Urban design can be seen as storytelling from different perspectives [24,25] for the reason that the past of the city may be used as a resource to provide a narrative for present and future [26]. Urban spaces and structures can be energized by providing residents and visitors with stories relevant to the city [11].

The theoretical framework of classic narratology from literature and the transformation of its concepts brings new insights into the field of urban design theory [27]. Structuralist narratologists believe that any narrative text is composed of two parts: story and discourse [28,29]. The story is the content of the narrative and the discourse is the expression of the narrative. Similarly, place narrative can also be constructed under such an understanding. The cultural resources consisting of both tangible and intangible remains of past human activity [30] in the urban space constitute the content of place narrative. These may include objects, spaces such as buildings; structures; prehistoric sites; historic or prehistoric objects or collection; rock inscription; earthworks, canals, or landscapes as well as events such as celebrations, speeches, ceremonies, etc.

Urban designers believe that urban spaces can be animated by making the stories associated with them [11]. Urban spaces such as front yards, bridges, and borders may become narrative carriers of urban memory in the view of everyday life [31]. In the urban design practice, the use of narrative techniques such as narrative themes and sequence of experiences can help make distinctive places with cultural themes and stories [32]. As cities devote more and more energy to cultural information management, their public spaces can bring their past to life—not one past, but those of the diversity of people and events that formerly lived in the city story [11].

Using the medium of narrative, cultural information can be presented in space. Architectural theorists believe that architecture narrative can be easier to use in cultural buildings such as museums and art galleries [33]. Similarly, in the dimension of urban design, narrative is more likely to appear in the design of urban settings invested with cultural resources, for example, the historic inner-city area. Combining the specific problems encountered by the Haiyan inner city and using the theory of place narrative, the research team intends to explore and utilize the cultural resources of the city from three aspects, solve the practical problems in the inner city, then highlight the cultural significance of the city, shaping the cultural identity of residents, so as to achieve a cultural sustainable development of the city (see Figure 5).

First, for the problem that cultural information is unintelligible, we plan to excavate and analyze the urban “narrative contents” to interpret invisible urban cultural information. Second, for the problem that cultural resources in the city are inaccessible and scattered, we use the narrative structure from narrative theory, including pointed structure, linear structure and other different types of narrative structures, to integrate these cultural resources, and at the same time use the theory of space syntax to verify their accessibility. Finally, for the non-utilization of cultural resources in the city, we combine cultural activities with physical space to strengthen the experience of the place.

Such experiments of place narrative are now being designed for the inner city of Haiyan, China, as part of an urban regeneration project that will herald the city’s arrival into the culture age. Known as the “The Revival of the Ancient City”, the project aims to incorporate cultural information into everyday aspects of the public realm, making places that respond to residents, change to accommodate multiple activities, provide stories and hopefully, become deeply meaningful to a rich array of people in Haiyan who will live within them.

3. Interpretation of Cultural Information

The inner city needs to be regenerated, and the connotational cultural information needs to be interpreted. In the field of heritage conservation, ICOMOS regards interpretation as an important part of cultural heritage conservation and management [34]. Interpretation can enhance the communication between the heritage and the public, so that the public can understand the value of the heritage [35].

The development of interpretation comes from the activity of understanding itself. Philosophers have pointed out that cultural phenomena must be understood in an analytic context [36]. In the urban regeneration of the inner city, interpretation helps residents to go beyond the appearance of buildings and landscapes and offers an insight into the urban cultural information. Taking Haiyan’s inner city as an example, on the surface, the Silk Factory Building and Cocoon located in the northern part of the city moat waterfront are just a few dilapidated factories built at the end of the last century that were not enough to be included in the official heritage list. However, from the perspective of meaning analysis, this building is inextricably linked with the long history of the local silk farming industry, the working methods familiar to the parents of young people, and even the use of the moat in a specific period. These can only be seen from within the cultural context.

Considering that interpretation is an effective tool to heighten the experiencer’s awareness to the cultural resources [37], a very practical problem is how to promote the interpretation of invisible cultural information in the regeneration of the inner city. Traditional interpretation normally uses the medium of print and electronic publications, public lectures, etc. to explain the meaning [34].

We believe that with the help of narrative methods, to be precise, when we use different narrative mediums, and even spatial-experiential narrative medium in the space, we can enable people with varied interests and backgrounds to receive information effectively. Of course, in a large number of small and medium-sized cities, especially those in developing countries, urban designers still face a step before interpreting the cultural information of these areas, namely excavating the invisible cultural resources.

The interpretation of cultural information often needs to go through the following steps: to collect, to analyze, and to interpret cultural information (see Figure 6).

The first step is the data collection on cultural resources, that is to say, to screen cultural resources through multi-source data. The difficulty of the collection lies in how to acquire other general culture-related data, such as buildings that were built in the second half of the last century and are not on the conservation list or special ritual in a certain community. This kind of cultural resource can be excavated from historical map data by using the method of historical map overlapping. Various texts’ data from official or private records can be used as supplementary data for these unspectacular cultural resources. In addition, investigation methods such as in-depth interviews and questionnaires are very helpful in finding non-material places of memory. In the case of Haiyan’s inner-city, more than 30 maps of Haiyan city in different periods from 1532 to 2016 were first collected. Through the method of historical map overlapping, combined with historical texts, in-depth interviews, etc., a total of more than 50 cultural resources were obtained.

The second step is the analysis of the data. For the cultural resources in the inner city, we need to explore their value at a historical and cultural level. At the same time, these cultural resources should be categorized under a proper framework. The ternary of cultural heritage—“objects-spaces-events”—provides a framework for the narrative content in inner-city areas [38]. The cultural resources in terms of place narrative can also be the classified into these three types and be defined as follows.

• Objects and materials related to urban memory, including buildings (typical residential dwelling, important public facilities, representative factories, etc.), structures (industrial facilities, defense facilities, etc.), natural landscapes (trees, etc.).
• Spaces of cultural resources generally include typical residential areas or typical urban textures, factory campuses, artificial works, parks, natural waters and forests, etc.
• Representative events related to the place, such as important historical events (wars, social changes, construction events), cultural celebrations, religious activities, community customs.

According to this framework, we categorized over 50 cultural resources found in the inner-city area of Haiyan (see

Table 3. Cultural Resources.

Type	Subtype	Number	Example
Objects	Buildings	15	Zha’s Family House, Silk Factory Building and Cocoon
	Constructions	6	Second Silk Factory Quay, Jinghai Wall-Gate
	Landscape	1	Pine of Former Zhu Garden
Spaces	Place for Living	5	Nuclear Power New Village
	Place for Production	3	Second Silk Factory
	Daily Activity Place	1	The South Gate Square
	Artificial Engineering	2	City Moat, City River
	Garden	2	Qi Garden
	Place with Old Name	4	Duwu Garden (Former Children’s Park)
	Natural Water Space	1	Jiangjiaqiao River
	Forest	1	Metasequoia Forest
Events	Cultural Celebrations	3	Rolling Lamp
	Wars	2	Invasions, Restorations and Emancipation of the City
	Religious Activities	2	Haiyan Saozi
	Community Customs	1	Work-Singing by Seawall-Workers
	Construction Events	2	Building of Qi Garden
	Social Change	1	The Revolution in Haiyan Shirt Factory
	Others	1	Reading by the Pond

and Figure 7). From the perspective of time, these cultural resources include the centuries-old urban moat, private gardens, local traditional houses built in the middle of the last century, factories representing the early modern industries of the city and urban customs; and also new residential villages and representative cultural buildings built at the end of the last century.

When the invisible cultural resources in the city are categorized, the cultural information behind them is self-evident. The final step is the interpretation of these cultural information. In urban design, designers can interpret cultural information through space, materials, forms and etc. Existing cultural resources can be reused or transformed according to their different conservation conditions, as well as residents’ demands and planning requirements. If cultural resources have lost their material carrier and only continue in the memory of local residents, designers can choose the most representative elements to reproduce them through reconstruction or the technique of metaphor.

In the urban regeneration of Haiyan’s inner city, in addition to the conventional method of presenting cultural information to residents through the sign system, we have specially designed some important nodes, trying to interpret cultural information through the space itself. The first case is the original West Gate of the city, which was an important part of the former city wall of Haiyan. During the urban regeneration, one of the important landmarks of the inner city can be reproduced through the rebuilding of the West Gate (see Figure 8).

Another case is the cultural resources that are in disrepair or in disuse. The designer may select and conserve the elements in the place and maintain their original historical charm through the technique of transformation. The Second Silk Factory belonged to the important industries in Haiyan at the end of the last century. With the adjustment of the city’s economic structure, the textile industry gradually moved away from the city center. The buildings in the factory have gradually become unused in recent years. In the urban regeneration, most of the original factory buildings will be conserved, especially the iconic chimneys and water towers in the original factory campus. The large-scale boring interface of the factory was broken, and the catering industry, which originally developed along the road on the north side of the factory, was placed in this place, so that the cultural significance of the place can be interpreted here (see Figure 9).

The interpretation of hidden cultural information can make the urban space to which the cultural information is attached become intelligible. This is conducive to rediscovering the value of dismantled cultural resources in the city, which helps to realize the value at the physical level in urban regeneration. When the inner city faces the problem of degradation, “run-down housing estates, derelict factories”, etc. are “the all-too-visible faces of poverty and economic decline” [39]. These derelict resources are often facilities that carry urban memory and culture. Selecting those buildings or spaces with a profound cultural background to carry out a renewal can enhance the city’s physical environment and improve the city’s image through the improvement of cultural resources, which ultimately promote the physical regeneration of the inner city—in some circumstances it may be the main engine of regeneration [40].

In this phase, urban designers should set up a culture resource map and regard it as an important premise for the subsequent culture-oriented design. This work usually belongs to the analytic phase of urban regeneration. The idea of reuse or reproduction of derelict cultural resources is the task in the design phase, where the designer should formulate design guidelines for the next stage of detailed design or architecture design to clarify how the hidden cultural information can be interpreted. In addition to interpretation, the presentation of cultural information can also be enhanced by integrating cultural resources (the connection between objects, spaces) and organizing cultural activities (the association between events and objects, spaces). We will introduce them in the following parts.

4. Integration of Cultural Resources

Because the value of cultural resources that do not belong to the listed buildings or intangible cultural heritages has not been recognized by the city administration for a long time, the conservation and adaptive use of these resources are insufficient. A large number of cultural resources are scattered in the urban space, especially in the inner-city area, which leads to a low accessibility. In terms of urban cultural sustainability, cultural resources in the city with high accessibility need to be integrated in the urban space and to reflect system continuity and public accessibility.

Since the 1970s, urban designers have successively put forward a series of theories of spatial integration in urban design. Edmund Bacon pointed out that the movement system of the city plays an integral role in urban architecture and space [41]. Roger Trancik summarized the post-war urban design methods into three types: figure-ground theory, linkage theory and place theory. He points out that it can provide us with a complete urban design strategy only by integrating these theories [42]. Bill Hillier’s concept of “space syntax” in the 1970s uses quantitative descriptions to study the social logic of spatial organization and is still widely used in architecture and urban design today [43].

The emphasis on the integration of cultural resources has two points, one is the integration of cultural meaning, and the other is accessibility of the corresponding physical space, especially walkable accessibility [44]. Most inner-city areas have been pedestrian-led urban spaces since their beginning. The walking space in the inner city that adapts to regional characteristics and everyday life needs must rely on the architectural background and cultural context corresponding to the scale to exist [45]. However, the overdevelopment of the inner city in past decades has damaged the urban fabric of the inner city. Taking Haiyan’s inner city as a case, the historic city moat lacks systematic planning and a large number of informal structures occupy the public waterfront space. According to statistics, there are 17 breakpoints in the waterfront space (10 in the inner circle and 7 in the outer circle), which lead to its low accessibility.

In terms of place narrative, designing “storylines” to link cultural resources in a system is similar to designing a narrative structure for the narrative content. In the field of heritage conservation and tourism development, the strategies for history-related spatial narratives usually have three forms: narrative from a single point; sequential narrative along routes; complex narrative over large areas [46].

In Haiyan’s inner-city area, a suitable narrative structure needs to be chosen for the arranged cultural resources. Considering that the moat is currently the oldest example of human engineering and its waterfront area contains several different cultural connotations. As a matter of course, turning the moat into a “storyline” to integrate scattered cultural resources using place narrative is an ideal choice for the city. This “storyline” should be like a time tunnel, which could integrate the cultural connotations of diachronic backgrounds in the city.

Spatially, through the frequently-used methods, such as adding exclusive walking paths, breaking the walls of adjacent places, and overhanging walkways (to avoid waterfront obstacles), the breakpoints could be cleared according to the different conditions, so that the moat-side walking system is fully connected. In the plan, a new, moat-guided promenade forms the linear narrative structure of the regeneration (see Figure 10). In this “storyline”, culture resources would show great systematization and accessibility. Influenced by the narrative structure, this linear open space is connected to some cultural resources deep inside the inner city through many finger-like spaces, and is integrated with the city’s historic district and landmark garden in the northwest of the inner city.

With the integration of different cultural resources, the moat and inner city can present different characteristics. Together with private gardens, residents can receive the living culture of the city a thousand years ago; with the city walls and gates, residents can receive the cultural information about the fire of the wars a hundred years ago; with the old factory buildings, residents can receive the memory of urban industrial development in the past half century. The “storyline” provides residents with different perspectives to inspect the cultural information of the city, and when it finally forms a closed loop, the communication of diverse and rich cultural information constitutes the complete memory of the city.

To simulate the integration of the corresponding physical space in the urban regeneration, the segment analysis was carried out using space syntax theory and considering the route networks before and after urban regeneration: The existing walking system and the walking system resulted from the integration of the latter with a newly-optimized waterfront promenade and several roads in the center. Bill Hillier and colleagues created the model of space syntax with the emphasis on the global configuration of spatial morphology [47]. This theory considers urban space as a continuous whole network, where any change in local space can change the relationship between all local spaces [48]. ”Integration” in space syntax expresses the ease with which a node connects to other nodes in a spatial system based on topological depth. The study shows that this data has a high correlation with the walking traffic in real cities [49]. With this tool, it is possible to better judge the previously designed integration relationship of cultural connotation through quantitative indicators, so as to rationally optimize the “storyline”. Space syntax is also helpful in diagnosing the situation of a continuous experience of cultural places in the city.

In space syntax, a “segment map” is established based on a real urban map to represent the urban network configuration. Actual urban spaces are modeled as nodes linked by a road network for the quantitative measurements of space configurational attributes [50]. Considering the situation in the inner city of Haiyan, there is an obvious contrast between the traditional serpentine streets and the circular road along the moat and the newly-built straight roads in urban development, which also leads to the fact that the axis analysis in the space syntax cannot objectively reflect the comparison between these two types of road conditions. Therefore, in this study, we chose the segment analysis and modeled the curved walking system by a series of continuous segments in the software of Depthmap X [40]. The parameter of integration included in the segment analysis was specifically analyzed.

Due to the repair of the walking system on both sides of the moat (with the optimization of the roads in the old city), the total length of the road and walking system in the inner city is expected to increase by 10.5% in the urban regeneration. We take the east-west city river (Yanjiatang) and the north-south trunk road Xinqiao Road as the boundary to divide the inner city into four areas (see Figure 11a). Next, we focus on analyzing and optimizing the average integration of the whole roads and cultural resources in each area with different radius (see Figure 11b). Integration is the most widely used index in space syntax and represents how easily a space can be reached from other spaces [51]. A higher integration value indicates a higher accessibility of the space inside the given spatial network. At the same time, the corresponding segment is shown in a redder color in the map.

It is noted that in each area, the expected average road integration is higher than the existing situation when calculating the radius of 500 m (community scale) and 2000 m (county-city scale) (see

Table 4. Distribution of space configurational attributes of the existing and expected situation.

	North-East	North-West	South-East	South-West
Number of Segment (Before)	846	1082	1111	765
Number of Segment (After)	950	1151	1183	825
Total length of Segment (Before)(m)	20,012.9	21,413.9	21,240.7	16,677.0
Total length of Segment (After)(m)	22,850.0	22,899.8	23,823.5	18,140.8
Number of Cultural Resources (Objects, Spaces)	8	18	5	7
Number of Breakpoints at Waterfront (Before)	5	4	3	5
Average T1024 Integration R = 500 (Before)	92.9	138.1	159.7	165.3
Average T1024 Integration R = 500 (After)	138.4	171.5	181.4	215.8
Average T1024 Integration R = 2000 (Before)	907.1	1052.9	1038.3	1118.3
Average T1024 Integration R = 2000 (After)	1144.8	1197.6	1192.3	1295.0
Average T1024 Integration R = 500 of Cultural Resources (r = 500) (Before)	125.8	161.4	257.1	224.4
Average T1024 Integration R = 500 of Cultural Resources (r = 500) (After)	161.1	201.8	278.1	275.5

). This increase is particularly evident in the northeast area, where the most breakpoints in the walking system and unused cultural resources exist at moat waterfront. After a series of measures, the average integration of the roads is expected to increase by 49.0% (see Figure 12).

Also noticeable in the urban regeneration is the accessibility of cultural resources. Through calculation, the expected accessibility of cultural resources in the four areas can be increased by 21.0% on average compared to the current situation. As one of the important results, the waterfront promenade also shows a significantly higher accessibility than the surrounding segments on the map. After optimizing the local problem shown in the space syntax, the research team formally determined the integration plan of cultural resources in urban regeneration.

For urban regeneration, the integration of cultural places at the connotative and spatial levels can drive the development of the urban transportation system, especially to promote the accessibility of the cultural resources and the walkability of the inner city. From a longer-term perspective, the improvement of inner-city walkable integration can facilitate the social intercourse among residents from different communities, such as eating together in a restaurant space converted from the derelict factory campus, or exercising together in a basketball gym renovated from an old warehouse. In this way, the sharing of places in the inner city could be achieved and residents from different communities and generations could be integrated, which means a positive impact on the inner city regarding social aspects.

As an important part of the design phase in urban regeneration, urban designers need to combine the masterplan to design a “storyline” and to complete the optimization of spatial integration with an emphasis on cultural resources. The narrative structure provides a systematic framework for the place and promotes the accessibility of cultural resources in the city. However, in a specific space, narrative techniques are still needed to enable the residents to have a better experience through the combination of events, objects, and spaces. This requires the organization of cultural events in the city.

5. Organization of Cultural Activities

Activities directly bring vitality to the place, that is, the social, production, and living practices of various places. Therefore, the reproduction and creation of events has become an increasingly common method of heritage conservation: These include events such as historical stories, religious activities, community customs, etc. Daily activities and future events that are related to urban culture or linked to material cultural resources should also be regarded as cultural activities. In terms of place narrative, the cultural information of urban space can be narrated by organizing historical events, and at the same time, by creating culturally relevant activities related to the present and future, the potential value of urban space can be activated.

Urban theorists believe that culture activities have become a primary motivation for making and using urban places [52]. From the perspective of urban space, when activities are associated with a specific urban place, the urban place can further attract residents to stay in it for spatial experience and perception. While arousing the experience of place, urban events can effectively solve the problem of non-utilization of cultural resources in cities. We continue to take the inner city of Haiyan as an example. According to the memories of local elders, there was a special activity of singing the “silkworm flower” songs in the west of Haiyan City. Several young men rowed a small boat together to the quay of the river at the gate of the sericulturist families. While singing the “silkworm flower” songs, they drew various shapes on the boat in the middle of the river to play a water show. This activity is often greeted by nearby residents, and silkworm farmers are also willing to give out homemade cakes as a reward [53]. Today, there are still many quays on the bank of the city’s moat, but the related activities of singing “silkworm” flowers have not happened for a long time, and the memory of silkworm culture in the city has gradually disappeared.

The precondition of organizing cultural activities in a city is to sort out material cultural resources (object, space) and immaterial cultural resources (event). One approach is to directly link events (activities) that belong to cultural resources with material cultural resources. In terms of the principle of authenticity in the field of cultural heritage, the place where the urban cultural activities from the past took place should be analyzed and cultural activities should be reorganized there.

In urban regeneration, it is more often the case that new activities are associated with existing or unused cultural places. Such activities include cultural catalysts (such as festivals), theme events (such as regional and world-class competitions), and daily activities (such as night running, morning exercise, commuting, etc.) [38]. These events connect material cultural resources, the interactive relationship between residents and the place, and create a sense of experience in the place.

Another approach is to connect traditional cultural activities into newly designed urban spaces. By integrating past activities into newly-designed places, it can inspire new vitality and enrich modern, efficient and fast-paced civic life. By participating in traditional cultural activities, residents can be immersed in it, and then absorb traditional wisdom and aesthetic power, so that emotions can be healed.

The research team established a public participation platform in the early stage. Through questionnaire interviews, in-depth interviews and offline discussions, the public could participate in the design process and understand the demands of diverse groups of people. In the design process, the possibility of each subject in the society participating in the event creation was fully considered, and a series of cultural activities was organized. These also provided the basis for the emergence of some spontaneous subjective cultural activities in the future period.

Taking the moat waterfront promenade as an example, some local folk cultural activities are suitable to be injected into urban space, especially into cultural resources. The lotus pond located at the confluence of the city moat and Jiangjiaqiao river in the southwest corner of the inner city can be traced back to the 19th century. Apart from the place name, there are no other material carriers left. In urban regeneration, the moat as a “storyline” connects this open water area with the adjacent historic settlements and metasequoia forests. The open water surface has become a natural water stage, and the hydrophilic platform extending into the water surface could be not only used as an activity space for residents in daily life, but also as a temporary stand during performances. The cultural activity of singing “silkworm” flowers in Haiyan mentioned above can be held in this newly-designed place (see Figure 13). In addition, the place offers the potential for a variety of organized or daily cultural activities to take place. In this way, the “forgotten corners” of the city, which had been little visited, are expected to be energized and attract residents and visitors in the future.

Combining new activities or daily events with spare spaces can also activate those unused cultural resources. The briquettes factory in Haiyan is located on the north side of the inner city. With the briquettes gradually disappearing from local residents’ kitchens, the briquettes factory area has been derelict for some time. The massive warehouse and the wide space in the yard are actually suitable spaces to meet the various sports needs of residents, which can be seen in the renovation of many industrial plants around the world. Various forms of sports activities can be organized here; moat promenade is interspersed in the original factory area, and this unused cultural resource is expected to be regenerated (see Figure 14). New activities and functions in this area may make the place more active, thereby attracting more people to these unused cultural resources.

The shaping of urban place based on cultural activities has its positive role and significance. It helps to discover and fill unused cultural resources in the city and reshape the vitality of the city; at the same time, it can bring new functions and industries, not even limited to repetitive cultural industries, to the city. From the residents’ point of view, cultural activities help to shape the sense of urban cultural identity and promote residents’ participation in public places [54]. Residents can gain a unique, culture-relevant experience in consumption, so it seems that the organization of cultural events can invariably improve the attractiveness of the commercial offer [54], which will eventually have a positive impact on the inner-city economy. In this phase, designers should formulate new functions for unused places and plan potential cultural activities taking account of all stakeholder concerns, usually in the design and implementation phase of urban regeneration.

6. Discussion

In the paper, we discovered that it is the existence of these cultural resources that makes Haiyan, a moated city, reflect the unique geographical features and recognizability that are different from other cities. Traditional theories of cultural conservation and urban regeneration cannot effectively solve the problems faced by some inner-city areas of counties in China, including Haiyan. In culture-oriented urban regeneration, the focus is not only limited to those conserved heritages, but has also moved to a large number of cultural resources in the city that can reflect cultural diversity, which can expand the breadth of urban culture. On the other hand, compared with the listed historical buildings, cultural resources are more related to the personal experiences and emotions of residents, which are more likely to resonate with residents and reflect the depth of urban culture. As a leading part of the “The Revival of the Ancient City”, in the research, all kinds of invisible cultural information are arranged in the city, and the achievements will become the guidelines for each specific plot design and architecture design in the longer-term plan. The culture-oriented urban regeneration is expected to solve the concrete problems of the unintelligibility of cultural information, inaccessibility of cultural places, and non-utilization of cultural resources, which were summarized in the preliminary investigation, and then stimulate the inner-city area to move away from cultural degradation.

The use of narrative theory, gradually introduced into the realm of architecture and urban design in the 1980s, is able to better present the often-overlooked side of the cultural resources: the “story” in the place. The urban regeneration practice based on the theory of place narrative, with emphasis on the protection of cultural resources and cultural context, is conducive to integrate physical space in the city with the connotational story and strengthen local cultural identity.

The use of narrative is to convey the content of the story, and then present the connotational historical and cultural memory. This can strengthen the continuity and promote the depth of cultural experience in urban spaces in the times of the experience economy, opening up a new path for urban regeneration, and the following significance of the narrative is self-evident (see

Table 5. Urban Regeneration Approaches and Purposes.

	Urban Regeneration Approach	Urban Regeneration Purpose
Interpretation of cultural information	Reusing or reproducing cultural resources	Beautification of the physical environment; Improvement of the city’s image
Integration of cultural places	Designing “storylines” and connecting cultural places	Enhancement of urban transportation; Promotion of resident integration
Organization of cultural activities	Combining activities and urban spaces	Excavation of new functions; Activation of new urban industry

).

Place narrative can explore the potential cultural information. In the urban regeneration using place narrative, by arranging the narrative content, the city is able to regain the collective memory of the past and the carriers of collective memory such as “objects”, “spaces” and “events”. Then the regional history, cultural characteristics, daily life, and other recorded information can be merged into the design and creation of public space, which is conducive to the interpretation of cultural information. Interpretive-oriented renewal of cultural resources can enhance the city’s physical environment and improve the city’s image. This has a positive significance regarding the material aspects of the inner-city regeneration.

Place narrative can integrate scattered cultural resources and promote a better connection between these. In the place narrative-led approach, by building the narrative structure to link the scattered cultural resources throughout the city in a sequence, it can effectively integrate the scattered cultural resources in the city, at the same time construct the connection between various cultural resources in the urban settings. With integration, the walking system in the inner-city will be improved and residents from different neighborhoods will be given the opportunity to integrate, which undoubtedly creates social value for urban regeneration.

Place narrative can promote a better experience of cultural resources. In this approach, by utilizing narrative techniques, places in the city can be better experienced. Specifically, organizing events in the space to promote the interaction between citizens and urban space and urban culture is conducive to residents’ participation in the urban places. New activities imply new functions; thus, it will stimulate new industries and bring economic revitalization to the inner-city area.

However, during the research we also noticed the following limitations. First of all, the scope of use of this method is usually limited to urban blocks, communities and villages which contain cultural resources. Haiyan County, which we selected as a case study, has a profound cultural background, and the degradation faced by its inner-city area mainly occurs at the cultural level. Although such a situation is common in the fast-developing eastern region of China, we still need to point out that this situation may have a certain particularity. Whether this method is applicable to large-scale urban spaces and planned cities remains to be further studied. On the other hand, we also noticed in our research that the culture-oriented urban regeneration procedures, although largely in line with the conventional processes of urban regeneration (see Figure 15) mainly focuses on the cultural aspects of the city. In the process, it can solve some other aspects, but is not primarily suited to tackle economic and ecological challenges. Facing these kinds of problems, it needs to be combined with other urban design methods and theories.

7. Conclusions

In conclusion, this study explores a culture-oriented urban regeneration method by integrating a series of methods, aiming to discover the cultural connotation of the city with the help of place narrative theory, and link the city’s physical space andwith cultural meaning. Compared with simply using traditional theories of cultural heritage conservation, this method pays more attention to the experience of human beings in urban space. Compared with simply using the space syntax mentioned in the paper, this method emphasizes cultural connotation in urban space.

“Without culture, there is no future for cities” [55] Culture-oriented urban regeneration has been practised in big cities in the past few decades, especially in big European cities such as Bilbao, Barcelona, Milan, etc., [56,57,58]. The construction of large-scale cultural facilities can improve the city’s image, thereby promoting the tourism industry; the holding of very large cultural events can deliver sustainable regeneration for host cities [59]; the development of cultural industries as important growth engines can stimulate consumption and promote economic development [60].

However, these lessons from the practices in big cities also suggested that the cultural-led urban regeneration practice pays more attention to cultural products and cultural enterprises, ignores the participation of local residents and lacks the creation of vitality of urban daily life space. Some scholars recently pointed out that, public perception on cultural heritage puts an emphasis on tourism revenues and less on regeneration [61]. How to use new methods to solve these problems exposed in the culture-oriented urban regeneration and to formulate a design scheme for small and medium-sized cities is the focus of this research. Culture-oriented urban regeneration should concern every resident, every community, and every daily activity space. Here we can also see that culture-oriented urban regeneration using place narrative theory can not only play an active role in the cultural sustainability of the city. According to UNESCO, culture is “a driver and an enabler” of sustainable development. At the same time, it is seen as a cross-cutting theme that has an impact on different aspects of sustainable development. In the case in Haiyan, culture-oriented regeneration may benefit the conservation of cultural heritages, provide accessible transport systems and the availability of public spaces in the city. These are all in line with the UN’s sustainable development goals framework for sustainable cities. From a broader perspective, by understanding the past of the city, residents can be inspired towards an interest in their cultural identity and a broader participation in urban development. Thereby cities can catalyze and drive social and economic changes, and enhance their development potential [55]. At the same time, considering culture-related experiences as a cornerstone for activating new industries in cities, has positive meaning for the economic aspect of cities.