Community Renewal with Urban Diagnosis: Bajiao Community, Shijingshan District, Beijing

As in medicine science diagnosis is generally recognized as a bridge that links basic medicine and clinical medicine, in urban planning, diagnosis is also required as transition and connection between the planning principle and practice. The basic principles of planning and the data on the performance of all systems of a city serve as strong supports for setting urban planning goals and corresponding strategies. With the development of information technology, big data and related technologies have delivered new tools and approaches to urban diagnosis. They also provided data basis and technologies for formulating systematic and quantitative diagnostic standards, enabling urban diagnosis to be more scientific and accurate. The diagnosis in community renewal is an important application of urban diagnosis methodology on a micro-scale. The population base, historical data and realistic demands of old communities determine that the urban diagnosis methods based on big data are of great significance for guiding the formulation of community upgrading goals and strategies. Bajiao Community in Shijingshan District, Beijing, a complex for the working class whose building work started in the 1980s, is the first area that realized urbanization in the district, thus of specific historical and cultural significance. The community features complex traffic, diversified population and various buildings built in different years. In order to rejuvenate the old residential areas, achieve fine management and deliver quality life, the local government began to formulate a plan to upgrade this area in 2018, where city diagnostic methods and a variety of big data technologies were adopted. Besides traditional research, big data was employed to identify the community’s symptoms and their root causes, analyze its historical problems, and check corresponding urban systems so as to help explore the major demands of community development as well as the needs regarding facility supply, public space and public activities and made quantitative analysis of these issues. All this offered meaningful guidance for the establishment of community upgrading strategies and the design of implementation paths.