The management of change: Strategic design for historic urban quarters of Guangzhou

This paper will discuss the conflict between designers and other actors in urban regeneration processes in China’s historic quarters. It does this because the role of mediation is missing. Based on observation and analysis, it will be shown how urban design can address this problem, both theoretically and in practice.As an increasingly popular discipline, urban design has been having a positive role in urban-regeneration processes in the West. However, this is not the case in the Chinese context. Urban planning and architecture have not been using mediation to try and solve the conflicts that can arise where there is urban regeneration. From a theoretical perspective, urban designers’ roles as potential mediators in regeneration processes will be highlighted by a review of relevant literature; while from a practical perspective, the potential of mediating, and creating dialogues of urban design, will be analyzed and tested by my thesis design project later on.The main aim of this paper (and my graduation project) is to address the theoretical gap that exists regarding mediation within existing professional approaches (namely urban planning and architecture), and at the same time provide an alternative regeneration model for historic urban quarters in China.Design of the urban fabricArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Design of the Urban Fabri