In Beijing, 742 old districts have been renovated and 548 have been completed, 71 old factories have been renovated and improved, and the space under about 50 bridges has been renovated and improved, making city life more vibrant; in Tianjin, the achievements of urban renewal are everywhere. Whether it’s the transformation of Jinmaohui from a thermal power plant into a modern shopping mall or the conversion of a cotton spinning factory into the creative neighborhood ‘Cotton 3’, these revitalized industrial heritages are like wordless books, silently recording historical changes.

The city is a place where people live in concentration, and urban construction must give top priority to making people live comfortably. At the beginning of the new year, the first executive meeting of the State Council, which studied the promotion of urban renewal work, pointed out that “urban renewal is related to the improvement of urban appearance and living quality, and is an important means to expand domestic demand”, and emphasized that “we should support each place to carry out innovation and exploration according to local conditions and establish and improve the sustainable urban renewal mechanism! ”. Recently, the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development also said that in 2025, we should vigorously implement urban renewal, plan and implement a number of urban renewal and renovation projects, fully complete the renovation of urban old residential areas built before the end of 2000, and encourage local residents to explore the independent renovation of old residential houses.

Urban renewal is not simply tearing down the old and building the new. Besides the renewal of buildings, the renovation of old neighborhoods, the improvement of both the soft and hard environments, and the functional upgrading of lifeline projects, it also involves nourishing the industrial and innovative ecosystem, inheriting the city’s history and culture, and providing a new foundation for the city’s high-quality development in terms of conditions and capabilities. Urban renewal is a complex systematic project, which requires strengthening policy guidance, reinforcing all-round elemental support such as land, capital, talents, technology and scene, and constructing a sustainable long-term mechanism for urban renewal.

Land is an important material foundation for urban development, and the rationality and efficiency of land use is directly related to the effectiveness of urban renewal. Currently, it is crucial to accelerate the development of assessment methods and tools to strengthen the identification and potential assessment of the stock of low utility land. In-depth research should be carried out on several key issues in urban renewal, such as the definition of land use, to promote relevant legislative protection and institutional supply, and to actively encourage market entities to participate in urban renewal. In addition, a good balance should be struck among various types of land use. While improving the urban landscape and upgrading the city’s energy level, we should plan and create a necessary amount of low-cost living space, so that the fruits of urban renewal can benefit all groups and preserve the city’s human touch and lively atmosphere.

Urban renewal empowers new high-quality productivity. It not only transforms the physical spaces for R&D, production, and living but also systematically upgrades urban functions, the industrial ecosystem, social governance, and cultural quality, thus reshaping the city’s competitiveness. Large-scale urban renewal projects are characterized by a large scale of transformation, high investment intensity, a long implementation cycle, and slow capital recovery. In this regard, it is necessary to build a diversified investment and financing mechanism. For urban renewal projects with clear public service attributes, efforts should be made to build a mechanism to ensure the growth of financial input. For urban renewal projects with more obvious market attributes, effective policy design and institutional arrangements can be made to improve market-oriented financing channels, fully mobilize the participation of market entities, and activate market vitality. While expanding the sources of funds, it is also necessary to pay attention to the saving and centralized use of urban renewal funds, use limited funds where they are most needed, focus on solving the people’s “urgent, difficult, worrying and expected” issues, and promote the upgrading of the city’s energy level.

Urban renewal cannot be achieved without strong and reliable technical support. To this end, we should promote the iterative upgrading of key technologies such as inspection and monitoring, safety assessment, protective restoration, ecological design, and green construction, and make efforts to solve the problems of aging pipeline systems, degradation of facility functions, and irrational layout of service facilities of urban lifelines, so as to enhance the city’s resilience; we should accelerate the research, development, and application of technologies and products such as barrier-free renovation, aging-appropriate digital technologies, and intelligent service equipment to better meet the opportunities and challenges brought about by aging; we should also accelerate the construction of digital, networked, and intelligent new infrastructure to meet the city’s needs for cultivating new high-quality productivity; vigorously develop technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and digital twins to build a smart city, and lay a solid material and technical foundation for the development of urban digital governance and the digital economy. These technologies are highly integrated, and it is necessary to coordinate them to promote a series of tasks, including basic frontier research and the construction of common technology R&D functional platforms, and actively explore the formation of major technological research projects and the innovation of management mechanisms.

Urban renewal requires the cooperation among the government, market entities, and the public to create various realistic scenarios and promote the formation of an effective interface where elements gather, supply and demand interact, and service ports are integrated. Scientific and reasonable scenario design can enable the public to truly experience the warmth and sense of gain brought by urban renewal. For example, the “Courier’s Post” provides a resting space for many deliverymen, and the “pocket parks” allow residents to discover the beauty of nature nearby.

Urban renewal connects the people’s sense of fulfillment, happiness, and security at one end and the city’s history and future at the other. With the support of all-round elements, the construction and improvement of a sustainable long-term urban renewal mechanism will surely make the city more harmonious and livable, smarter and more convenient, and more resilient.