Deputy director-general of the Shanghai Municipal City Planning
Management Bureau Wu Jiang said on Tuesday that the city government
would issue an order disallowing any changes to be done to the 64
old streets in the city. The order aims to protect the original
style of these streets that reflect Shanghai's history and
culture.
Over the past few years, Shanghai has done much to protect the
city's historical and cultural sites as well as the historical
buildings. Some experts say the new order shows that such
protective measures have begun to cover the city's old streets.
According to Wu, these protective measures were first applied to
individual buildings in the city and later will expand to the whole
area of the historical and cultural zones. Recently, they
discovered that the city's old streets are worthy of protection,
too. If, some day, these streets are re-constructed or widened for
city expansion purposes, a historical buildings nearby will be
inevitably affected, too. To protect the area as a whole, the
Shanghai government had decided to issue an order to the effect
that these old streets should never be expanded in future.
Sixty-four streets in the order, including Hengshan Road, Yuyuan
Road, and Shanyin Road. In the city's downtown area, there are
altogether 144 roads under protection as they are scattered in one
of the 12 designated historical and cultural zones, and are
therefore protected as an indispensable part of the zone
itself.
In order to restore the city's historical feature and save the
old trees growing in protective zones, the Shanghai transportation
department has already cut off the city's rail construction
volume.
So far, 27 square kilometers of land in the city's downtown area
have been approved as historical and cultural zones, accounting for
one-third of the city's total downtown area measured in 1949.
(Chinanews.cn June 23, 2006)