China News Service, Fuzhou, November 1 (Ye Yilin) At present, cities around the world have entered the stage of inventory renewal and transformation. How to solve the contradiction between the decline of old city style, development and construction, and heritage protection, so that the thousand-year-old culture can "live" and become "popular" in modern cities? On the 1st, the 2026 World Cities Day global home event sub-forum "Cultural Sustainability, Symbiosis and Livability - Systematic Protection and Living Inheritance of Historical and Cultural Heritage in the Context of Urban Renewal" was held in Fuzhou. Experts and scholars from the field of housing and construction, universities and colleges gathered together to explore ways to protect and regenerate the historical built environment.
Fujian has deep cultural roots, broad cultural context and rich culture. It has long integrated cultural heritage protection into the urban development process. It now has 12 famous historical and cultural cities, 63 historical and cultural blocks, 200 famous historical and cultural towns and villages, and 10,792 historical buildings, ranking among the top in the country in total.
Chang Qing, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University, pointed out in the keynote report "The Way of Adaptive Regeneration of Historic Built Environments" that the protection of historical environments should adhere to the concept of "keeping integrity and innovating, preserving the old and continuing the new, and continuing the present and deriving from the present". Combining cases such as the Bund Source in Shanghai and the regeneration design of Fuzhou Zhongzhou Island, he stressed that on the basis of strictly controlling the historical texture and pattern, we must restart endogenous power and introduce external space "catalysts" to deeply integrate old buildings with the needs of modern life and achieve symbiosis between the old and the new.
"In the past expansion stage, we emphasized the need to prevent 'constructive damage'; now when we turn to the renewal of old urban blocks and old blocks, we must also avoid 'renewal damage.'" Wang Ke, deputy director of the Department of Building Energy Conservation and Science and Technology of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said that the protection and inheritance of historical culture has entered a new stage, and all localities must fully implement new concepts and new requirements for protection and inheritance. We must always put protection first, strengthen historical and cultural protection in the entire process and every link of urban renewal, accelerate innovation in institutional policies and standards, establish a protection implementation mechanism with residents as the main body, focus on project planning and generation, strengthen supervision, inspection and accountability, so that the people can have a real sense of gain in historical and cultural protection.
The protection and renewal of historic blocks requires huge investment and a long cycle. How to achieve long-term sustainable operation? Liu Yan, deputy chief planner of Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Planning and Design Institute, proposed that the renewal of historical areas needs to adhere to "operation first", clarify the boundaries between public welfare protection and market-oriented assets, and replace homogeneous commercial formats with original scenes.
Yan Longhua, a professor at Fujian University of Science and Technology, shared his experience in the protection of Fuzhou Yeshan Heritage Park and the collaborative construction of Zhongshan communities. Taiwanese architectural designer Wu Zhenglong took Luoyuan County, Fuzhou City as an example to share the "demand-oriented" micro-update path.
In the roundtable dialogue session, experts and scholars conducted in-depth discussions on the revitalization paths of ancient buildings, the cultivation of traditional craftsmen and grassroots social governance, actively responded to the United Nations' New Urban Agenda, and explored ways for sustainable urban development in the global stock era.
