ACTIVATION STRATEGIES IN REGENERATION OF LARGE SPORTS BLOCK IN HIGH-DENSITY URBAN AREA

Abstract

In the era of national fitness, sports blocks have become increasingly essential to urban life, thanks to their unique attributes of sports competition and fitness facilities. As a significant component of urban public spaces, large sports blocks have the potential and responsibility to infuse greater vitality into the city. However, the reality is that some sports blocks appear to lack the expected vitality. In the context of urban regeneration in most metropolises, the scarcity of urban land caused by high-density development has put large sports blocks in the challenging position of renovation and regeneration. Consequently, finding ways to activate the areas within and surrounding these large sports blocks has emerged as a critical topic. On the one hand, in light of the national fitness movement, large sports blocks serve as primary venues for athletic activities within the city and must fulfill their traditional responsibility of hosting public daily physical exercises and major sports events. On the other hand, given the increasingly diverse demands of citizens, these blocks should also accommodate various other activities, such as shopping and dining. As such, vitality within sports blocks should encompass not only citizens' basic sports-related activities but also a wide range of complementary activities, necessitating mixed-use functions in these areas. Addressing these new demands requires a novel development approach during the regeneration of sports blocks. This dissertation comprises four sections. The first three sections focus on exploring activation strategies for sports blocks, incorporating both theoretical research and case studies in each part. The final section demonstrates the application of these strategies in a project design. In the first section, the components of vitality in sports blocks are analyzed, followed by an examination of vitality issues in Shanghai-based case studies using both collected data and field research. The second section investigates the environmental requirements for fostering high vitality through theoretical research and subsequently identifies the factors contributing to vitality problems in these cases. Based on these analyses, the activation strategies for large sports blocks will be developed and proposed, supported by the study of successful case examples. In the final section, several urban design projects for large sports blocks in Shanghai will be presented, illustrating how the proposed strategies can be implemented in typical scenarios.