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Awakening urban heritage and retaining urban memory: heritage memory reconstruction under the rew urban policy

What:
Paper
When:
9:30 AM, miércoles 31 ago 2022 (20 minutos)
How:
After the founding of P.R.C., a huge number of factories were constructed one after another. It is time to think about how to transfer their roles in the process of urbanization since these factories have made great contributions to industrialization and lost the original functions. As the precious industrial memory of that generation and the mark of urban civilization, the destiny of these old industrial sites is increasingly valued by the people. The object of this research is such a factory, located in Jinan,Shandong. Shandong is a province with the third largest quantity of economy in China. Its modern industry has risen rapidly after the 20th century. Jinan is not only the economic, cultural, and political center of Shandong Province, but also a crucial city for the industrial development of China. With the continuous expansion of the city, in the process of urban renewal, the government issued the rule: “Implementation Plan for the Conversion of New and Old Kinetic Energy in Shandong Province(2018)”. Based on this background, some old industrial areas in Jinan faced with the fate of being demolished. How to preserve the important industrial relics in the early stage of P.R.C. becomes an urgent problem to be solved. The object introduced in this paper is the dormitory area of Shandong Plastics Experimental Plant. As an important chemical enterprise in Shandong Province, it was once the pride of Shandong in the era of the planned economic system. Based on the construction background, we sort out its development history and record the status quo. We also introduce the difficulties and attempts to retain its industrial memory. Since 2018, most of the factories distributed in the planned area have been demolished, only the staff dormitory area of the factory left alone, which is in the landscape area of the new planning plan. Combined with the archives, the oral narration of the aborigines, and the field investigations, it is obvious that there are three difficulties in retaining this important industrial historical memory. Firstly, lacking of memory source. The historical data was not rescued during the demolition process so that the relevant data was not well preserved. Secondly, the fault of collective memory. Moving away from the old unit community has caused the loss of indigenous people, the memory of industrial communities is fragmented. Thirdly, the up-down updating model. The governor lacks a sense of historical identity. Industrial culture has long been relegated to a backward marginal culture. A huge number of old industrial sites disappeared in the process of urbanization, leading to a memory crisis. The historical field investigation methods, folk memory oral interview methods, and multidisciplinary methods are employed to realize the extraction, storage, and reorganization of industrial memory. By exploring the preservation methods of urban industrial memory, this article presents different ways to re-appear the collective industrial memory. The research significance of it is to wake up the memory of a generation of industrial production, enhance cultural identity. It is a great pity that we failed to prevent most of the old factories from being demolished, and a considerable amount of precious remains were destroyed and lost forever. Similar situations are still happening, the renewal of the city is unstoppable, and there will eventually be some "witnesses" of human development that cannot escape the fate of "disappeared". It is the responsibility of every heritage protection worker to preserve the industrial memories through reasonable and effective means, to help them re- positioning their new historical role and make them a part of the memory heritage of China even the whole world.
Speaker
Nanjing University of Science & Technology
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