Renovation, gentrification, and revitalisation of the Chinese Baroque area in Harbin: Lessons learned from a heritage-driven urban development project

Harbin, a city located in Northeast China, was founded by the Russians in 1898 when Russia commenced building the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) under the 1896 Li-Lobanov Treaty. As the Russian administrative centre of the railway, Harbin boomed to be ‘the second biggest city in Asia after Shanghai’ by the 1920s. The Russian colonial rule brought European architecture to the city, in which context the Chinese Baroque architectural style – a hybrid of Baroque façade and Chinese traditional quadrangle – was created. Today, Harbin, especially its Daowai District, still accommodates a large number of Chinese Baroque buildings. Since the early 2010s, there has been an ongoing heritage-driven urban development project in Daowai District. The project aims to revitalise its Chinese Baroque neighbourhood by transforming the historic area into one of the three largest tourist areas in Harbin. To carry out the plan, native people were forced to move out, which caused widespread discontent within the community. While a small part of the area has been renovated and in turn gentrified and transformed into a tourist destination, many historic buildings are still left empty and even unattended to decay. With archival analysis, observation, and semi-structured interviews, this paper critically analyses the urban exclusion due to built heritage conservation and renovation, and investigates how to make heritage-driven urban development more inclusive and sustainable. In-depth interviews were conducted with local people, urban planners, travel agents, and government officials, to understand their perceptions of the exclusiveness and inclusiveness of heritage-based urban planning and urban revitalisation. This paper argues that the dilemma faced by the Chinese Baroque neighbourhood is not only a cultural/social problem but also an economic problem. While Chinese Baroque buildings are significant in terms of architecture, art, and history, the conservation, refurbishment, and promotion of the neighbourhood are mainly to profit the city in terms of economy. For the economically depressed city of Harbin, the key to sustainable urban development is to keep a balance among various needs – between the needs of the local community within the historic area and those of the broader society, and between the heritage-focused social/cultural needs and the tourism-focused economic needs. Suggestions are also made for a more inclusive future of the planning and management of both this Chinese Baroque area and similar historic areas.