Objective As urban development transitions from rapid expansion to quality enhancement, urban daily landscapes, as carriers of collective memory and historical culture, play a crucial role in promoting the harmonious development of urban environments together with society and the economy. Despite this potential, the involvement of the landscape architecture discipline in urban renewal remains insufficient, underutilizing its capacity to address complex issues such as invigorating social vitality and balancing economic growth with environmental sustainability. Additionally, the preservation of daily landscapes often lags behind the provision of basic public services, while urban renewal initiatives frequently disregard the broader regional cultural and historical context. This disregardreduces the role of daily landscapes in preserving historical memory and conveying spatial narratives. Consequently, redeveloped old urban areas often lose their unique cultural identity, lack the momentum to regenerate spatial vitality, and exhibit issues of homogenization, functional inadequacy, and spatial fragmentation. To address these challenges, this research aims to explore various carriers of urban daily landscape memory across different historical periods, systematically excavate the embedded memories, and establish meaningful connections between these memories and the spatial characteristics of daily landscapes, so as to strengthen residents’ sense of cultural identity, enhance social emotional networks, and facilitate the co-development of urban vitality through the empathetic power of daily landscapes.
Methods 1. Selection basis for landscape memory entities: The researchis grounded in the integrated perception of landscape and human interaction articulated in the European Landscape Convention. The research adopts perspectives from such works as La pensée paysagère and Landscape and Memory, emphasizing the authenticity of landscapes and the construction of memory. These foundations inform a systematic classification of the diverse types and origins of daily landscape memory entities. 2. Develop a mining framework: Based on the selected memory entities, the research develops a comprehensive framework for diversified memory mining, termed as “Ten Carriers, Four Voices, and Three Data Types”. The framework identifies ten memory carriers of daily landscapes from four sources — local residents, multidisciplinary experts, historical records, and online media. These carriers include local chronicles, literary works, poems, paintings, photographs, oral histories, recorded videos, etc, encompassing the three data modalities of textual, visual, and audiovisual formats. 3. Data Collection and Quantitative Analysis: Due to the diversity of memory carriers, memories associated with old urban landscapes are typically fragmented. This research combines traditional research methods with digital technologies, including text mining, semantic sentiment analysis, and data visualization. This integrated approach facilitates the mining and quantification of vast memory fragments, enabling the identification of vitality distribution and emotional characteristics of daily landscapes in old urban areas across different historical periods. 4.Narrative expression of daily landscapes: Considering the current development status of old urban areas, the spatial characteristics of regional landscape memory identified through analysis are recreated in urban renewal projects using narrative landscapes. This approach ensures the preservation of memory and the continuation of site-specific identity.
Results A case study focused on the old city of Tianjin illustrates the practical application of this framework. Three novels by renowned Tianjin author Feng Jicai — Yin-Yang Eight Trigams, Three-Inch Golden Lotus, and Faces in the Crowd — are selected as primary data sources. These works, which depict life in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican period, are subject to text mining and semantic sentiment analysis. The analysis reveal three distinct emotional characteristics of daily landscapes: 1. “Bustling Scenes”: Positive emotional spaces, such as religious sites and venues associated with traditional artisans and eccentric figures, reflect the region’s commitment to preserving traditions and fostering a sense of collective enjoyment. These spaces embody the residents’ emotional attachment to communal and celebratory activities. 2. “Marketplace Atmosphere”: The dynamic and vibrant commercial streets of historical neighborhoods exhibit a balanced emotional characteristic of both joy and sorrow, highlighting the residents' reliance on fluid commerce and interconnected alleyways. These spaces demonstrate the community’s recognition of mobility and commercial adaptability as integral to Tianjin’s urban fabric. 3. “Spaces of Conflict and Tension”: Negative emotional spaces, associated with activities such as haggling and public deliberation, are primarily concentrated in enclosed administrative areas and monotonous commercial streets. These spaces reveal a complex emotional attachment to social dynamics characterized by tension and confrontation. Based on these findings, renewal strategies are proposed to enhance landscape differentiation, adaptability, spatio-temporal continuity, and spatial interaction. Recommendations include incorporating sensory elements such as the auditory landscapes of street vendors’ calls and the olfactory appeal of Tianjin’s signature snacks, as well as fostering interactive platforms for the exchange of intangible cultural heritage.
Conclusion The daily landscapes in old urban areas encapsulate collective landscape memories of living spaces and, similar to other officially recognized cultural heritage, represent a form of shared heritage. By aligning the memory subject (human character) with the memory object (spatial characteristics) through narrative landscapes, this research achieves the heritagization of daily landscapes, emphasizes the continuity of site culture and memory, and promotes the diversity and multifunctionality of urban areas. Additionally, the research revitalizes spatial vitality through renewal efforts and provides a novel method for sustainable urban spatial optimization.
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