Urban renewal transforms historical city

As a result, it will look like an ancient compound, keeping many historical relics and bringing to life the city of the past, but with greatly improved functions and facilities.

For the ordinary old residential areas, the government will pull down the illegal buildings, re-arrange the water supply and drainage networks, increase and improve the equipment such as the nursing homes, healthcare centers, public fitness centers, 5G base stations and new energy charging piles and enhance public spaces such as the greenery and parks, Zhou noted.

In the key areas with a large population, the local government will also improve the infrastructure and public facilities for the residents such as building new schools, hospitals, roads and public parking lots.

Changsha renovated 225 old residential areas from 2019 to 2020, which will rise to 368 this year and 576 next year.

The move will benefit about 300,000 households as a whole, according to the official figures.

During the period of 2016 to 2020, a total of 14 historical communities in Changsha got revamped, in which more than 80 relics and pieces of historical architecture have been well preserved.

At the same time, the city built pedestrianized streets with an accumulate length of 69.5 kilometers in different communities to reproduce the unique scenes of the ancient city.

As a result, Changsha has been selected as one of the 10 happiest cities in China for 13 years consecutively and its population, with 3 million people moving to the city in the last 10 years, surpassed 10 million in 2021, the official data showed.