Project type: Professional, consulting for local government and developer

Location: Zigong, Sichuan, China

Year: 2023

Scale: 10.4 square km

My role: project lead

Zigong is a shrinking post-industrial city with exceptionally rich salt-related cultural heritage. While cultural assets are abundant, they are spatially fragmented and weakly connected to everyday urban life, limiting their ability to support long-term urban regeneration.

The central challenge was not whether to develop tourism, but whether culture could move beyond themed attractions and short-term consumption. Existing development models risked commodifying heritage without generating a durable civic structure capable of anchoring public life and future economic transition.

The project proposed a new urban core structured as a civic center before a commercial center, prioritizing public institutions, cultural venues, and collective spaces. Salt heritage was translated into a spatial and organizational framework rather than symbolic theming, while fragmented cultural and landscape resources were connected into a continuous public system. Industrial legacy areas were retained as adaptable platforms for cultural production and emerging industries, allowing flexibility under long-term uncertainty. The strategy reframes culture as a structural driver of urban organization rather than a consumable attraction. It offers a model for post-industrial cities to integrate heritage, public life, and future development through spatial continuity and institutional anchoring, supporting regeneration without relying on short-term tourism logic.