Caoyang Centennial Park
Caoyang Centennial Park
This open space project consists of a narrow linear park crafted within an 880 metres by 15 meters wide stretch of land previously occupied by a branch line of Zhenru Freight Railway. The line had been repurposed for two decades as a farmers market before its recent closure as a result of the COVID pandemic.
With surrounding land occupied by traditional blue collar housing units with few accessible recreational facilities and new retail and commercial development springing up at both its north and south ends, the district government opted to transform the unoccupied land into a park serving the local neighbourhood.
Drawing inspiration in part from New York’s famous Highline elevated greenway, designers stacked the new facility into three overlapping layers to provide space for a variety of activities. The resultant “vine-and-melon-like” walking belt was designed and built within one year, providing a replicable and low-cost model for adaptive reuse for China’s many odd-shaped and left-over land parcels both in Shanghai and beyond.
While land projects in China’s command economy are often carried out with minimal public consultation, in this case local authorities were committed to engaging all 11 residential communities that surround the park, together with several other local public office stakeholders. The focus was to define the type and extent of access from each neighbouring residential unit. This commitment to dialogue with a plethora of local interest groups makes the project’s tight timeline for design and construction all the more remarkable.
In order to incorporate the project’s three-storey concept, designers excavated to a “semi-basement” level, although underground conduits prevented them digging deeper than one metre. From there, the park’s first storey was established at 1.4 metres above ground level, with the design calculated to allow maximum light to reach the lowest floor, which consists of socially-programmed activities such as art exhibitions, community facilities, and creative markets. The top level, meanwhile, was limited to 3.8 meters in height so as to protect privacy of adjoining residents.
The resulting three-storey linear park is part landscaping, part skywalk, part exhibition and cultural space, part basketball court, galleries, and free space for the community to enjoy.
Since opening in 2021, the facility has hosted over a million visitors and has also become a template used by other local governments for repurposing similar odd-job land parcels in the city, which are increasingly being targeted for reuse as the urban fabric becomes denser and the supply of available land shrinks.
As its reputation has grown, adjacent businesses, industrial facilities, and a local elementary school have all asked to link their own open spaces to it, thereby expanding the overall land volume and improving access. As such, the park is a prime example of how local governments, businesses, and residential neighbourhoods can band together to adapt what would previously have been regarded as fallow or waste land into productive community purposes.