Eighth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

This paper examines a special scenario of ”ZhuGaiShang,” Residential Building Injected with Commercial Usage (RBICU) in many residential districts in Chinese cities. As a grass-root activity, the RBICU has become a common phenomenon emerged in many residential districts that are planned and constructed in the past thirty years. It is surely opposite to the original intention of the government planning policy and practice of urban housing development. The past studies of the RBICU were mostly from the perspectives of legal, management, building design alone, and focused mainly on those negative aspects. The research outputs mostly led to a similar result that recommends to enhance the administration role to eliminate or limit the RBICU activities. However, in reality, these simple and crude administrative approaches could not properly change the RBICU phenomenon，and even causes some other problems. Hence, the studies of RBICU needs to explore an alternative perspective. The first task is to fully understand the physical attributes of BRICU. What has RIBCU done to change the residential buildings, how does it change? Is there any common symptom of RIBCU? Why residents want to change their living environments? Clarifying those questions become a priority to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpreting the phenomenon of the RBICU.