An Analytical Culture-led Approach to the Urban Revitalization of Historical Center and Walled Cities

In the background of globalization; cities are competing with each other on the global scale to attract investments and intelligent resources and possibilities to develop into world attraction cities with strong identity and characteristics. In this sense; a historical city with clear edged center (ancient city walls) will definitely enhance the identity of a city. Nonetheless; what kind of strategy and design guide line we should follow when these inner cities need to be regenerated is still not clear yet. As the designer of the city; to seek a better combination of historical heritage and contemporary add-ons has always been a hot issue. We need to avoid that residents are migrating out from the inner city and the historical center and gradually emptied from local culture and activities; and finally replaced by homogeneous commercial cityscape.This paper is aiming at comparing the different examples of resilient inner cities on the key aspects such as population density; spatial distributions; and economical distribution among the cities (Xi’an in China and Nicosia in Cyprus) which have clear historical boundaries (city wall) from the contemporary modern cities. Since the walled cities in the contemporary city are the physical division for the old and new parts in the most of the cases. Accordingly; it is intended to find out the basic characteristics and design strategies for historical inner city centers facing the contemporary urban regeneration; to suggest a common way to protect the local historical and culture milieu as integrity in the regeneration process. To achieve this object; the qualitative research design and observation techniques are used. An analytical culture-led approach is also discussed in the study since we count on the cooperation of multi-aspects will form a solid foundation in participation and fulfillment of urban design and planning.