User:Kayla Yang/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here.)

urban renewal

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

Since I've been in some urban renewal projects and I would like to know the macro definition and description of the urban renewal, the preliminary impression of it is a program to help cities recover form the urban economic ad environmental decay.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

1. The article perfectly explains the origins of the term “urban renewal” in the introduction part. Urban renewal program can be traced back to the UK’s city regeneration program and urban decay address principles. Later, the article examines multiple urban renewal programs which are deeply influenced by Early Western European urban renewal methodologies and principles. It did include some Asian countries and regions’ examples. However, urban renewal has new forms which are developed by other principles. It is not mentioned in the article. So the audience may naturally assume that nowadays all countries’ urban renewal plans originated from the UK urban planning methodology and the process of any urban renewal program is “clearance of the slums- rebuild the community- regenerate the city’s economic and social life.”

Specifically, the article mentions that “Urban renewal is the clearing out of blighted areas in inner cities to clear out slums and create opportunities for higher class housing, businesses, and more.” and “Urban renewal is a process where privately owned properties within a designated renewal area are purchased or taken by eminent domain by a municipal redevelopment authority, razed and then reconveyed to selected developers who devote them to other uses.”

But it is not the total truth. I would like to take the Chinese urban planning form as an example. In Chinese urban planning principles and ideologies, the term “slum” does not exist. I’m not implying that China does not have poor people, uncomplemented infrastrures, and incomprehensive city services. The truth is that Chinese urban planning is all about the administrative geographical distribution. There are no exactly corresponding concepts such as “urban community” and “slum” since there are no urban units which are proposed and organized by the public. The different concept leads to the phenomenon of “poverty village or poverty county” but no slums: it is only possible to have a whole urban unit as a poor area rather than having certain spots in an urban unit as a poor area.

So for countries which are not totally dominated by the Western European countries’ urban planning ideology the origin and current process of urban renewal process is different from what the Wiki article described.

2.One more point I would like to add in the Wikipedia article is to emphasize the function and the role of the municipal organization in the urban renewal process. In the various countries’ examples, the article does not include how the municipalities influence the urban renewal program as it mentioned in the definition.

3. There are some citations missing in the content.

4. I would like to add some examples such as various kinds of urban renewal plan mode.