Guangzhou Street (7) Tianhe Road full of urban flavor

Photography:/Text: The earth leans on the river.

This is a street with almost no history, but it is very modern, lacking personality but very popular. Tianhe Road, located in Tianhe District in the east of the city, is probably the most iconic street in the center of Guangzhou's new city, with wide roads and many high-rise buildings. Only more than 20 years ago, this street was located in the countryside east of the city, and now it has become the new center of the city.

Tianhe Road, named after the old Tianhe Airport, has rapidly evolved into a magnificent street with the rise of the new city center. Interestingly, although the villagers in the villages on both sides of the street are still enjoying the collective economic dividends in the village, they have also become the earliest citizens of this most modern city center street, and some have become the new citizens of the city's central business district on the south side of the street-the most fashionable block in the city. Tianhe sports center on the north side of the street was born at the same time as the street, and its grand scale strongly contributed to the grandeur of Tianhe Road. Today's sports center is a little old, but it only brings some sense of history to the young streets.

Tianhe Road starts from Tianhe Interchange at the eastern end of Huanshi East Road and connects Zhongshan Avenue to the east, with a total length of about 2.2 kilometers. The whole street meets Shuiyin Road/Meihua Road, Guangzhou Avenue, Tiyu West Road, Tiyu East Road and Tianhe East Road from west to east, forming multiple intersections. Its north and south sides are also connected with a number of streets, forming a number of T-junctions. This east-west street is 60 meters wide and has two lanes of *** 8 to 10. Its width is roughly the same as those famous similar streets in the world, such as Gracia Avenue in Barcelona and Champs Elysé es in Paris.

The middle section of the street is the section between Tiyu West Road and Tiyu East Road, and the width of the central lane is about 48 meters. On both sides of the driveway are green belts with a width exceeding 1 m, and Ficus macrophylla is planted with a tree spacing of about 8 meters. Although the trees in this block are not dense, they can provide shade for the street and effectively strengthen the boundary of the street. The width of sidewalks on the north and south sides of the street is different. There are open spaces along Tianhe City Square and Jiazheng Square in the south, and the sidewalk about 3 meters wide in the north is relatively narrow. Of course, if you put the green belt, bicycle lane and sidewalk together, it is wide enough.

The west section of Tianhe Road is a street section between Tianhe Interchange and Sports West Road, and the difference mainly lies in trees. In this section, two rows of green belts with the same width 1 m are added to the central roadway, and the whole street looks much higher and denser. After crossing the intersection with Tianhe East Road to the east, the east section of Tianhe Road bends slightly to the northeast, but the street is still regular. Adjust the lane when you get to the South China Expressway interchange. The whole Tianhe Road presents a modern urban street landscape that pays attention to environmental quality requirements and embodies standardized design.

Such a new street is well worth spending some time on a special trip. And this roaming should travel from west to east from the north side of the street. Here we can see the skyline of blocks with different heights. Most buildings along the street are huge in size and vary greatly in height, ranging from various shopping places with a private scale of about 7 to 9 floors to super-high-rise buildings with a superhuman scale pointing directly at the sky.

The first thing I saw was the Guangzhou Book Shopping Center, the first book shopping center in China, which is located on the north side of the street and has a unique seven-story shape. Next to Victoria Square, it consists of two diamond-shaped north and south towers with 52 floors and 37 floors respectively. On the south side is the 9-story Zhong Yi Fashion White Shopping Center connected by a tunnel. Crossing Sports West Road to the east, Tianhe City Plaza, the first comprehensive shopping mall in Chinese mainland, and Jiazheng Plaza, the largest shopping mall in Asia, are in turn on the south side of the street. The similarity between the two buildings is that there are two towers, the East Tower and the West Tower, which are towering Grade A office buildings and five-star hotels. Across the street is tianhe sports center, where the opening and closing ceremonies of the 6th National Games were held. This is the core section of Tianhe Road where the new central axis of Guangzhou passes.

To the north, you can see CITIC Plaza on the 80th floor, and to the south, you can see Guangzhou International Finance Center (commonly known as West Tower) on the 103 floor and Guangzhou TV Tower with a height of 6 10, the tallest steel tower in the world. What you see and feel is magnificent and exquisite. Many people like to have a drink in the open-air cafe in front of Jiazheng Square and enjoy the street view while chatting leisurely.

Crossing Tiyu East Road eastward is the focus of Tianhe Road's latest landscape. On the south side of the street, in addition to the original Guangzhou Computer City, South Computer City and Gao Yi Digital Plaza, Wanlinghui, which consists of several super high-rise buildings, has sprung up, including the 55-story Wanlinghui Plaza. The pure glass curtain wall building is particularly eye-catching. On the north side of the street, there are many high-rise buildings in taikoo hui Square, which is another new highlight of the street, gathering hundreds of international brands, top fashion, daily necessities, famous restaurants and local delicacies, and holding cultural and entertainment activities. It is surrounded by Fortune Plaza, Goldlion Building, Bainaohui Plaza, Tianhe Entertainment Plaza and other buildings, which constitute the whole street view.

Tianhe Road obviously has a prominent commercial flavor. Since 1996 Tianhe City Plaza was completed and opened, those comprehensive MALL with abundant funds and large scale have gathered here, becoming the strip business circle with the highest concentration of shopping centers in China, even surpassing Xujiahui in Shanghai and Xidan in Beijing and becoming the "No.1 business circle in China". However, none of these huge commercial organizations seems to be more prominent in self-expression. As an integral part of the street, they appear in the fashion of daily life and penetrate into every street corner, making the ubiquitous commercial symbols become one of the existing ways of the street and the landscape details of the street.

Due to the importance of Tianhe Road to the traffic in the east of the city, the local media always report the traffic situation here. Although there are 10 lanes, driving difficulties or traffic jams are still common. Field observation shows that this traffic artery has actually controlled or even closed the north-south traffic at several intersections, but it seems to be of no help. The traffic jam from Tianhe Road in the east to Zhongshan Avenue and its surrounding areas has become a serious problem that affects urban life and hinders urban development.

In order to solve the traffic problem of Tianhe Road, BRT Expressway was opened here before the Spring Festival of 20 10, and the sports center station as the starting point of the expressway is located in the middle of the street in front of Tianhe City Square. BRT has been controversial since its establishment, but it has arrived as scheduled in doubt and expectation, and has become a new facility and landscape of this modern street.

People enter the station from the cross-river tunnel, and then take the express train through the electronic ticket purchase procedure just like taking the subway. The traffic benefit of BRT has yet to be tested, but its influence on conventional lanes is obvious. All kinds of social vehicles at Tianhe Interchange from west to east should give up special lanes, and vehicles should be reduced from the original five lanes to three lanes. The same adjustment should be made to the cars in the opposite direction. Moreover, in order to "fast" BRT, many left turns in Tianhe Road and other related streets have been cancelled. This is the necessary price of BRT, and its smooth premise is that other vehicles and blocks are not smooth and inconvenient. Which is more important seems to lie in the differences of views and angles.

But people seem to adapt to these changes quickly, and now they just expect BRT to play its due rapid traffic function as soon as possible and realize the traffic benefits in the design.

Tianhe Road is like a magical urban magic. The other half of it is hidden underground through the imperceptible but ubiquitous passage in the street, which is unpredictable and confusing. In other words, the street on the ground is accompanied by an underground world extending in all directions, which is another Tianhe Road that dives into the ground.

An important feature of a city is the expansion of vertical space, which is a certain state of the city. It not only expands the sky space vertically on the ground, but also creates underground space downward in the same direction.

No one knows whether Tianhe Road is crowded on the ground or underground. I thought the underground streets of Sports West Station, Tianhe City Square and Jiazheng Square were grand enough, but later a bigger "Festival Pedestrian Street" came out, extending northward along the underground of Sports West Road. Then, there appeared an underground world in tianhe sports center that was much larger than the sum of these spaces. Nowadays, the rapidly expanding underground space of Tianhe Road has spread to Wanlinghui Square and taikoo hui Square at the east end of the street.

Being in this underground street extending in all directions, every angle of view makes people shine. All the shops are competing to show fashion. Many clerks in ethnic clothing stores greet their guests gracefully in Chinese-style cheongsam, which is the traditional exquisite taste of China. Julie & dean's Korean wardrobe is projected in front of a pure white brick wall under the crystal chandelier, which exudes an oriental avant-garde in leisure; Adidas' famous three parallel stripes are familiar to young people. Since 1970, this German sports brand has sponsored many famous football teams and NBA leagues, making its symbol of strength and honor in the Tianhe underground world particularly eye-catching. The smell of coffee wafts here, too. However, a biscuit named "Queen's Love Song" seems to be more attractive. It is said that many people buy it not only because of the wonderful combination of six kinds of biscuits, but also because of the exquisite box. In contrast, "Big Cass" is obviously a popular drink, but this kind of tea brewed in Taiwan Province Province is full of pure flavor. Although the shop is small, it can be recognized at a glance.

There is no doubt that the underground space of Tianhe Road is an integral part of Tianhe Road. In a complete sense, Tianhe route is composed of vertical sky space, ground space, underground space and horizontal space. Tianhe Road undoubtedly interprets the spatial characteristics of modern cities to the extreme. Its ground space is full of realistic secular noise, its underground space is somewhat different, and its cloud space is pure. Looking up at the glass curtain wall standing in the clouds from the ground, we can better understand the pure beauty of modern architecture expounded by Corbusier.

Of course, in the end, we are happy to return to the ground space, although there is no regret here. In fact, a little in-depth observation shows that the short board of Tianhe Road is clearly visible. On the north side of the street section between Tiyu East Road and Tiyu West Road, along the open space in front of tianhe sports center Stadium, the necessary enclosure of the street suddenly disappeared. In addition, the ground in front of Jiazheng Square on the south side is quite open, which makes the street feeling here extremely weak. Roaming here may have a strange feeling, the space is completely open, it is a street but not like a street, it is a square but not like a square.

There is a street theory that when you walk along one side of the street and look up at the opposite side at a 30-degree angle, if the ratio of the height of the building across the street that intersects with your line of sight to the distance from this building is exactly 1:4, then you will feel that the space of your street is clearly defined, and the sense of street may be weak but clear. But when the ratio drops to 1:5 or even less, people no longer feel that they are on the street. From the point of view of street boundary, when the width of the street exceeds 450 feet (137 meters), no matter how high the buildings on both sides are, even if the space can still be defined, the street no longer exists.

Tianhe Road, an open street, is certainly not serious enough for people to ask whether this street still exists, and there are street trees and billboards on the sidewalk to help create a space for this street. But obviously, the street feeling in this section has been greatly weakened, which can be regarded as an "incomplete street". At the same time, this is not just a matter of formal beauty of streets. On-the-spot observation shows that pedestrians here, especially leisure vagrants, are obviously less than those in the south, and more are office workers rushing to cross the road or wait for the bus. You can imagine how embarrassed people will be when the sun is shining or it is windy and rainy. Even when the weather is clear, pedestrians will feel that the road is long and monotonous because there are no buildings along the street and there is a lack of diversity, which will be regarded as a fear of the road. This may be a congenital structural problem that Tianhe Road is difficult to solve.

Can we imagine the spectacular modern arcade street stretching about 800 meters on the north side between Tiyu East Road and Tiyu West Road on Tianhe Road? The arcade building is 4-5 stories high, and its overall shape is rich and unified, full of "complexity and contradiction" of postmodern architecture. Facade is the modern evolution of traditional Guangzhou arcade architecture, which exudes the beauty of modern streets reflecting historical heritage.

Riding downstairs is a variety of exquisite shops, which are Taobao resorts for urban vagrants and tourists from all over the world. Small shops can only occupy one colonnade, and large shops can occupy several or even more. There should also be brands in the old city, famous coffee shops, leisurely tea rooms, tourist boutiques and particularly famous physical bookstores. This arcade street can be opened where the new central axis of the city passes, and an open space of moderate size can be set up. The arcades on both sides turn in an arc in the direction of Tianhe Stadium in the north, forming a changing street view. If so, this arcade street can block the ugly big building of the sports center, which can not only effectively make up for and strengthen the integrity and sense of enclosure of the street, but also bring unprecedented spectacular modern street rhythm to Tianhe Road.

This is a bold and common practice in the city. /kloc-in the 9th century, a two-kilometer-long Rivoli colonnade (Rivoli) opened in the north of the Louvre in the city center, extending along the Dullery Garden to the Place de la Concorde. Arcades arranged more than 100 times have created a spectacular new rhythm in the city center. The things under the arcade waft with the elegance, romance and pride of the city. This may be an example of our "Tianhe Road Imagination". There are colonnade streets in Paris, France and Bologna, Italy, and arcade streets in Guangzhou. If the arcade street in Guangzhou can spread here with a brand-new modern look, how interesting and interesting it will become. Perhaps it will also make the streets have some historical and cultural significance that tourists expect, resulting in more interesting diversity.

The arcade on Tianhe Road is just an imagination, but I'm sure it at least means that Tianhe Road has enough conditions to become better. One of the important reasons is that the vacant land around tianhe sports center can provide the land needed to improve the streets. Incidentally, tianhe sports center is mentioned here. Compared with the land area it occupies, it seems a little too big to use. Today's Tianhe Road is not the Tianhe Road that ushered in the Sixth National Games in the national wind. At that time, the urban area suddenly expanded eastward, and there seemed to be inexhaustible land between urban and rural areas, and the planning scale was also generous. This sports center has always been needed by the city, but adjusting its marginal area does not prevent it from providing fitness and exercise places for citizens and tourists. It is of great significance for tianhe sports center to contribute to the improvement of Tianhe Road.

Of course, there are more options for the improvement of Tianhe Road. It is said that about one and a half years after the Guangzhou Asian Games, tianhe sports center will be transformed into a fully open sports park, and a sports and leisure corridor with a length of about 4.8 kilometers will be built around the sports center. In other words, according to this plan, the most important middle section of Tianhe Road will be a promenade on its north side. Or classical or modern or international style or local characteristics? It looks really imaginative.

(Written on Liuhua Lake)

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■ This article is quoted from the author of Guangzhou Expectation Street, Yang Heping Photography (Guangdong Tourism Publishing House, 20 10, 1). In this broadcast, it was modified and a subtitle was added.

■ Photographer Yang Heping likes "street photography", likes to shoot small places and small people, and likes to tell stories with images. I have used the above methods to state such common stories as London: Turn a blind eye, San Remo: Lost elegance, and Vienna: There is a kind of coffee called melancholy.

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