How Chongqing Renews Functions, Industries and Vitality Through Urban Renewal

Chongqing - A year ago, it was an abandoned parking lot in a former factory area. Today, young visitors gather outside Chongqing’s Jialing Tea House, posing for photos with gaiwan tea served in traditional covered bowls, while seats inside are often hard to find.

Across Chongqing, old residential communities, former factory buildings and streets carrying generations of memories are being given new life. According to the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the city has launched 104 urban renewal projects this year, with a total investment of 40.1 billion yuan.

Opening urban arteries, renewing old spaces

In Yueguang Village of Xinyi Community, Dadukou District, most buildings were constructed in the 1980s. Although close to a rail transit station and a city park, the community faced aging facilities and difficulties for elderly residents in climbing stairs. In February 2025, new elevators were installed, expanding the living circle for elderly residents and stabilizing, even slightly raising, housing rents.

In the Santaishuyuan area of Qianjiang District, there are eight old residential communities, most of whose buildings were collectively funded housing built in the 1980s and 1990s. Their facades were weathered, pipelines aging, and activity spaces lacking. Since 2024, Qianjiang District has launched comprehensive urban renewal and renovation, demolishing nine dangerous buildings, upgrading 2,000 meters of underground pipelines, and adding a 3,700-square-meter leisure square.

According to the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the city has completed the renovation of 9,916 old residential communities, installed 13,800 elevators, and added 21,000 parking spaces.

In addition, as a typical mountainous city with large vertical height differences, Chongqing has implemented quality improvement projects for cross-river bridges such as Chaotianmen Bridge, Dongshuimen Bridge and Qiansimen Bridge, adding 10 bridge sightseeing elevators to connect the upper and lower levels. 

Currently, a six-story escalator is being added beside Hongyadong to link Cangbai Road, the Qiansimen Bridge deck and the riverside promenade, with a designed maximum daily capacity of 216,000 passengers.

Reviving old places with new businesses

Urban renewal is not only about addressing shortcomings, but also about creating new consumption and new business forms.

Not long ago, the former Jiangling Cinema in Dashiba, Liangjiang New Area, was transformed into "Jialing Tea House." Built in the 1950s, the cinema gradually fell into disuse. 

After renovation, Jialing Tea House now features rich spatial functions and distinctive characteristics: the first-floor front hall retains the original ticket window, now converted into a tea and food ordering counter; the second floor makes use of the original factory height to create sunken booth platforms for visitors to relax and watch films; and the roughly 100-square-meter old projection room on the third floor will be converted into an exhibition space.

Data show that Chongqing has revitalized 7.4 million square meters of idle commercial office space and old factory buildings, and built a number of leading urban innovation and vitality centers such as MSG Huixing, Sanlang Enterprise Park, Beicangli and Chuangke Port, driving employment and entrepreneurship for more than 200,000 young people.

Putting people first in urban renewal

To sustain the vitality of these old communities, factory buildings and streets, deeper institutional support is needed. In practice, Chongqing has explored a new path: innovating institutional supply, moving beyond disputes over ownership, and flexibly promoting the separation of "ownership" and "operating rights," so that professional operators can focus on revitalizing and making good use of old spaces.

Take Shancheng Alley, which receives more than 10,000 visitors a day, as an example. Yuzhong District innovatively adopted a "government-guided, enterprise-operated" model: the government invested in land acquisition costs, Kangxiang Company acquired the property rights and became the owner, and then an enterprise was introduced through public bidding, granted a 15-year franchise, and encouraged to invest its own funds in renovation and operation. Today, Shancheng Alley has a property occupancy rate of 95 percent, a cumulative total output value exceeding 1 billion yuan, and more than 2,000 new jobs.

According to an official with the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Chongqing is exploring 52 policies, including combined land and building supply and fiscal and financial support, to encourage central state-owned enterprises and private capital to become "strategic partners" and patient capital in urban renewal. Social capital now accounts for more than 60 percent of investment in urban renewal.

Chongqing's urban renewal has always put "people" at the center. When the government and the market work together, and when institutional innovation opens channels for capital, old spaces become vessels for carrying new life.