Canal-orientated urban waterfront regeneration based on the concept of everyday heritage: a case study in Suzhou, China

This article selects as a case study the Suzhou Canal, one of the most important sections of the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal. It investigates how the Suzhou Canal is used as a driving factor to achieve canal-orientated urban waterfront regeneration based on the concept of everyday heritage. The article is presented in four sections. The first identifies the key characteristics of the global transformation of the canal-orientated urban waterfront. The second reviews the Suzhou Canal District’s historical morphological evolution from the Song dynasty (960–1279) to the 1950s. It then investigates the transition of Suzhou’s canal-orientated urban waterfront regeneration from a conservational approach to adaptive reuse of heritage policy from the 1960s to the present. The third section introduces the concept of ‘everyday heritage’ and explores how during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912) the Suzhou Canal shaped everyday life in terms of the formal public courtyards and informal marketplaces along it. This canal-related architectural heritage reveals its crucial role in shaping human behaviours and everyday patterns in the time–space dimension. These findings help us better understand how to adaptively reuse canal-related urban heritage through the concept of everyday heritage and how to integrate it into contemporary canal-orientated urban waterfront regeneration strategies. In the fourth section, the article concludes by proposing corresponding recommendations for reusing canal heritage resources to reveal a new potential for economic, social and ecological recovery based on the concept of everyday heritage.