Dongmen Pedestrian Street has officially launched its Research and Practice Hub, creating a collaborative platform for academia, government, businesses, and the community to drive the sustainable revitalization of this historic district. The unveiling ceremony welcomed seven professors from three renowned partner universities and 35 visiting faculty and students from the University of Hong Kong.

As a cultural landmark of Shenzhen, Dongmen Pedestrian Street carries the city’s history and vibrant urban life. Amid ongoing urban renewal efforts, the challenge lies in balancing preservation with innovation to revitalize the area. The new hub aims to address this through interdisciplinary research focused on adaptive reuse of architecture, upgrading fashion consumption, and heritage preservation.

The initiative integrates academic research with practical innovation. It brings together top scholars to explore new pathways for historic district revitalization and facilitates hands-on projects such as spatial transformation and cultural heritage development. By fostering international collaboration, it provides students from global institutions with real-world opportunities to engage in urban regeneration.

The hub is committed to six key goals: fostering cross-sector innovation, empowering young talent, enhancing experiential learning, expanding global perspectives, pioneering new education models, and establishing a sustainable research and practice brand. It will generate high-quality academic outputs, including research reports, publications, international exhibitions, and documentaries, while also organizing public events such as community workshops and academic forums to encourage public participation.

At the launch event, nine experts were appointed as academic advisors to guide the hub’s development. The first group of visiting scholars—professors and 31 graduate students from the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Architecture—have already begun their research projects, marking the start of this dynamic initiative.