(Note: This text is a transcription of a speech. Viewers are encouraged to watch the video or use "listen and read" mode.)

The speech is divided into five parts: the general trend, pain points and difficulties, key solutions, popular expectations, and a final summary.

Part 1: The General Trend:

Chengdu was the first city in China to begin the transformation of urban parks into scenic areas. In February 2018, during an inspection of Chengdu's Tianfu New Area, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out the need to highlight the characteristics of a "park city," incorporating ecological value and striving to create new growth poles. This speech officially launched Chengdu's pioneering role in urban park construction. The following year, in early 2019, Chengdu established the Park City Construction and Management Bureau. By 2021, Chengdu had issued the "Chengdu Regulations on the Construction of Beautiful and Livable Park Cities," establishing preliminary rules and standards for urban park construction. During this period, Chengdu's urban parks began to undergo transformation and achieved good results. By 2022, the State Council, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and other departments had successively issued a series of supportive policy documents. With Chengdu as a successful model, the time is ripe for the nationwide promotion of urban park construction.

Here, I list some policy documents related to urban parks. Worth noting is the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development's "Urban Park Management Measures (Draft for Comments)" document. The solicitation of opinions ended in late 2023, and the official release is expected soon. The document clearly encourages urban park management units to legally conduct supporting service operations to invigorate parks.

Compared to established scenic areas, urban parks are at a disadvantage in terms of cultural resources, natural resources, investment intensity, and profitability. However, many urban parks share a common advantage: prime locations. The advantages of location and transportation mean that urban parks have better conditions for creating high-frequency consumption scenarios than scenic areas. Let's look at three successful cases in Chengdu.

The first case, Chengdu Tianfu 111 Urban Park, is a typical example of art curation. It uses three landmarks—the Chengdu Tianfu Art Museum, the Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Tianfu Humanities and Arts Library—to attract visitors, creating the ultra-integrated Chengdu Biennale with over 1.1 million visitors. The Wenbo Fang, Wenshang Fang, and Wenchuang Fang cultural blocks showcase Shu culture; and the surrounding areas of the Yinggui Lake, Hehua Lake, and Fangfei Lake, with their clustered businesses, offer a rich mix of leisure, entertainment, retail, and dining.

The flexible integration of parks, art, and commerce has created a new cultural and tourism highland in Chengdu.

The second case is the innovative commercial Chengdu Dayuan Central Park. The park utilizes a unique double-layer space, catering to the preferences of different customer groups. The upper level is designed as a natural ecological park, continuing to serve the elderly who exercise and relax in the park; the lower level caters to the preferences of young urbanites, featuring new businesses such as cafes, music venues, and art spaces. This makes it a typical urban park that caters to the needs of all age groups. In addition, Dayuan Central Park leverages the advantages of the Dayuan business district to create the high-quality community commercial brand Chengdu Regular Yuanye, featuring non-standard curator brands, international high-end brands, trendy buyer's collection stores, and veteran ring-around brands. It serves employees of Fortune 500 companies in the surrounding area. The public space features markets, picnics, camping, and high-end coffee shops. The sunken plaza features galleries, brand exhibitions, pop-up shops, DJ performances, electronic music parties, brand launch events, and design office spaces. The rich range of businesses maximizes space utilization.

The third case is the immersive night tour of Jinjiang River. During the 2024 Spring Festival, the Jinjiang River night tour ranked among the top three most popular attractions in Chengdu, attracting 388,200 visitors in eight days, a year-on-year increase of 373.41%. This is a typical example of an urban park transforming into a scenic area.

The Jinjiang River night tour uses wharves as nodes and the Jinjiang River story scroll as the main thread, using spatial layout of multi-node story scenes to connect a 10-kilometer waterway. Because the wharves and waterways of the Jinjiang River night tour not only provide an immersive sightseeing experience but also serve as water transportation, they connect nearby urban parks at each wharf, linking both banks of the river.

Each wharf showcases different stories, with performances and a rich range of businesses centered around them, including gong-striking attendants, flute players on the river, tea ceremonies, and traditional magic tricks, telling Chengdu's cultural stories with a strong sense of ritual and immersion. Cruise routes are designed for different customer groups, offering cruises combined with food, opera, drama, study tours, and sports. This has also incubated a series of sub-brand IP matrices for the Jinjiang night tour main brand IP, including urban micro-sports brands, Jinjiang study tours, night tour Longmenzhen, Jinjiang Night Love, Jinjiang Elegant Gathering, Jinjiang December Market, Jinjiang sleepless night, Ordinary People Concert, and Wangjiang Still Remembers Jinguang City. The Jinjiang night tour route is still under construction and expansion, becoming a unique and flowing characteristic urban cultural tourism card connecting Chengdu's waterway routes, and one of the must-visit destinations for tourists experiencing Chengdu's 3,000 years of human fireworks.

After looking at three successful cases of urban park transformation in Chengdu, we find that the traditional urban park model is a very simple functional form of park + basic services + sports and leisure. Most parks in China are public spaces with a focus on landscape. Because the park's functional businesses are too single, most park visitors are those who exercise, relax, or even elderly people taking a stroll.

After industry transformation, urban parks with reshaped businesses have completed the transformation of ecological value. After adding "park +" food, accommodation, transportation, travel, shopping, entertainment, commerce, health, education, production, research, and education, a business model similar to that of traditional scenic areas is naturally formed. Urban parks, relying on their advantageous transportation and open-style operations after business reshaping, show obvious characteristics of economic sustainability. Furthermore, the future vision of urban park and scenic area industry upgrading is a scenic area model with brand value. Of the three cases we mentioned earlier, the Jinjiang night tour is closest to this brand scenic area model. This model builds an IP industrial ecosystem, providing double monetization capabilities through online and offline economic linkages. Based on a mature scenic area or urban park environment, it builds innovative business models, creating an industrial ecosystem through resource integration, channel marketing, brand incubation, and win-win cooperation, realizing the transformation of cultural and tourism value.

Chapter Two: Pain Points and Difficulties

The first difficulty is fiscal pressure:

China has a vast number of urban parks, with a total of 24,841 nationwide, covering 7 million hectares. The average maintenance cost is 3-15 yuan/square meter/year, even exceeding 20 yuan/square meter/year in tier-one cities. These costs are all financed by government budgets, placing significant pressure on public finances, especially now with the downturn in the real estate market, increasing the financial strain on local governments that rely on land-based economies. Actively exploring ways to increase revenue and efficiency in urban parks can effectively alleviate this financial pressure. During my nationwide business trips, I've observed many urban parks lacking sufficient maintenance funds, resulting in overgrown weeds and dilapidated infrastructure. Instead of waiting until finances are insufficient to begin revitalizing urban parks, it's better to plan ahead when there are still budget surpluses. Compared to Chengdu, Shenzhen has a similar number of urban parks. However, since 2018, Chengdu's urban parks, primarily managed by its urban investment company, have implemented operational strategies. After four or five years of operation, some smaller parks in core areas have achieved operational balance in terms of maintenance and revenue. Shenzhen, on the other hand, has started reducing its urban park maintenance costs this year, but its park operations haven't progressed as quickly. If it fails to generate profits from park revitalization in the future, at the current reduction rate of 20-30%, urban parks will soon lose their current aesthetic appeal.

The second challenge is balancing public welfare and profitability.

Shenzhen's parks are quite cautious about profit-making projects, and different districts have varying attitudes towards adding profit-generating businesses. To ensure public welfare, either the government must continuously provide financial support, or profits from park operations must support public welfare initiatives. Clearly, adding profit-generating businesses is crucial for economic sustainability. Below, I've listed preferred and negative lists for park businesses. There are significant restrictions on the catering industry, even though shopping malls are increasing the proportion of catering businesses because it's one of the few industries that heavily relies on physical locations. We also hope to make breakthroughs in catering beyond food trucks and light meals.

The third and most important challenge is land restrictions.

Most Chinese urban parks were built without sufficient space. Even with breakthroughs in business types, limited usable space will restrict park operations. In this aspect, we can learn from the land policies used in rural revitalization. Rural revitalization faced similar land issues as urban parks, but the government quickly introduced a policy of point-like land allocation, providing a certain proportion of land based on the overall development needs of rural scenic areas. This provided favorable policies for rural revitalization. If point-like land allocation were also implemented in existing urban parks, it would provide more operational space.

Part three: Key solutions, seeking answers from international cases.

First, I propose an IP strategy. For urban parks, scenic areas, or other daily consumer products, leveraging brand value is key to avoiding price wars when competition is fierce and the market is limited. People's recognition of brand value is a form of emotional consumption, which often drives consumption.

We often see museum-type projects, such as Sanxingdui, whose display of 3,000 years of Chinese history is awe-inspiring and cannot be measured by money. I call this 'guarding culture.' Furthermore, the Dunhuang cultural immersive exhibition, which repackages ancient cultural heritage as a new product, brings cultural heritage to life and generates good economic benefits; Shenzhen has such an exhibition. Beyond this, the cultural and creative products derived from the Dunhuang and Forbidden City IPs represent the revitalization of culture. Disney is another example, a long-lasting success in the cultural tourism industry, whose core is its cultural IP. Unlike ancient Chinese culture, Disney is a modern creation compatible with modern culture. In China's cultural tourism industry, the only product with significant influence that doesn't rely on ancient culture is the 'Bear Storm' from Fantawild. Most scenic areas lack sufficient cultural IP development. Urban parks are a product of modern society, and most lack ancient cultural heritage to leverage. Therefore, creating spaces for modern cultural displays in today's urban parks lacking cultural heritage is a topic we should consider.

The second key solution is to build diverse business models around a defined cultural IP to meet the needs of different customer groups. A typical example is New York's Central Park, opened in 1857, now one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, with over 40 million visitors annually, one-fifth of whom are tourists. The park features ice skating rinks, a wildlife center, birdwatching spots, bike paths, and 19 playgrounds, 12 sports fields catering to different groups, a dockside restaurant that's more than just a light meal option, large-scale concerts in public spaces, and museums. The variety of businesses surpasses many scenic areas.

Another example of diverse business models is Singapore's East Coast Park, covering 1.58 million square meters. It includes a food village, over 20 restaurants with different characteristics, a children's playground, a skate park, a campsite, an artificial surfing pool, a water park, even a golf driving range and a resort. It offers a full range of services, exceeding most Chinese scenic areas in terms of business diversity. You can easily spend a day and stay overnight, making it a model for transforming urban parks into tourist resorts.

The third key solution is co-construction and win-win cooperation.

For existing parks, some local governments can rely entirely on policy measures for reconstruction, inevitably increasing financial pressure. The High Line Park in the US, however, leveraged social forces and resource integration, covering 24% of reconstruction costs and achieving sustainable operation through fundraising by the 'Friends of the High Line'. Now, the High Line Park is a destination for viewing public art and a favorite of many fashion industries, operating both online and offline. Charity events and art galas are annual gatherings for artists. To date, High Line Park-related projects have generated $9 billion in tax revenue.

Over 29 new projects have been completed along the High Line Park, including 2,558 residential units, 1,000 hotel rooms, 40,000 square meters of office and gallery space, $2 billion in private development, 12,000 new jobs (8,000 construction-related), and a threefold increase in apartment prices in eight years. The High Line Park, through co-construction and win-win cooperation, has increased the sense of participation among those involved and brought sustained economic vitality to the area.

Another example of co-construction and win-win cooperation is Minami Ikebukuro Park in Japan. This small community park, managed through community co-construction, has become a shared gathering place for residents. Due to its small size, it quickly achieved a balance between income and expenditure, a successful example of a revenue-generating park.

Chapter Three: High Expectations

Based on the successful cases of Chengdu's pioneering parks and numerous excellent international park operation examples, we can envision the future of urban parks.

Urban park operations align with government needs and interests, reducing financial pressure. Operational revenue ensures the sustainability of public services, and a socially governed model increases citizen participation, reducing the burden on the government.

Secondly, from the perspective of citizen needs, it not only continues to meet the daily needs of leisure, sports, social interaction, and public welfare, but also adds new consumption scenarios, providing people with more choices;

From the perspective of tourists, future city parks will not only meet the cultural experience needs of new cities, but also provide services in all aspects, including food, accommodation, transportation, tourism, shopping, entertainment, commerce, health, and education;

Finally, unlike scenic areas, city parks can meet the needs of urban companies, such as product sales, new product launches, new office styles, and industry exchanges;

Summary:

In summary, as the trend indicates, starting with the Chengdu pilot program, three cases have proven the feasibility of city park operation; pain points and difficulties in three aspects can be solved through subsequent policy support. The business model of IP-centric business reconstruction and win-win cooperation, and the examples of three successful foreign cases prove its feasibility; ultimately, the vision we hope to achieve is a future city park landscape where the government is satisfied, citizens are happy, tourists yearn for, and companies profit. We believe this day will not be far off, and we hope that this brief sharing can gain the attention and support of all sectors of society and relevant national departments.

Finally, we welcome everyone to exchange industry information, contribute ideas for city park operation, and build a win-win situation.