Chang’an Avenue

Chang’an Avenue is one of the most famous streets in China. As an important part of urban planning of ancient Beijing in the Ming Dynasty, Chang’an Avenue was built from A.D. 1406 to 1420. In Chinese the name “Chang’an” means “Long Peace”. The avenue runs east-west through the centre of the city, across in front of Tiananmen Gate perpendicularly with the main north-south axis of ancient Beijing. Along Chang’an Avenue an amount of important architectures are located, such as the Great Hall of People, the National Museum of China and the National Grand Theater and so on.

ections of Chang'an Avenue

Only the section between Xidan and Dongdan is officially called Chang'an Avenue, but the whole East-West road through the centre of Beijing is generally referred to by this name. The extended Chang'an Avenue includes the following roads, from West to East:

*Fuxing Road (from the West 5th ring road to the West 3rd ring road)
*Fuxingmen Outer Street (from the West 3rd ring road to Fuxingmen)
*Fuxingmen Inner Street (from the West 2nd ring road to Xidan)
*West Chang'an Avenue (from Xidan to Tiananmen Square)
*East Chang'an Avenue (from Tiananmen Square to Dongdan)
*Jianguomen Inner Street (from Dongdan to Jianguomen)
*Jianguomen Outer Street (from Jianguomen to Guomao)
*Jianguo Road (from Guomao to the East 5th ring road)

The main changes of latter-day Chang’an Avenue

After the demolishment of the two city gates named Fuxingmen Gate and Jianguomen Gate in 1940, the rudiment of latter-day Chang’an Avenue formed. Because of the traffic problem and the demand of parade, after the foundation of People’s Republic of China, another two gates named Left Chang’anmen Gate and Right Chang’anmen Gate was demolished in 1952 around. In the development of Beijing, Chang’an Avenue has been widened to 50-100 meters wide. Further more, many important events of modern China taken place in Chang’an Avenue, so it always has a great relationship with national politics.

The problem in urban design of Chang’an Avenue

Compared with some other famous streets of other countries, the form of Chang’an Avenue is much more influenced by national politics. For example, the Champs Elysees in Paris is a long street with different functions. Some segment of the Champs Elysees is a beautiful garden, and some segment is a busy shopping street. And Unter den Linden is a boulevard in the center of Berlin. There are not so many shops in Unter den Linden, but it connects several busy shopping streets and important nodes of the city. Both these two streets are not too broad and a lot of great trees are planted along them so that people can walk in the street very pleasantly. The scale of the buildings at both sides of the street is comfortable to human. That means the two streets are designed for human.

On the contrary, Chang’an Avenue is not so comfortable for people’s walking. As an important symbol of the capital, Chang’an Avenue is extremely broad. The heavy motor traffic makes it very difficult for people to go across Chang’an Avenue. Although there are some commercial facilities at the two sides of Chang’an Avenue, it is very boring to walk in it because of the too huge volume of the buildings.