This year, Shanghai accelerated the development and transformation of key strategic areas, and as part of these efforts, the building of a “15-minute community life circle”, which refers to making a wide variety of goods and services available within a 15-minute walk, has been among the agenda. In a super-large city with scarce land resources, can industrial upgrading and urban development coexist with cozy leisure space and a slow life? Recently, the DoBe Dahuali digital culture industry innovation center was officially opened in Baoshan District. As a major industrial investment project in Baoshan in 2023, DoBe Dahuali aims to build itself into a new landmark featuring the functions of an industrial park, entertainment area, community center, business district, and scenic spot, providing a model for urban renewal and injecting new momentum for Shanghai’s “northern transformation”.

A new model of “15-minute community life circle”

Not long ago, the Neighborhood Market opened in DoBe Dahuali, which brings the residents of the nearby Dachang Town a new place for leisure activities and entertainment. The Market organized activities with IP DooroBear, and more than 50 stalls selling food, handicrafts and cultural and creative products as well as providing interactive music, pet and parent-child activities settled in. It has become a space where nearby residents can enjoy themselves and spend time with their friends and family members. In addition, the Neighborhood Market also cooperates with Dahua No.1 Village No.1 House and other communities to hold fairs for kids to sell their stuff for donation, providing a platform to foster entrepreneurship and awareness of public welfare in communities.

For most people, the majority of their waking time is probably spent at the workplace, and an enjoyable leisure space where they can relax and spend time with family members and friends near home would certainly serve to make their lives more balanced and fulfilled. DoBe Dahuali stands out not only for being such a place for entertainment, but also for its innovation in bringing market and leisure activities into a digital culture industry park.

Since the beginning of this year, Dachang Town has been working actively on building a people-oriented, low-carbon, resilient, fair and inclusive community centering on the goal of “building a digital-empowered and happy Dachang”. It is vigorously promoting the building of a “15-minute community life circle”, as part of its efforts to provide residents with more convenient services, and a more colorful experience of urban life.

How to effectively integrate a diverse variety of businesses within reach of such a small circle as people can access in a 15-minute walk? DoBe Dahuali provides a new model for that.

Conveniently located at No. 1528 Hutai Road, Dobe Dahuali is about 440 meters away from Xingzhi Road station of Metro Line 7 and is close to Jing’an Darong City, the largest shopping center in northern Shanghai. According to the relevant person in charge, Dobe Dahuali, as the first major work of the Dobe Group in Baoshan District, gives full play to the advantages of enterprise resources and advantageous geographic location to create a space that integrates leisure and art office area, which can complement the functions of the surrounding areas, and make the whole neighborhood suitable for travel, business, living, learning and senior life.

In terms of layout, the park consists of 10 sparingly distributed buildings that form an open block spanning nearly 10,000 square meters. The main street leads to various leisure spaces such as Xingkong Square, the central garden outside the courtyard, and Luyan Square.

With the rising demand for offline life experience and interaction, street commerce and night markets are gaining popularity. Dobe’s Park takes a differentiated route with the surrounding shopping malls by digging into the needs of nearby residents and filling the gap between demand and services. For example, the Park has garden villas, open-air theaters, rooftop camping, and market stalls, providing a one-stop experience for entertainment, living, work, and cultural activities. In this way, it can build a block for fashion, and cultural slow life that can attract residents in the surrounding 3 to 5 kilometers. At the same time, the block is open for visitors all day, which effectively improves the supporting service radius of a “15-minute community life circle”.

At the opening ceremony, the Dobe Neighborhood Empowerment Alliance was officially established, and the Ciwei Platform for Youth Development was introduced to enhance DoBe’s connection with businesses and communities through activities such as online publicity, establishment of university entrepreneurial community resource links, event planning and execution, and volunteer and experience officer recruitment. In doing so, Dobe can not only empower the community through business development, but also help facilitate youth innovation in the community.

A model for urban renewal that reserves urban memory while facilitating functional transformation

A city’s future is rooted in its past. Since 2015, Shanghai has entered an era of intensive growth in its urban renewal, and its urban construction focus has gradually shifted from “demolition, renovation, and retention” to “retention and protection”. Preserving the city’s memory and history has become an integral part of Shanghai’s development.

For residents of the surrounding communities, the “reborn” Dobe Dahuali is still familiar to them. This open block was built after refurbishing the Dahua Hotel, which has been brought to a new life by Dobe in the renewal project based on a principle of “functional renewal while retaining a memory of the neighborhood”.

Dahua Hotel, established in the 1990s, was then a state-operated hotel under collective ownership. For more than 30 years of operation, the hotel was known for its Shanghai local cuisines, and gradually became a symbol of the “classic taste” of Shanghai in the heart of locals. The memory of taste often accompanies people the longest. Those who enjoyed the dishes of Dahua Hotel for years have already developed an intimate taste memory of the food there, thus making the cuisines of the hotel the name “flavor of home” in the neighborhood.

In early 2023, Dobe undertook the transformation and operation work of Dahua Hotel. In order to enhance the spatial, cultural and brand influence, Dobe retains partly the original elements on the facade, such as the quaint tiles, cozy balconies and unique architectural forms, while renovating the inside space to make it a more comfortable and relaxed work area. It shows a model for renewal of historical blocks that achieves functional renewal while retaining the simple, elegant and secluded atmosphere of the place to the utmost.

The continuation of urban memory, in addition to the renewal of the building itself, is also inseparable from the culture. At the awarding ceremony of “Xingzhi Reading Corner”, Dobe Dahuali Cultural Month was started. In the future, the park will, under the guidance of Dachang Town government, cooperate with enterprises inside and outside the Park to carry out a series of cultural and art salon activities related to Baoshan’s history, culture and celebrity anecdotes, so as to show the rich historical root of Baoshan District and Dachang Town, and meanwhile better inherit the red culture. The “Xingzhi Reading Corner” will help create a public cultural reading space in which residents can spend time and interact with others, fully activating the function of the building, and promoting the transformation of the region.

Tech-empowered industry development promotes the “Building of a Technologically Innovative Baoshan”

Industrial development always stands as a priority in regional development. At the opening ceremony of Dobe Dahuali, the Dachang Town government presented “policy packages” to business representatives, delivering preferential policies and quality services to promote the high-quality development of enterprises.

In addition, Dobe Dahuali will also build a youth AI experience center, so that young people in the community could have a chance to learn about or even participate in the development of AI, thus becoming a new force in the future development of the area.

With Dobe Dahuali as the center, a new development blueprint is slowly unfolding. The relevant person in charge from Dobe Group introduced that Dobe Dahuali is a landmark park that shows the deep cooperation between Dobe and Dachang Town in promoting the transformation and upgrading of the old industrial park. The project will create a light-asset company ecosystem, facilitate industrial development, and contribute significantly to optimizing the business environment and promoting the “Building of a Technologically Innovative Baoshan”.

In addition to software services, the Park is employing a series of technology hardware and smart management systems to provide more convenient services to enterprises settling in. For example, the main building is equipped with a naked eye 3D display screen, laser projection, wehome intelligent curved screen, an intelligent large screen in the lecture hall, and an intelligent meeting reservation system.

Dobe Dahuali is planned to provide office space for enterprise headquarters in areas such as fashion design, games, and cultural creativity. Besides, it will attract enterprises in business services, new business economy, culture, education and sports to settle in.

In the future, Dobe Dahuali will focus on building the cultural and technological industry development cluster, new digital cultural industry cluster, and digital creative incubation base, thus creating a headquarters economy hub that generates clustering effects and stable tax, as a way to facilitate innovation in the digital cultural industry and the urban digital transformation.