“租隙理论”是由美国的Neil Smith 教授提出的解释城市更新的重要理论之一。本项目基于租隙理论研究历史街区如何保持渐进的可持续更新，从而使历史街区不断散发着活力免于衰退和败落。本项目结合厦门市的历史街区（包括鼓浪屿岛上的历史街区）进行研究，从不同层面探讨可持续的更新策略，通过问卷调查来了解自下而上的更新与自上而下的更新造成的不同影响。本项目融入项目负责人在德国公派留学时的考察与调研经验，以及对德国城市更新的研究经历，通过持续至今与德国海德堡大学的教授进行长期的合作研究，借鉴德国历史街区更新中的经验与教训。结合“欧洲社区创新计划”，应用Neighborhood Transopoly软件来分析历史街区中的社区变化，尝试通过建立3D城市模型来研究历史街区的更新问题，并建立历史街区可持续更新数据库作为未来长期跟踪研究的基础。

Rent Gap Theory (RGT) is one of the most important theories to explain urban regeneration. It was proposed in 1979 by the American professor named Neil Smith. This project is based on RGT aiming to study how we can make historic districts have progressively sustainable regeneration so as to protect historic districts from decline and keep historic districts attractive, creative, innovative and energetic. This project aims to research the historic districts in Xiamen city (including Gulangyu Island), and discuss the sustainable regeneration strategies from different levels. We will do the questionnaire survey to investigate the different effects of bottom-up regeneration and top-down regeneration. The project will combine the observation, investigation and study about successes and failures of German urban regeneration from the project manager’s experience in Germany (based on a scholarship under the State Scholarship Fund from China). The project is based on the foundation of the project manager’s long-time international cooperation with professors from Heidelberg University in Germany. The project plans to combine the program of The URBAN Community Initiative in Europe, use Neighborhood Transopoly to analyze the changes of communities in historic districts, try to set up 3D city model to research on urban regeneration of historic districts, and at last establish a database on sustainable regeneration of historic districts as the base of long-time follow-up research in the future.