The densely populated households in the urban village make the public space crowded and at the same time extremely abundant. Large part of the residents' daily activities are held at outdoor public space because of the litmited indoor space. Due to the deficiency of unified planning, the lack of space for activities and the imperfection of infrastructure settings, people tend to have an impression that the material environment in the urban villages is “dirty, messy and noisy”, and this impression affects how people judge the social and population structure of the urban villages, leading prejudice and misunderstanding towards the urban villages.

In the SMALL & SMART DESIGN COMPETITION 1.0, Shenzhen Center for Design will cooperate with the organizing committee of BI-CITY BIENNALE OF URBANISM\ARCHITECTURE to publicly solicit design solutions targeting at the “dirty, messy and noisy” problem of Nantou Old Town for the improving of public spaces and infrastructures.

Nantou Old Town is considered to be the first choice as the project base for this competition. Nantou Old Town, also known as Xin'an City, is located in the north of the Nantou overpass, Nantou District, Shenzhen, covering an area of about 70,000 square meters. Nantou Old Town lies in the east bank of the Pearl River estuary. For a long time, it served as the administrative center of the Lingnan coastal areas, and the distribution center of the marine defense fortress, the marine transportation and foreign trade. It also originated the history of Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macao. In 2017, the 7th BI-CITY BIENNALE OF URBANISM\ARCHITECTURE chose Nantou Old Town as its main venue and held an exhibition there under the theme "Breathe with the City". Participants can choose specific site in the Nantou Old Town according to their needs and work out their design schemes.