Mao and Beijing

Hi, I'm doing a study on modern China's culture and impact from the Communists after they came in power in 1949, especially Mao Zedong's ideas. One example is the fate of the old city walls and gates of Beijing. Please take a moment to read the following facts about this topic and leave your comments whether you agree or disagree with the approach to modernize the ancient city once called Peking by the Communists, or Mao. Thanks.

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In the first half of the twentieth century, as modernity transformed so many cities around the world, Beijing remained relatively intact. Political instability stunted China's growth, and then Nanjing became the capital once more, under the Kuomingtang. Even during the Japanese occupation, Beijing's physical layout wasn't threatened. In fact, the Japanese planned to preserve the old city, concentrating all new development in a separate satellite district. This plan was never implemented, and in 1949, after the Kuomingtang fled to Taiwan, the Communists made Beijing the capital of their new China. There was nothing else in the world quite like it - a major capital city, designed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that had hardly been touched by modernity or war.

But Mao Zedong, like Yongle, was a ruler with big ideas. He envisioned Beijing as an industrial center, and the city's old gates and walls were considered an impediment to progress. One by one, they torn down, for various reasons. In 1952, Xibian Gate was destroyed, in order to harvest bricks. From 1954 to 1955, the Gate of Earthly Peace was demolished, in order to build a road. Chaoyang Gate, in 1956: condemned because of disrepair. Dongzhi Gate, 9165: a new subway line. Chongwen Gate, 1966: subway line. Before the Communists came to power, the fifty-foot-high city wall and its gates had been among the city's most distinctive features, but by the end of the 1960s virtually all of the structures had been torn down. During the Cultural Revolution, most of Beijing's remaining temples were either destroyed or converted to other uses.

建議看Geremie Barme關於北京城的著作。

I can not tell if I "agree or disagree with the approach … by the Communists", since I don't think there was a such "communist approach" really fit to your description.  Beijing in 1949 was not "hardly touched by modernity or war", but an unmaintained city ruin in its quick decay.  If you don't believe so, just comparing the status of Forbidden City or Summer Palace to the decay of Yuan Ming Yuan Ruin by 1980.  The latter was indeed "hardly touched" through the age, even by the Communist government.

除舊迎新乃是所有大城市發展必經之路， 同志何需大驚小怪？