Prefabricated Panel Houses in Taiyuan
Most of the prefabricated panel houses in Taiyuan were built in the 1970s and 1980s and are currently facing numerous issues. Various renovation methods have been implemented, but the renovation process presents certain challenges.
As an old industrial city, Taiyuan constructed a large number of prefabricated panel houses in the 1970s and 1980s. Nowadays, most of these houses are over 40 years old, with some approaching 50 years. Due to the construction standards at that time, these houses have problems such as low seismic resistance and poor structural stability. After long-term use, hidden dangers such as wall cracks, roof leaks, corrosion of water supply and drainage pipelines, and circuit aging have emerged in a concentrated manner, seriously threatening the lives and property of residents.
Diverse renovation methods: Taiyuan has carried out renovations on some prefabricated panel houses. From 2020 to the present, more than 3,497 old residential communities have been renovated, benefiting 644,000 households. In 2026, more than 200 communities will be included in the renovation plan. However, conventional renovations can only solve surface problems and cannot address structural safety hazards at their root. For dilapidated houses with structural crumbling, such as the Qinxian Road Recycling Company community, conventional renovations cannot be carried out, and demolition and reconstruction are necessary. In 2025, the central government explicitly included the renovation of prefabricated panel buildings as a core task of urban renewal. Shanxi Province has issued relevant regulations to support the demolition and reconstruction of dangerous housing. Taiyuan has also released a draft for public comment, supporting the self-renovation and original-demolition-and-original-construction of old housing and simplifying the approval process. Currently, there are cases of original-demolition-and-original-construction of dilapidated prefabricated panel houses, such as Buildings 1 and 2 of the Shanfang dormitory in Xiayuan Subdistrict, Wanbailin District, which adopt the model of "demolition on the original site, construction on the original site, and resident relocation".
Conditions for inclusion in "original-demolition-and-original-construction": Safety compliance, with professional institutions identifying the houses as Class C or Class D dilapidated houses; age compliance, built before 2000, with priority given to prefabricated panel houses over 25 years old; unchanged planning, with demolition and reconstruction carried out on the original site without changing the land use nature or exceeding the original building area; resident consent, with the consent rate of residents in the building reaching at least 90%, meeting both the number and area requirements; and funds in place, with the property rights unit or residents raising the funds and the government providing appropriate subsidies.
Problems in renovation: Some prefabricated panel houses only undergo renovation of public areas, such as the prefabricated panel buildings in the Wujia San community and Wusi Street of Baijiazhuang Mine. Some prefabricated panel houses have historical property rights disputes. During the process of original-demolition-and-original-construction, some residents question the purpose of the renovation.
