North before south, west before east—this has been the order in which new buildings along Chang'an Avenue have appeared on the timeline since 1949, and it is also the beginning of shaping today's layout of Beijing.

　　In the early years after the founding of the People's Republic, the planning department was not yet sure how wide and how long Chang'an Avenue should be, but because office space for the new regime was tight, a batch of office buildings urgently needed to be built. At the dawn of this new historical era, attention swept across the long expanse of Chang'an Avenue and settled on the plot south of East Chang'an Avenue and west of Chongwenmen Inner Street.

　　In 1951, the new Chinese government's first batch of brick-concrete buildings of five stories or fewer on Chang'an Avenue were completed one after another on the barracks sites demarcated by the armies of the foreign powers and on the airfield built by the Kuomintang. Because planning and construction were rushed, judged by today's road standards for Chang'an Avenue, they were relatively close to the Beijing Hotel opposite, and the roadway was not so wide.

　　The real layout began after 1953. In order to leave more room in the street width, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee decided that when arranging buildings on Chang'an Avenue, construction should begin on the north side of the road first, so the Telegraph Building, the Cultural Palace of Nationalities, and the Xidan Department Store, which was never completed and was halted midway, were all built on the north side of Chang'an Avenue.

　　As time extended, the strong characteristics of their eras, embodied in buildings constructed in different historical periods, all coalesced along Chang'an Avenue: the "Chinese and ancient" classical Chinese-style imperial architectural complexes are mostly distributed near Tiananmen Square; the "Chinese and new" buildings, which have the traditional features of Chinese architecture, were built from the late 1950s through the mid-1990s and are located slightly farther out; the "Western and new" forms of new architecture increased somewhat after 1995, while modernist buildings, of which many were built after the 1990s, are relatively concentrated at both ends.

　　Beijing's "order" is that the west governs the inner and the east governs the outer. The style of today's buildings on Chang'an Avenue is its best illustration.

　　West Chang'an Avenue has a total length of 2,935 meters, of which the building frontage on the north side of the street accounts for 76%. Because most of these buildings were born before reform and opening up, the buildings along West Chang'an Avenue have a strong sense of order, their plans are relatively square and regular, and the facade widths of the buildings are mostly 100 meters, with intervals of 10 to 40 meters, especially on the north side of the street.

　　East Chang'an Avenue has a total length of 2,766 meters, of which the building frontage on the north side of the street accounts for 64%. Compared with the uniformity of West Chang'an Avenue, East Chang'an Avenue, whose appearance took shape later, has buildings along the street that each have their own characteristics; facade widths vary from 60 meters to several hundred meters, and building plans are also quite diverse.

　　Chang'an Avenue is the only national-level street, so any new building on Chang'an Avenue must go through a special high-level approval procedure and must strictly follow the rules that befit Chang'an Avenue.

　　According to reports by mainland media, to enter the sequence of buildings along Chang'an Avenue, a project must first submit a project initiation application within its own system, pass assessments at various levels, and then be submitted to the competent ministry or commission of that system for approval. Next it enters the process of the Beijing Municipal Planning Commission, which first reviews whether the proposed project conforms to the overall plan for Chang'an Avenue. After project screening, an expert group conducts demonstration (including architectural style, floor height, and so on). After the demonstration is passed, it is handed to an architectural design institute for architectural design, and the plan is demonstrated and revised by the expert group until it meets the standards for entering the sequence of buildings along Chang'an Avenue.

　　After completing this process, the plan is reported to the Beijing municipal government for approval. Next, it must also be reported to the State Council for final approval. The entire process takes at least several years and at most more than 10 years.

　　No taxis to be hailed on Chang'an Avenue

　　In the 1960s, when Tsinghua University was carrying out planning for Chang'an Avenue, it once made a six-panel screen and drew to scale the main thoroughfares of six cities of the world—Beijing's Chang'an Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., New Delhi in India, Red Square in Moscow, and others—on the screen. During the "Cultural Revolution," this work was settled as evidence that its leader, Wu Liangyong, was "imperialist, revisionist, and reactionary," because what kind of place was Chang'an Avenue, and yet foreign things had actually been used for reference.

　　It is impossible for buildings on Chang'an Avenue not to be conspicuous; after all, this is the No.1 Street of China. Therefore, buildings on Chang'an Avenue face a dilemma: traditional design is considered to lack a modern feel, while modern design is seen as damaging the appearance of the ancient capital. Anyone can become a critic of Chang'an Avenue's buildings, and buildings on Chang'an Avenue are often the result of compromises among various ideas.

　　Even so, the buildings on this street still have strict dimensional and formal specifications.

　　Because of the needs of a political and cultural avenue, symmetrical buildings predominate, and asymmetrical buildings are mostly located at important crossroads. From the founding of the PRC to the 1960s, symmetry was "convex"-shaped, such as the Cultural Palace of Nationalities, the Long-Distance Telephone Building, and the Telegraph Building; from the 1980s to 1994, symmetry was "concave"-shaped, such as the Civil Aviation Business Building, the Ministry of Transport, the Customs Building, Guanghua Chang'an, and Huacheng Building; after 1994, symmetry became "flat-roofed," such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank, the Electric Power Building, and the Financial Center.

　　Symmetrical buildings highlight the solemn and rational characteristics of Chang'an Avenue, while asymmetrical buildings add flexible and perceptual characteristics to Chang'an Avenue.

　　There are also strict regulations for night lighting in the Tiananmen Square area and the Chang'an Avenue and extension areas, with rules detailed down to each building. For example, lighting on the square must highlight the solemnity and elegance of the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Tiananmen Rostrum, and the buildings in the area, and must highlight the grandeur and breadth of Tiananmen Square. With the Monument to the People's Heroes as the main scene, illuminance is greatest there, and other places decrease in turn. There are also unified designs for lighting of the national flagpole base, colored lights on the pine trees around the square, outline lights on the reviewing stands, and lighting at the entrances and green areas of Zhongshan Park and the Working People's Cultural Palace.

　　In terms of architectural color, the National Day projects of the 1950s were mainly beige. In the 1980s, white and gray predominated. In the early 1990s, there were more variations in tone. In the late 1990s, due to the use of steel structures and glass curtain walls, buildings dominated by blue tones appeared.

　　North of Tiananmen Square is a magnificent complex of ancient Chinese palace architecture with yellow roofs and red walls. The southeast and three sides of Tiananmen Square are enclosed by beige granite buildings. The buildings on East Chang'an Avenue are diverse in form and rich in color, but lack uniformity. The buildings on the north side of West Chang'an Avenue are mainly white and beige, while those on the south side are mostly in blue tones; because the main facades of the buildings face north, the colors appear somewhat dark.

　　In the mid-1990s, as the political mystique of Chang'an Avenue gradually dissolved, billboards once proliferated; after rectification, the scene improved greatly. Then in 2004, Beijing Municipal Government Order No. 151 promulgated the "Measures for the Administration of Outdoor Advertising Installation in Beijing," stipulating that outdoor advertising is prohibited within 100 meters on both sides of the road along Chang'an Avenue (from Jianguomen Inner to Fuxingmen). Regulation became even stricter.

　　The regulation not only ordered the removal of fixed billboards on Chang'an Avenue, but also specifically stipulated that vehicles with body advertisements are prohibited from passing through the section of Chang'an Avenue from west of Wangfujing intersection (excluding Wangfujing intersection) to east of Xidan intersection (excluding Xidan intersection) and the Tiananmen Square area. Vehicles temporarily used for public service advertisements and major events are excepted.

　　Not only are advertisements not allowed to appear on Chang'an Avenue, but the regulation of building plaques along Chang'an Avenue was also standardized during rectification. Even for the headquarters of central state-owned enterprises or ministry and commission buildings, plaques that were originally too conspicuous and detrimental to the tidy and solemn image of Chang'an Avenue were all rehung in a low-key manner.

　　In addition, the Beijing traffic management department stipulates that empty taxis are not allowed to drive on the section of Chang'an Avenue from Jianguomen to Fuxingmen, and during major political events, the sections where empty taxis are not allowed to drive will extend to the east and west ends. For example, during the "Forum on China-Africa Cooperation," empty taxis were not allowed to pass on Chang'an Avenue (from Dabeiyao to Xinxingqiao), the main road of the East Second Ring Road (from Dongzhimen Bridge to Dongbianmen Bridge), Sanlihe Road (from Muxidi to Ganjiakou), the east and west side roads of Tiananmen Square, and the west side road of the Great Hall of the People.

　　Admittedly, banning empty taxis has the rationale of easing pressure on major traffic arteries, but together with the earliest ban here on "yellow-label" vehicles that do not meet Beijing's environmental protection requirements and restrictions on vehicles with non-local license plates and passenger vehicles with 19 seats or more, the biggest reason is the same: because this is Chang'an Avenue.