Many urban improvements are short-lived, looking glossy and impressive when first built but aging poorly and falling into disrepair or decline over time. The Liuyun Xiaoqu area conversions of formerly gated and single-use residential buildings into mixed-use and publicly accessible pedestrian zones since the early 2000s has always been opposed by city planning officials who object to what they consider violations of zoning codes. Starting in a small area south of Teem Mall, there was always a question about how this trend would fare over time.
Several surrounding communities, including Shangya Xiaoqu (尚雅小区), resisted the trend for years, not allowing ground floor shops and keeping the gates up and locked. Even when shops managed to creep in, the refusal to remove the gates and open up to public access inevitably meant the shops could not survive beyond something like a bottled water distributor, which is still the only shop in view of the cache.
By 2020 some sporadic battles continue but the war has been won, and the winner is the Liuyun Xiaoqu model which is spreading prosperity, pedestrianization, public-access and plazas (and no parking) throughout this part of Tianhe. Even the longest holdouts like Shangya Xiaoqu are finally starting to open up the gates and installing shops and landscaping improvements at the ground level.
Shangya Xiaoqu includes paved outdoor recreational areas, mostly table tennis, badminton, and children playing. It's far less fancy than the other neighbourhoods and the interior paving landscaping has not yet seen an upgrade. There's not yet much evidence of shops moving in, so the future trend for the community is not yet clear.