As Kevin Lynch described in his book “The image of the city”, city can be viewed as a large-­‐scale structure, which exists in the long history of society development. There are so many cities all over the world, with different scales, populations, environments, histories, politics and cultures. City is also becoming a more and more popular place where people like to live in. City redevelopment and revitalization especially the downtown area are becoming a significant part of the planning of the whole community all over the world. How to develop the city, and how to improve the standard of living of urban residents are emerging to be an important task to the urban planners. In this article the author will use two examples of adaptive reuse: Promenade plantée in Paris and High Line Park in New York City to give designers and planners a new perspective to resolve the problem of brownfields in the downtown area and accelerate sustainable development of China.