Abstract：Urban renewal is the process of tapping and releasing the potential of urban sustainable development. Starting from the
perspective of potential, the paper forms a general definition of potential—social concepts, spatial relationships, and
constituent elements, and further establishes a conceptual model for urban spatial potential analysis—own productivity,
contextual interaction, and network influence. Based on the idea, the paper takes Shenyang City as an example,
constructs a characteristic index system, and observes 227 observation units in Shenyang urban area. The result shows
Shenyang City has a relatively typical “center-periphery-edge” urban spatial potential distribution on the block scale,
and different types of observation units have significant differences in their main characteristics. Finally, the article
combines the urban spatial structure concept of Shenyang’s territorial spatial planning and the main urban renewal
elements such as old communities and inefficient industrial land to propose targeted urban renewal suggestions.
