This paper studies the main body is the city remains or abandoned industrial building, the purpose of the study is to combine Chinese national condition according to the requirements of sustainable development on the industrial building protection and renewal. The Zhonghua Gate area of Nanjing old industrial buildings as an example, on the old industrial buildings renovation and protection problem of the existence in the process and outstanding contradiction developing system of research and study, and the old industrial building reuse targets, update, mode, strategy and other aspects of the maneuverability and the promotion of the study. Any historical event, the progress of civilization need material place support. History and its creators live venues are closely linked. Therefore, in the sense of a city is the city history and civilization material carrier. The culture of this concept is very abstract and inclusive. In essence, the culture is the human society to work together to create the material civilization and spiritual civilization is comprehensive; people in the certain environment, material resources, social interaction of lifestyle adaptive form. History and culture is wide, not only include the hundreds and thousands of years ago and marshes, there are now more historical great change since the founding of new China, the rapid development after the reform and opening up. The city historical street style we should protect, but at the same time should look in the traditional historic district under the body—the soul of the traditional culture. No traditional culture support historical and cultural block is not possible through social recognition and times of test. As a general rule, historical and cultural blocks and heritage attractions is the main essence of city culture. But also want to see the ordinary old residential alleys and recording of that particular era people carve industrial sites constitute the ordinary city, exactly the essence of existence main carrier. Historical cultural tradition though we need protection, respect and love. But when people rack one’s brains to find the traditional form of a reproduction Millennium Monument to local context in the spirit of the time, it will be found that the artificial separation of the old city and the historical and cultural blocks in the relationship between the two, amounts to a cultural background of the formation of the forgotten, in a sense, also cut off the history. At present put up a pageantry" retreat" in the transformation of old cities, some of the so-called "school masters" just keen attention to cultural relics, humane, scenic spots," high culture", and the" non-mainstream" civilian culture, Ichii Mika, popular folklore as city memory is also real and precious, is worthy of preservation and respect. City old city renewal transformation has been the city construction problems and contradictions. On one hand, the rapid development of the city, along with the entire city is large-scale" be busy at putting up installations", city construction is developing the impact of a weak old city protection in this area. On the other hand, as people material standard of growing, the spiritual needs but also deeper demand. Based on the Nanjing China door historic area as the research object research and elaborates on how to resolve the old city protection, renewal and the fast development of city construction between the increasingly prominent contradiction. The hope of Nanjing city building benefit.