Dai, X.;
(2004)
The Chinese city Suzhou in seven hundred years: an investigation of the relationship between the changing functional pattern and its spatial structure in the urban transformation process.
Masters thesis , UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
What is the relation between the changing functional pattern of a city and its spatial structure? And how might an understanding of this relation for a particular city improve our ability to plan its future? In this paper we ask this question of the Chinese city of Suzhou by analysing the changing spatial structure over 700 years against a background of what is known from urban historians of its morphological and functional changes, especially the growth and shift of its various centres. Over and above its main aims, this study raises four key theoretical issues: the difference between the changing functional pattern of the city in an incremental growth in the pre-1949 time and in a massive growth after 1949; the co-existence of a canal system alongside the road system and its meaning to the city’s spatial structure; the stability of the physical positions of historical urban elements against the shift of their syntactic context; and the special character of ‘interrupted’ as opposed to the more common ‘deformed’ grids. This study also explores the ability of space syntax to work in a social and cult ural context in which it has rarely been applied before. By the various spatial analyses carried out in this study, it proposed that it is very important to conduct the axial modelling in a flexible way according to the specific social context. E.g. the ve hicle models in the pre-1949 period are proved more powerful than the all-route model in terms of capturing the business centre; the Iida Syntaxa Model is suggested to be a better modelling to reflex the more complex spatial structure of the contemporary city.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Chinese city Suzhou in seven hundred years: an investigation of the relationship between the changing functional pattern and its spatial structure in the urban transformation process |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | Suzhou, Space syntax, urban, spatial structure, function |
| UCL classification: | |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1431 |
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