Sun, Yichang; (2025) The Everyday Life of Small Urban Places: An enquiry into the morphological transformation of inner-city Nanjing, 1920s-2020s. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Sun_10210882_thesis.pdf Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 August 2026. Download (43MB)

Abstract

This thesis presents a study of Taiping South Road (TPS) area, a neighbourhood in central Nanjing, China, characterised by its diverse land uses and social/economic activities. As the ‘first commercial street’ of early 20th-century Nanjing, Taiping South Road, has sustained its prosperity over the past century. Taking a place-based approach, the study offers a historical investigation into guilds and small businesses in the city and neighbourhood during the pivotal 1920s-30s period, as well as into non-domestic patterns of TPS area in the 1930s. In parallel, it traces the richly mixed uses and activities within the historical alleyways and their surroundings in the 2020s TPS area, situating these observations within a broader temporal framework that spans a century of urban change. This research examines first, the shifting spatial patterns of each type of small urban places across scales over time; and second, whether and to what extent the spatial morphology can explain or facilitate the shifting patterns of private-to-public relations in people’s social-economic activities and everyday practices. It seeks to bridge the theoretical and methodological gaps between urban form and everyday life studies. The findings reveal that small urban places embedded within networks of streets and alleyways exhibit distinct spatial and transpatial cultures, characterised by a great mixture of numerous uses and everyday activities, while – methodologically – a fine-grained micromorphological approach can enhance our understanding of the everyday meshing of co-presence and micro-rituals. Building on the concept of co-presence, the study proposes an interdisciplinary framework of space syntax, urban morphology, Historical GIS (HGIS), and temporal analysis. Combining extensive historical-archival research and contemporary fieldwork, this research traces the everyday settings over a century of urban transformation. This re-examination of people and place, it is argued, shows that small urban places could play a vital role in shaping and maintaining urban diversity and sustainability.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as XMLJSONCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item