A configurational perspective on the transformation of smalland medium-sized historical towns in Zhejiang, China

Abstract

[EN] Historical cities in China have experienced tremendous changes in the past century and in particular over the past 30 years. While an increasing number of researches on the transformation of major cities have been witnessed in recent years, endeavours to studying the more ordinary and small- and medium-sized towns are very rare. This research attempts to bridge this knowledge gap by studying six historical towns in Zhejiang, China from a configurational perspective. Changes of street configuration and its relation to spatial distribution of urban activities from Qing dynasty to the present are investigated. Methodologically, both axial and segment models of Space Syntax method are employed and different syntactic measures are examined, in order for an insightful analysis of the change of street configuration. Point-of-interest (PoI) mapping is harnessed to describe urban activity distribution, and its relationship with street configuration is examined using bivariate correlation analysis. The result shows that all six case studies exhibit similar process of change – street configuration become increasingly integrated and structured from Qing dynasty to the 1980s before getting separated and less structured and diverging in street layout until the present. The distribution of urban activities, however, is shown positively correlated to spatial integration throughout the period of history under investigation.