Evaluation of Generating Mechanism of Residential Building Patterns in Contemporary Cities – Case Study on Xi’an and Nanjing

Abstract

[EN] Residential area occupies a large portion of urban land, so it is very important to understand the characteristics of the residential building patterns and how such patterns, normally parallel multi-story and high-rise slab apartments in various cities of China, are formed. The residential building patterns are according to the living behavior, climate consideration, environmental requirement and market demands. Our previous studies have shown that sunshine regulation is by far the most important factor in the generation of the residential building pattern since 1980. This paper attempts to make a comprehensive evaluation to see the generating mechanism of the residential morphological patterns. Ten residential plots from two cities located in different climate zones of Xi’an and Nanjing are evaluated. Five factors, namely, the type of the apartment, plot FAR, land coverage, sunshine regulations and spatial characteristics of plot pattern, will be used as comprehensive evaluation indicators in the comparison. The study reveals how these factors interplay in the generation of the observed plot patterns and which factor is most important in this process. If the sunshine regulations were the key factor, how different the plot patterns in different climate zones and latitudes would have varied. Through evaluating generating mechanism we could find out the key generating factors, which is useful as the references for design.