Title: Chinese Urban Design: A Typomorphological Approach
Abstract: Chinese Urban Design: A Typomorphological Approach, Fei Chen and Kevin Thwaites, Surrey, Ashgate, 2013, 244 pp., £65.00 (hbk), ISBN978-1-409-43388-0Much of the existing urban design practice and literature on Chinese urban design focuses on something akin to city scale masterplanning, so a book that develops a systematic structure for dealing with urban form at a more detailed design level must be welcome relief for practitioners, academics and the general reading public wanting to see the 'angel in the detail' on China's new urban streets.The book chronologically outlines the nature of Chinese urban form since the emergence of Yangshao Jiangzhai, a Neolithic settlement archaeologically dated to 5000-4000BC in the Yellow River Plain. The authors consider the political, socio-economic and cultural impetus behind the structuring of urban form, concluding that it is these factors that are the essence of local identity. The authors assert, however, that the consequence of post-1978 urban policy and subsequent rapid urban development is an urban identity crisis. This crisis has been precipitated by six broad factors: the emergence of a central business district and a change in land-use patterns as residential development moves to the urban periphery; the emergence of development zones, including higher education towns (like the one I occupy while writing this book review), to attract foreign investment and other economic activity; changes in residential form that have seen vast areas of freestanding high rise apartment blocks set within gated communities; a preponderance of iconic buildings to promote and brand the city; migrant enclaves in urban areas due to extensive rural/urban migration and the inability of migrants to access welfare services; and the conservation of traditional urban form since the 1980s through the implementation of the Fleritage Conservation Act in response to concerns over rapidly disappearing heritage. The latter has been criticised for lacking the required potency to halt demolition of a large amount of traditional urban fabric, and for focusing largely on the preservation of traditional heritage for tourism purposes, paying little attention to place-making for ordinary people.Chapter 3 sets out the evolutionary background to the concepts typology, morphology and typomorphology, with typomorphology being defined by the authors as 'a theory that interprets the built landscape in relation to location, time and scale in order to understand the production and transformation process of urban form and to guide quality design practice' (p. 57). The authors justify the use of a typomorphological approach to structure their response to Chinese urban design as an essentially anthropological approach that draws on the people and their associated culture within a locale to identify a place's identity, rather than relying solely on historic artefacts such as heritage architecture to foster a sense of place. In China, this reliance on history for place-making has led to a widespread practice of rebuilding exact replicas of what was there before, leaving academics, practitioners and lay people alike to debate notions of authenticity and validity. In addition, this approach recognises the temporal dimension, which, in turn, acknowledges that culture is dynamic with changing symbols. Moving away from a focus on symbols to types enables a consideration of place identity that is rooted in the ebb and flow of social and cultural change.To relate this approach to a Chinese context, a set of seven elements are outlined in hierarchical order: general plan, silhouettes or skylines, street networks, urban blocks (plots), public spaces, public buildings and houses. The relationships between these seven elements are as important as the individual elements themselves; however, the definitions of these elements are slightly curious when considered in the Chinese context and would benefit from a political overlay. …
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot