Research on Chinese urban form: retrospect and prospect

Abstract

In the last 10 years, research on Chinese urban form has grown rapidly both in China itself and in other parts of the world. At the same time Chinese cities have undergone unprecedented growth and transformation, presenting great challenges for the comprehension and management of urban landscape change. In planning future urban morphological research during this period of exceptional flux, an important first step is to take stock of past research, especially that of the recent past. Hitherto research on Chinese urban form across a range of disciplines, including architectural history, urban planning, archaeology and urban geography, has tended to be descriptive and has contained scant comparison, either of findings or methods, with that on towns and cities in other parts of the world. Future research on Chinese urban form can benefit from exploring the efficacy of urban morphological concepts and methods that have been developed and applied elsewhere in the world, especially Europe.