Abstract
From the 1950s to the 1990s, China underwent a significant transformation of its political system and economy, from socialism to rapid development after the reform and opening up. In the 1980s and 1990s, to meet the demand for housing and urban modernization under the rapid growth of cities, almost all Chinese cities underwent large-scale urban construction, transformation and expansion. With this background of rapid advancement, many cities have lost their traditional urban features and characteristics. However, it was during this period that Hangzhou not only restored the historical scenery of West Lake through multiple projects but also explored overall planning of the city and introduced conservation ideas, making West Lake, which was originally located outside the city, part of the city. This period also shaped the contemporary urban characteristics of Hangzhou with traditional landscape features. To explore Hangzhou’s positive experience and determine the critical junctures and influencing factors, this study observed the entire historical process using morphological methods. Based on a summary of the characteristics of each development stage, this study further focuses on the key issue of how conservation ideas are gradually introduced into urban planning and affect the development process.
Highlights
The construction of Chinese cities from the 1950s to the 1990s went through three distinct periods with different characteristics, the period of learning from Soviet Union’s experience of building socialist city, the period of serving the political movements, and the period of absorbing the experience of various countries into a period of rapid construction after the reform and opening up (Zou 2014)
Regarding the urban construction of Hangzhou from the 1950s to 1990s, existing studies focused on analysing road patterns and their formation processes in the 1990s (Li 2017), and some studies focused on clarifying the historical details regarding past construction projects and plans in the West Lake Scenic area (Wu 2004; Yang 2008)
To further analyse the critical junctures and influencing factors, the morphological analysis did not define the urban fringe as most other morphological papers but selected three changing features, the size of the urbanised area, the length of the roads, and the number of construction projects on a large scale, which could quantify and measure the speed and characteristics of urban development
Summary
The construction of Chinese cities from the 1950s to the 1990s went through three distinct periods with different characteristics, the period of learning from Soviet Union’s experience of building socialist city, the period of serving the political movements, and the period of absorbing the experience of various countries into a period of rapid construction after the reform and opening up (Zou 2014). Data are from archives of the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Gardening and Cultural Relics and Hangzhou Yearbook) conservation ideas were introduced into urban planning, which protected the West Lake Scenic area, controlled the construction of the city centre, and guided the city expansion away from the West Lake In this context, West Lake, an essential part of Hangzhou, experienced a period of environmental improvement, a period of great damage, a period of landscape restoration and a period of comprehensive conservation (Fig. 3). Referring to the actual morphological development, the City Master Plan (1953) was essential to promoting the formation of the city-lake combined urban form It established the central position of West Lake by road network arrangement and clear urban function partitioning, while the lakeside area of West Lake was further urbanised with the construction projects of facility recuperation, such as the army sanatorium and provincial union sanatorium on the western side of the lake, naval sanatorium on the southwestern side of the lake and Hangzhou Hotel on the northern side. Through this sophisticated analysis process, the specialized control index of each block was determined
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