Abstract
This study explores the spatiotemporal evolution of urban landscapes in 19 Chinese historic water towns in the northern Zhejiang plain. Utilising historical maps and remote sensing images, we derived 2-D morphological patterns from town ground plans in 1918, 1969, 2000, and 2021 to represent urban landscape fractions (buildings, lands, and waters). Morphology-based landscape metrics reveal three distinct periods of urban landscape dynamics over the past century: stabilisation (1918–1969), accelerated growth (1969–2000), and high-speed growth (2000–2021). Our findings present a diminishing role of rivers in shaping land fragments and urban riverscapes, behind which is the weakening conventional water-human relationship during water towns’ modern urbanisation. The results offer insights into shifting water town landscape patterns and regional landscape heterogeneity, prompting further considerations of hydrology-oriented urban design and planning to conserve historic urban landscapes.
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