Urban Tissue of Traditional Chinese and Southeast Asian Port Cities: The Influence of Maritime Trade

Abstract

In the process of urban development and regeneration, a city always gradually derives multiple morphological characteristics from its original single form. The transformation of urban form can be viewed as representation of consequence of overlapping of cultural attributes, an urban quality which is often ignored by property developments. This paper addresses that culture is a starting point to analyze traditional urban forms of Chinese and Southeast Asian traditional port cities. On the one hand, it analyzes their urban morphological characteristics focusing on the urban tissue level, which can reflect a process of urban evolution based on multi-culture brought by the ancient maritime trade. On the other hand, four port cities with similar cultural attributes including Quanzhou and Guangzhou in China, Hanoi in Vietnam and Malacca in Malaysia are analyzed comparatively to demonstrate their morphological differences and similarities. Based on the analysis of the two aspects, the paper recovers the relationship between cultural attributes and urban morphology, as well as some universal and special rules of urban development.