Thematic Cartography For Spatial Planning: Symbol Construction And Strategies Of Visual Representation

According to the fringe position of planning mapping both in the spatial planning and cartography realms, this paper reveals an urgent requirement that the spatial planning maps and mapping activities should adapted to a new situation of regional spatial planning, which can be summarized as:planning connotations shift from a static space to dynamically linked'places'; planning roles move from'programming' towards'strategic communicating'; and planning visualizations switch from textual drawings to a conceptual vision. So it proposes six hypothesis and main tasks of this study based on certain problems of regional spatial planning cartography. After redefining the'concept regional spatial planning'and its primary characters, we make the functions and categories of thematic planning maps more clear.First, with a focus on the final communicative or exhibitive schemes, this study is intended to provide some insight into the symbolic discrepancies in the cartographical expression of regional planning maps produced in China and Switzerland. Case maps of various planning tiers are selected from both countries for comparison, for example, the spatial strategies for megalopolis, provincial urban system plans and comprehensive city plans in China as well as the federal spatial concepts and cantonal guiding plans in Switzerland. Planning systems of the two countries are reviewed with respects to their mismatched hierarchies, major plan contents, symbol modalities and visual styles, as well as their respective advantages. Such influential factors as regional context, socioeconomic development phase, planning and cartographic conventions and professions, and target users are identified to explain the dissimilarities. Then a strategy of'mutual reference and reciprocity of superiorities'is proposed to optimize visualization of spatial structures, relations and balances between planning contents and forms, map makers and users, scientific and aesthetic visual styles.Second, this thesis defines a ternary property of thematic symbols in spatial planning maps, and summarizes'semantic modalities'that are described by a series of 'Key-Catchy-Phrases', which are concentrated as core concepts from various spatial structures and relations and embedded into the geometric expressions of point, line and area symbols. Based on these, we establish a semiology-based hierarchies model of thematic symbolization in spatial planning maps, and a'semantic-primitives'based methodology for thematic symbols construction. Then we find graphic primitives and their arrangement principles as more as we could from a large amount of case maps, in order to show some commonness. Finally we build a symbolization process which consists of steps of'spatial structures and concepts' - 'semantic modalities' 'primitives and arranging principles' - 'visual variables'. While connecting the spatial patterns and spatial forms through these semantic modalities, this paper also extend the primary visual variables with special ones such as shadow or shading, solid or perspective viewpoint, high gloss, and so on. Besides, fitness of these variables are analyzed regarding to nominal, order, quantitive and uncertainty aspects. Then a hierarchical standardization strategy is proposed after a discussion on six conflicts in standardization issues.Third, in order to achieve better user communications, we give three 're-visualization'approaches of'concept abstract and schematic map representation', 'cognitive logics and animated map representation', and'remote-sensing images and thematic syncretization', which are all aiming at a harmony among inner logics of space, theme and time of planning thematic map symbols with a external logic of user perceptions. Some implementations prove that the dynamic deconstruction is an effective way for cartographic representations. And methods like borderlines generalization, spatial structure abstraction and schematized structure of virtual concepts, are all good supplements to the conventional planning maps. Besides, visual syncretized design for remote-sensing images maps can benefit the elimination of background noisy on the transmission of thematic concepts in spatial planning.In a word, it is important to admit the regional differences of spatial planning cartography in different countries, to set the spatial structures and relations as key objects of planning mapping, as well as to consider the users cognitive communication as bases. This attempt of cross-culture and cross-domain integration is expected to assist and improve the innovative use of cartographic workflows and visualization in regional spatial planning, so that to enhance the adaptability of planning visual representation system to diverse requirements on multi-dimensions of economy, society, politics and natural environment, and to shape attentions on the topic of regional planning cartography and to enrich the theories of thematic cartography and their application.