The Western China Capital Cities Landscape Characteristic Aesthetic Structure

As one of the empirical studies of the National Natural Science Foundation(The approval number for the project is 50578069), the dissertation aims to conduct a systematic study concerning the urban landscape characteristics types and their structural relationship in the capital cities in western China from a regional perspective by applying the theory of urban landscape aesthetic characteristics structure. The current studies on landscape characteristics mainly centers on case study of certain cities rather than the on group study of the objects from a systematic and regional perspective. However, the dissertation, from a western regional perspective, comprehensively takes the regional characteristics of the cities into consideration, thus avoiding the stereotyped study of different urban landscape characteristics by only taking into account the urban landscape characteristics of certain cities. The dissertation, by applying the relevant theories in aesthetics and aesthetic psychology and comparing and analyzing the urban landscape types, summarizes the major urban landscape types featuring prominent landscape characteristics. Thus, the dissertation develops the typical landscape features with reasonable logic, namely, the urban landscape characteristics aesthetic structure and it constructs the single element landscape characteristics aesthetic structure and panoramic landscape characteristics aesthetic structure respectively for China's western cities.In the study, the dissertation takes the regional characteristics (natural condition, history and humanity) affecting the urban landscape as the masterstroke. The first parts of the dissertation is devoted to the fundamental theoretic studies, introducing the relevant concepts and systems concerning urban landscape characteristics aesthetics, analyzing the various universal factors affecting urban landscape and the particular factors affecting the shaping of urban landscape in China's western cities. The particular factors that contributes to the urban landscape in China's western cities include the following: natural conditions involving geographical features and climatic features, social and human factors including multi-ethnic and multi-regional beliefs, long history and the assimilation and integration of various cultures and also the special periods such as the anti-Japanese aggression war and China's civil war and the special policy of grand western development. The latter part constitutes the major core of this dissertation, developing the single element landscape characteristics aesthetic structure and the panoramic landscape characteristics structure respectively. The single element landscape characteristics structure refers to the characteristics structure constructed with the certain landscape as the main line or mainstream of the structure. Chapter 4 and chapter 5 mainly centers on the analysis of the aesthetic features of urban water landscape, mountain landscape, plant landscape, architectural landscape and urban public space landscape. And then after aesthetic comparison, it goes on to summarize the main landscape characteristics types of China's western capital cities and it develops the single element landscape characteristics aesthetic structure. Chapter 6 is devoted to the development of panoramic landscape characteristics aesthetics structure in China's western capital cities. The chapter first summarizes the landscape characteristic types in China's western capital cities, and then compares and analyzes the overall landscape characteristics in China's western capital cities and selects the most striking representative features and then summarizes the panoramic landscape characteristics aesthetic structure. Meanwhile the author selects Xian, Lhasa and Kunming as the core landscape cities in the present western China. The last chapter puts forward some suggestions for the shaping and evolving of future landscape characteristics for China's western capital cities in the hope of shedding some light on further studies.