Construction And Deconstruction Of Public Recreational Space In Metropolitan Area

The Athens Charter,the result of the fourth meeting ofCIAM (Congr(?)s Internationald'Architecture Moderne) in 1933,pointed out the four basic functions of cities that areworking,living,recreation and transportation.The relationship of four functions aboveshould be well managed in balancing and zoning the function of living,working andrecreation on the basic of regional planning to build interzonal transport network.Thepremise of an efficient functional city is rational urban spatial structure and itsimplementation form and these have been the subject of much recent research.With socioeconomic and humanities development leisure and recreation have been aprevalent behavior pattern and a part of life.Meanwhile leisure space has become acomplex cultural environment where people can experience culture,feel close to natureand cultivate himself/herself in disposition.Owing to social demands,research into leisurespace structure and its principle of evolution is both important and urgent in order to guideGovernment Policy.The formation and development of metropolitan areas is an important feature ofmodern city evolution and the main trend of world urbanization in the 21 st century.As oneof the basic functions of a city,The research subjects such as how to implement healthy and sustainabledevelopment in metropolitan city structure and the forming process,functional charactersand development trends of recreation space in it have win more and more attention fiomthe tourism geography and urban planning fields.This paper focuses on system analysis of metropolitan public recreational space andincludes the following sections:In the first chapter,the author formulates a definition of metropolitan publicrecreational space fiom several perspectives including the disciplines of urban planning,urban construction and metropolitan area development.After that,the paper presents theresearch process including the purpose,methods and techniques.Lastly,the authorclarifies the study content and highlights the key issues.The second chapter,after a brief discussion of two groups of concepts involvingrecreation and tourism.urban space structure,open space and public space,raises theconcept of urban public recreational spaces.A comparative study o frelated literature fromboth international and local sources found that the major research themes are based ondemand analysis,specific recreational space studies,urban recreational space structureresearch and urban recreational space structure categorization and concept interpretation.Research into the complete theoretical system for the metropolitan area,however,is stillrare.The third chapter traces back to eastern and western ideological origins of urbanpublic recreational space.The author traces Chinese philosophical thoughts and points out that the rites mentioned in Rites of the Zhou Kao Gong Ji of Spring and Autumn Periodhas had a tremendous influence on Chinese ancient city public recreational space.Confucian and Taoist beliefs both advocate"harmony between the heaven and human",although from different perspectives.Confucianism puts further emphasis on the humandevelopment ofa meaningful world,while Taoism emphasizes the spontaneous unfoldingof the natural world.Both have had a lasting impact on city recreational space.Meanwhile,the western ancient classic thoughts have been applied to urban recreational spacestructure more or less.The western urban planning theories such as idealism,functionalism,humanism,and new urbanism have not only directly affected cityconstruction at that time,but also provided guidance and enlightenment to ourcontemporary urban recreational space phnning and construction.The fourth chapter presents the concept of a definition of metropolitan publicrecreational space from the perspective of physical space.Based on urban land-useproperties,metropolitan public recreational spaces have attributes of accessibility,civicnature,complex functions,diversity,symbolism,humanism and exclusiveness.Under thesystem analysis to national typical case study,the development reality of metropolitan areaand related norm and regulations,the text highlights a classification system consisting of 9categories,28 large suborders and 50 small suborders and investigates several typicalrecreational space structures and indicators.The fifth chapter reviews Chinese urban public recreational space evolution firstlyand finds that the key influencing factor was the evolution from the Lifang system toJiexiang system.Some new recreational patterns entered Shanghai in modern times withthe colonial intrusion.The major change of city space structure was the emergence of alarge number and new pattern of recreational spaces.During the planned economy period,Chinese urban public recreational space had a strong political orientation while,sincereform and opening up in 1978,has developed in the direction of diversification andcommercialization.In the second part of this chapter the paper discusses the western urbanpublic recreational space evolution which has abundant types and a strong"public"nature.The public spaces associated with buildings like squares,public bathhouses,churches,parks and so on have been retained until modern times.In general,Chinese traditionalurban recreational space is linear in shape,represented by the street and lane whilewestern cities tend to have more square shaped spaces.The sixth chapter and the seventh chapter focus on a case study of Shanghai.Theresearch follows the historical process of Shanghai's urbanization.From the old townduring the Ming dynasty,then semi-feudal and semi-colonial city in more modern times,to the contemporary metropolis,Shanghai's history has had four typical developmentstages of urban recreational space.These stages are:traditional urban recreational spacewith Jiangnan water village characteristics;a dual system of Chinese and Western urbanrecreational space;urban recreational space with"productive"characteristics;and aShanghai style public recreational space combining the cultures of Chinese and foreigncivilization.Through system analysis of urban spatial structure characteristics,categories of public recreational space and attributes,the paper aims to reveal Shanghai's publicrecreational historical spatial change patterns.The research undertakes preliminarydeconstruction of Shanghai public recreational space with the GIS technique.The dataanalysis shows the significant enlargement of scale and improvement in quality and somedifferences in public recreational space categories within the downtown area,commuterarea and outskirts.Shanghai public recreational space is still at the sole-core developmentstage.The majority is distributed in the downtown area and the dispersion trend tocommuter area and outskirts is not obvious.This means that the development reality is notable to suit the metropolitan space reconstruction ofpopuhtion and industries in Shanghai.Inthe last chapter the author suggests that it is uecessary to develop public recreationspace which corresponds with the population,industries and city functions within thedowntown area,commuter area and outskirts.Finally,preliminary recommendations areprovided.