Study Of The Settlement Patten Of Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal's Tianjin Section Under The Influence Of Multicultural Ecological Corridor

After the application for World Legacy of the Grand Canal in 2006, an extensive study of Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal has been carried out in the cities along the Canal. With the development of the research, its scope has been greatly widened. It concerns not only the investigation for legacy application or the relationship between the canal and towns, but also the canal culture. As for the research of settlement pattern, it has been focused on the spatial distribution characteristics of the Grand Canal instead of its social and cultural patterns. Judging from the history of its development, it is safe to say that the ecological evolution of the Canal culture been a fundamental driving force in the formation and development of the settlements along the Canal. Besides, it has greatly influenced the cultural evolution and settlement changes. So this paper will use the Tianjin section of the Grand Canal as a study case to go over the interrelationship between the cultural ecological evolution and the formation of settlement pattern from the perspective of cultural ecology. The research of its regularity might shed light on the construction of cultural ecological corridor. By adapting the advanced theories, we will come up with some protection strategies of the Grand Canal and at the same time fortify its function to meet the needs in a new era. More attention will be paid to the economic, ecological, and cultural values of the cultural ecological corridor. Based on the principles mentioned above, a protection and development pattern of the settlement in Tianjin section is proposed here, which combined marketing, planning pattern, supervision and control.This paper consists of seven chapters. Chapter one is general introduction, which includes the background of research, definition of the relative concepts, study reviews on canal at home and abroad, main research ideas, methods, framework, and innovation. This part is an introduction of the general situation of this paper, such as the selection of thesis topic and research breakthrough. Chapter two demonstrates cultural ecology, Settlement Geography, Symbiosis Theory and heritage corridor theory adopted by this paper and their use in this paper and also the application of Spatial Information technology in the research of Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. Based on the analysis of whole section of Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the evolution of cultural ecology and settlement patterns, chapter three divides the canal culture, which builds on the basis of the background of regional culture, in to different sections, and then adds them together. After the Comprehensive analysis, this chapter will present the cultural ecology of the other Canal sections except for Tianjin, and the characteristics of the settlement development along the Canal. Chapter four mainly discusses the study of Tianjin section. In chronological order, it shows the development and transition of cultural ecology of the Grand Canal in several important periods since it was first built, and the critical factors in the influence of the Canal cultural ecology to the presence and development of settlement patterns. Chapter five mainly analyzes the current situation of ecological culture in Tianjin section's settlement. It introduces the spatial distribution regularities, patterns and characteristics of cultural ecological construction of this settlement. Based on the above analysis, chapter six makes the comparative study of cultural ecology and the differentiation of settlement pattern evolution of various regions, and then explicitly pointes out the cultural ecological corridor's forming path, functional shift and systematic construction of Tianjin Section. At last, it comes up with principles and objectives of the cultural ecological revival. With the theme of protection and development of the settlement pattern along the Canal, chapter seven introduces Trinitarian(marketing, planning pattern, supervision and control)protection and development pattern, after stating the overall positioning of Tianjin Section, including cultural positioning and the functional positioning in the new era, according to the different cultural ecological elements. It also introduces the methods of control and marketing strategy of protection and development of settlement cultural ecology and explains them with living examples. The last part is conclusion and vision of the future. This part summarizes the core points of the analysis of cultural ecology, heritage corridor and other theories, and looks into the future of the relative researches which is not included in this paper.