| The water system in Beijing has a long history. More importantly, the historic rivers and lakes have been taken for the core elements of city construction and development during ancient times. For example, Ji City in Yan State during Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn Period is the earliest record of Beijing and its city construction has close relationship with water system. Then, during Liao Dynasty to Qing Dynasty Beijing has taken for the capital city and its city development always connected with the urban water system. Therefore, the historic river in Beijing possesses a large variety of heritage resources. However, the modern urban construction in a period of time caused serious damage to the water system because of irrational city development. The protection of cultural heritage and restoration of the ancient rivers must be emphasized. The ancient river and its cultural heritages are important manifestation of Beijing's historical and cultural features, and how to protect the historic river system and its cultural heritages during the inevitable modern city-building activities so as to make the styles and features of water outlook and ancient capital to be continuation are the focus of this article. Therefore, an increasingly popular vehicle for achieving these goals is the "river heritage corridor" which will explore the ways of sustainable development for historic look of urban river landscape.The thesis is a study from the following four aspects:Firstly, the development process of water system in Beijing has been analyzed mainly during Jin Dynasty to Qing Dynasty. Through the study of city water system, the motivation of the development of river construction, layout characteristics, and the features of various periods of the historic river landscape have been summarized. The clues of formation, development and change of the Beijing river and its cultural heritage have been explored. On the basis of the historical context analysis, the infection of historical river landscape influenced by modem urban construction has been studied, and the grim situation and major issues which the historic river and its cultural heritage is facing to has also been put forward.Secondly, the value system of river heritage corridor and its elements have been deeply analyzed. The value system of the River Heritage Corridor including the following five aspects:historical value, ecological value, multi-cultural value and waterfront recreation value. Its internal structure mainly consists of the cultural heritages, natural legacy to waterfront recreation land, green paths. The core elements of the river heritage corridor are cultural heritages which are the important part of the article. These cultural heritages have been analyzed more profoundly, and it has been classified. The distribution characteristics and environmental requirements of each type of cultural heritages has been expatiated. This provides an important basis for the following construction of river heritage corridor.Thirdly, on the basis of above analysis, the construction methods and urban context regeneration mechanism of the river heritage corridor have been studied. This is the difficult part of the article. The construction of river heritage corridor is the integration of the three elements:water system, cultural heritage, and green spaces. The construction of this complete system can be accomplished through: network layout method, environmental integration method, compared to highlight method, creating sight line method and symbolic memory method. On the other hand, the urban context of regenerative mechanisms of the river heritage corridor can be achieved through:the protection and development of the overall pattern of the historical water system, the protection of cultural heritages, renewal of historical sites, vitality recovery of historic river, green corridors'connection and regeneration of the historic rivers'culture. This is also the guarantee of sustainable development of historic river systems and its cultural heritages.Finally, the Changhe heritage corridor has been taken as a case study. The program illustrating the feasibility of the construction of river heritage corridor in Beijing, and it also confirmed the important value of the river heritage corridor in practice.Through the research, the construction of river heritage corridor is to achieve the double protection of the historic river and its cultural heritage in Beijing. On the other hand, river heritage corridor will fonn the whole security landscape for historical water system so as to avoid repeated construction of the river and its landscape.It means to promote the organic development of the river landscape by the way of grasping historic development and culture characters. |
