On The Urban Geography In The Western Han Dynasty

This dissertation surveys the formation and evolvement of cities in the Western Han dynasty, including its formation, development, geography structure (such as political structure, functional structure and spatial changes in different period.), spatiotemporal characteristic of distributing and the influence of political power on it.There are six chapters in this dissertation.Chapter one reviews the history of urban geography study and gives the definition of main notions, research area, research time and central study topics in this paper.Chapter two analyzes the characters of cities in different periods and different areas. The author firstly discusses the spatial process of cities in prefectures and counties and then makes a further study on the urban development and its spatiotemporal character in different areas. The conclusion of this part is that the number of capital cities was increased in different areas and the difference of political power development in areas was the key factor to the increase diversity of cities in different areas.Chapter three researches the property and the function of cities during the Western Han dynasty. After analyzing the urban function in the local administration of ancient China and discussing the division urban districts according to the urban function, the author discusses the relationship between the urban property and the urban function and the relationship between different combinations of function urban in different scale space. Then, the author draws a conclusion that the urban in Western Han dynasty has strong political character, cities in that time were the tool of the government to control the whole country. The political property of the cities became the main limited factor for its development during the Western Han dynasty.Chapter four focuses on urban hierarchical structure in the Western Han dynasty. Urban has two natures. One is that urban is a spot on the space with its own material shape and structure. Another is that urban is a region with certain influent area and it is usually the centre of local politic, economy and culture in the area. According to the two nature of urban, the author divides the grade of cities in the Western Han dynasty and analyses the comprehensive strength of different areas. Analyzing the archaeological...