Heritage Impact Assessment Study Of The Xi’an Urbanrail Transit Planning

After2000, China’s urban rail transit development has entered a rapid developmentstage. Until the end of2012, China had approved the operations, initiation and planningof subway in28cities,21of which are national famous historic cities. Due to particularrichness in heritage in these cities, the urban rail transit planning and construction hasbrought new challenges to them. As a major infrastructure project, urban rail transit hasto go through the relevant approval procedures according to China’s current basicprocedural requirements for construction. Historical and cultural city rail transit requiresapproval from the relevant heritage authorities for the network planning stage ofplanning, construction planning stage, project feasibility study stage before anyimplementation. How the famous historic cities cope with the rapid development ofChina‘s urban rail transit, how decision about urban rail transit should be made atfamous historic cities has become a leading topic in cultural heritage conservation.Currently the heritage impact study for pre-planning phase of a construction project hasjust started, heritage impact study report has gradually become a critical technicaldocument of reference for the approval of the urban rail transit project by the culturalrelic authorities. However, whether in China or other countries, theories, methodologyand practice on urban rail transit are relatively rare.As the world-famous thousands-year old historic city, Xi‘an‘s urban rail transit hasattracted a lot of attention from the very beginning of the planning phase. Thus thispaper selects the historic city conservation questions of the Xi’an urban rail transitconstruction under the historic city context as the research object. Through research onheritage assessment methods, overview of technical procedures of assessment,construction of theoretical framework of the assessment, the paper is to contribute to the relative areas in cultural heritage conservation.The study on impact assessment theories is based on the research and case studies in theliterature, integrating archeological study, cultural heritage conservation, urban planning,structural engineering, municipal engineering, environmental engineering and otherdisciplines. Selecting Xi’an urban rail transit planning for the study, the author carriesout technical procedure study for heritage assessment in network planning projectplanning phase, the recent construction phase, project feasibility study stage of theurban rail transit project for the approval of cultural relics authorities, and explore Xi’anurban rail transit planning HIA through three key technical problems:①HeritageImpact assessment factors;②heritage impact assessment scoping study;③heritageimpact assessment method. Thereby, through the practice on HIA of urban rail transitplanning in Xi’an, Xi’an urban rail transit planning HIA technical system is established.The dissertation is divided into five parts, the first part is the basic research, includingHIA research background as well as domestic and international research status; thesecond part is Theory study, in which for HIA technology roadmap for Xi’an urban railtransit plan is proposed; the third part is on the key technical problems in Xi‘an HIAresearch; the fourth part is the practice of Xi’an urban rail transit planning projects HIA;the fifth part is the establishment of Xi’an urban rail transit planning HIA technicalsystem.The thesis for the first time to the city as a unit, as a whole and the systematic study ofurban rail transit network planning and construction projects HIA theory and method;first for Xi’an Urban Rail Transit Network P lanning, built construction planning, lineengineering feasibility research conducted in three phases HIA research work, create aheritage impact assessment factor Chromatography Multiply Assessment Method, toachieve heritage impact of qualitative and quantitative assessment.