The Characteristics Of Urban Morphological Transformations And Development Mechanisms:a Case Study Of Guangzhou Since1949

Guangzhou, a city with2,200years history, is known for its cultural appeal. The inner city is a cosmos of diversified political, economic, cultural, and commercial activities that have shaped its variedly spatial forms. In an era of rapid expansion and intensive construction, there are a variety of problems in inner city including dilapidated buildings, poor public services, obsolete facilities, traffic jams, and deteriorative environment. To improve the city images and build up a national urban center, Guangzhou Municipal Governments has formulated a set of development outlines and strategies. Among the varied strategies, the Central Guangzhou Adjustment Strategy adopted in2007has emphasized the renewal of inner city.Guangzhou has entered an unprecedented development era since1949. The existing urban form has been shaped by a variety of planning and development strategies for more than60years. Before launching the overall renewal project, there is a need to explicate the law of changing spatial forms in Guangzhou inner city, to clarify the "do" and "do not" rules, and to analyze the trend of future development in order to provide a set of rational planning and constructive guidelines under such a current historical stage.Combining existing Chinese and English literatures with the actual demand for urban regeneration controls and guidance in current China, this dissertation concentrates on three research purposes. First, to study the changing characteristics of urban morphological transformation in Guangzhou from the foundation of morphological partition, the author defines the "morphological unit" and constructs an analysis framework through employing Conzen’s "Town-Plan Analysis" method. Second, to study the changing dynamic mechanisms of urban morphological transformation in Guangzhou, the author reveals the endogenous motivation of urban forms based on the "self-organization principles" of systems. Third, to study the intervention control design of urban form from the perspective of morphological typology, the author proposes effective means of intervention control on morphological design.There are six chapters. The first chapter is to introduce the research significance, research questions, methods, and concepts. The second chapter focuses on the changing characteristics of urban morphology of Guangzhou inner city from1949to1978by emphasizing the functional layouts and morphological patterns and defining the urban form in1949as the "morphological archetype". The delimiting morphological units and regions set the basis for analyzing later morphological transformations of inner city in Guangzhou since1978. The third chapter examines the post-1978changing characteristics of urban morphology of Guangzhou inner city through combining qualitative and quantitative methods. The forth chapter induces a general law of morphological transformation in Guangzhou inner city through investigating the morphological patterns, morphological units, property-right-land-lots since1949. It also generates significant concepts including urban periphery areas, morphological framework, and morphological cycles. The fifth chapter applies system analysis methods to probe the "self-organization" mechanisms within the process of urban morphological transformation in Guangzhou inner city through inspecting the evolution cycles, competitive-collaborative mechanisms, self-similar fractal characters, chaos and orders in the self-organization system of urban morphology. Chapter Sixth suggests a series of regulatory mechanisms for Guangzhou inner city’s urban morphology from the perspectives of "other-organization". It also proposes a framework to construct a pluralistic goal oriented system and produces different optimizing adjustment plans.The dissertation is the first study focusing on morphological transformation in Guangzhou inner city. It fills up the gaps between existing literatures and increasing demand of urban renewal in current China. Based on the definition of "morphological unit" and the foundation of morphological partition, the dissertation deconstructs the changing morphology of Guangzhou inner city since1949, explicates the process of ring structure establishment. Through adopting self-organization mechanism methods, the author reveals that competitive-collaborative mechanisms play key role in Guangzhou’s economy and society. A hybrid of urban forms has come into being in Guangzhou inner city as a result of implementing a chain of small-scales and gradually renewal strategies for60years. The delimitation of "morphological unit" in the renewal process has virtually combined the three goals of functional, morphological and historical protection and has effectively improved planning regulation and control by employing morphological design intervention measures.