Research Upon Urban Design Strategies Of Contemporary China Based On Ethical Aesthetics

Facing the rapid urbanization in modern China,quite a lot of cities have very similar appearances or inclined to own large buildings,xenocentric and weird designs.And also they have different aesthetic judgments on their urban spaces.But the directions and bottom line of urban aesthetics should be given thorough consideration in the process of urban design.By the help of multi-disciplinary studies including Ethics and Aesthetics,the concept of urban ethical aesthetics is brought up and used in studies of urban designs in this dissertation,thus providing strategies for our standardized urban design and setting new dimensions for urban space design from the perspectivesof urban design.By reviewing historical documents,the author conducted studies on both Chinese and western cities in different historic periods with elaborations on social ethics,social aesthetics,urban life and urban form.The urban history in the West was divided into five periods in chronological order: ancient times,middle ages,medieval times,modern times and post-modern times.They each had their own characteristics of urban design.For example,the natural ethics in ancient times created the glory and brilliance of Athens and Rome;the ethics in the middle ages with the replacement of humanity by revelation urgedpeople to build cities where they couldspeak to God;the revival of humanism during the Renaissance generated numerous cities of classicism;then social ethics in modern times with public enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution witnessed the emergence of modern industrial cities,and finally social ethics decided to examine its own errors once again when varieties of urban problems appeared in middle of the last century,pressing the public to constantly pursue better urban forms.Similarly,the Chinese traditional urban history was split into ancient times,modern times and the period of the Republic of China.The patriarchal and consanguineous ethics based on agriculture civilization in ancient times brought about urban forms with clear rank order.And compound urban forms came into being in modern times due to the collapse of traditional ethics and multiple effects of western culture,citizen ethics and elite ethics.Although people once tried to set up the common standards during the later period of the Republic of China,the integration still didn 't succeed without the help of centralized power.Studies show that urban forms can only be well matched with urban life when social ethics and social aesthetics interact in a reciprocal causation.After the analysis of the history,cities' internal mechanism,model selection and development path were studied again from the point of view of ethical aesthetics to analyze urban forms in modern China,and to put forward the aesthetic directions and bottom line that should be applied in urban design.Studies show that the forming process of urban forms is spiral and influenced by various aspects.And the Good design will be achieved when all aspects work in harmony while the Bad result caused as the balance is broken.Right now,Chinese cities witness not only high-speed development but also various social problems,such as ecological damages,controversial aesthetics and ethics disorder.And this research reexamined the products of urban design practices in contemporary society on the level of the public,designers,government and developers.Therefore,Chinese characteristics should be stressed on the basis of social ethics.Meanwhile,the urban design should focus on how to create livable place with vitality,and human-centered design can only be realized when human nature is emphasized.As a result,the design strategies have been put forward based on urban ethical aesthetics:(1)remodeling the four dimensions of ethical aesthetics in urban design: natural dimension,cultural dimension,humanistic dimension and spiritual dimension.(2)clarifying the mutual influences and transformational relations among the four dimensions.(3)further explaining the actual implementation of such strategies on the basis of practice cases related to these four dimensions.And finally,this dissertation offers effective prop osals for urban design strategies based on ethical aesthetics in terms of laws and regulations,administrative operation and professional assessment.