City Transformation [Research In Place Identity]

Cities of today are in the midst of architectural and urban forms transformation period. Most of the rapidly developing cities are centuries old and possess distinct buildings within local urban fabric. The city's transformation is dramatic in developing countries, process and demographic changes are results of the city's adapting to meet their necessary needs. It is a widespread belief that the urban planning have been strongly affected by late 20th century economic growth, markets appeared to transcend the nation's borders, while the individual ability to direct the internal affair and the manners they interact with external affects has declined; which known as traditionalism and modernism, it is conflicting but adapting at urban planning level. These affects reshape urban planning form and rearrange the distribution of cities design and form depending to the degree of participation in the global economy. Common characteristics of some of these cities are the massive social dislocation, polarizing inequality, congestion, pollution and environmental degradation. The disparities in the social structure are reflected in the structures of these cities, increasing slum towns often constituting more than half of the city's population, besides this entire crisis, the identity lack which is the study's interest.Cities can be perceived not just as houses and economic activities, buildings and streets but rather as the struggle place for social and spiritual activities as well as places of art, culture and civilization. The city's elements, districts, public realm, streets and squares, figure the place identity. Place identity, in its modest form, includes the re-appropriation of spaces, preservation of landmarks, landscape, natural greenery, domestic buildings types and architectural policy. Identity is one of the essential goals of good place appearance, through two levels: the urban level, planners and designers shape the places corporate with the local people needs, and then the place reshapes the citizen's life and encourages them to express themselves and to become involved. And the social levels that citizens have to define their social and environmental aims and actively participate in shaping their city so that it relates to their culture, provides for their needs to feel that some parts of the place belong to them, individually and communally, these parts which they care and responsible.Hereby the study discuss the changing of the place identity during the city transformation, it attempts to describe and understand how particular aspects of urban morphology, such as heritage (physical or cultural) and innovative design; form the place identity.In a case study of city of Meishan, Sichuan province in China, as a model the thesis analyzed in details the:Urbanization :1. Natural environment and topographical features analyses, which help to shape the City of Meishan identity, for instance mountains, forests, rivers and lakes.2. Analyze the urban planning structure components such as, historical sites, open spaces, green lanes and bathes.Architectural:1. Analyze the regional historical architectural styles (western Sichuan province) such as doors, gates, cornice, lattice, railing, roof styles, decorative elements, materials and ecological function which can play a bridgehead to form the city identity model through:– Convey the locality and tradition to the innovative building design,– Adorn and intersperse traditional material or painting on the building as example, dark color with low-saturation case used mainly to create a thick historical atmosphere.2. Identify some of the tradition buildings within their urban fabric, which are characterized by their natural harmonious construction and their locality.3. Draw a harmonious architectural section of Meishan city as a guideline for city buildings design.Finally the study basically aims to:Promote the place identity that allows the dwelling citizens to define the physical place easily and finding a stable condition of adaptability between the citizens and the place to obtain a sustainable habitable place.Promote the place legibility that is the degree to which a place can be easily understood- through providing recognizable routes, intersections and landmarks, improving local distinctiveness and the positive features of a place to help people have a sense of place.