Initiation And Development Of Urban Planning In The Initial Stage Of The People's Republic Of China (1949-1957)

The initial stage (1949 - 1957) is the transitional period in China's urban development history, as well as the very important historical stage of the People's Republic of China's urban development. In this period, urban planning was developed, together with the arrangement and implementation of 156 national key industrial construction projects of the First Five-Year Plan Period. Through urban planning, a large amount of construction was arranged and implemented for industry and infrastructure facilities and service facilities. Urban planning played very important and positive role in supporting economic development, guiding urban development and construction, and enhancing cities' economic benefits, social benefits and environmental benefits. Though there were some problems in terms of urban planning for lack of experience in this period, it was actually successful which set the foundation for the development of urban planning of the People's Republic of China. Therefore the period was called the "First Spring" in the history of the urban planning in China.Most cities in the initial period of the People's Republic of China were planned and constructed, based on their original styles. The urban planning in this period was nearly based on such three types of urban styles as following: (1) Traditional and classic cities, such as XiAn, Chengdu, Lanzhou etc. The basic planning patterns of these cities in the classic period were still kept until the beginning period of thePeople's Republic of China. (2) The recent colony and semi-colony cities, such as Qingdao, Dalian, Harbin, Shanghai, and Tianjin etc. Urban planning and construction were conducted for these cities occupied by the imperialism states according to their own needs. These urban planning was either the copy of the counterpart of the occupying country, or obviously affected by the thought and manner of urban planning of the occupying country. (3) Some cities planned by the national government of the Republic of China. The national government did some planning for those cities such as Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, and Wuhan, which was deeply influenced by some European and American urban planning theories and methods at that time, and also absorbed the space organization methods adopted in the traditional Chinese architectures. Whether implemented or not, all of the urban planning in this period did have some reference values for the urban planning in the initial period of the People's Republic of China."Lean to one side" state policy was adopted in the initial stage of the People's Republic of China. Urban planning was also not exceptional. The guidelines, organizational principles, technological economy analysis methods, strategic planning methods, and organizational procedures for urban panning were nearly all from Soviet Union. Although in practice, some Chinese traditional inherent ideas and methods would interact with western modern urban planning theories sometimes, however, the theories for urban planning in the initial stage of the People's Republic of China were directly based on those from Soviet Union. The city history is a continuous process. In this thesis, the historic starting point and the theoretical origin of urban planning in the initial stage of the People's Republic of China were reviewed and analyzed, and then the establishment of policies, principles, methods, institution and system for urban planning were thoroughly explained.In the initial stage of the People's Republic of China, urban planning was fully initiated in the First Five-Year Plan Period, and mainly focused on serving industrial construction. Both central government and local government paid much attention to it at that time. Because of our country's lacking of experiences in urban planning, a large group of experts in urban planning from Soviet Union were engaged, and many projects were conducted under the direct guidance of these experts from Soviet Union. During planning, joint factory selection group composed of expertsand technical staff from various fields was set up for selecting factories jointly; then comprehensive master plan for city development was prepared by the planning expert panel participated by experts from all the related departments; in the later planning stage, regional planning was conducted for some key industrial areas so that planning could match the construction very well. Planning for the construction of some key industrial cities was all participated and formulated by the senior officials from State Council who were in charge of national planning and construction, which could make the plan closely related to the planning under the strong and unified leadership, and would also make the urban planning very authoritative. The valued experiences from practice are still very useful and enlightening to today's urban planning.Different urban planning and construction with different emphases were conducted for different types of cities, considering whether there were key construction projects there in the initial stage of the People's Republic of China. The urban planning and construction, their success and failure aspects were presented and analyzed for newly built industrial cities and those cities that were expanded in large scale for that initial period. Beijing, as the capital of the People's Republic of China as well as the outstanding model of the classic urban planning, was emphatically introduced because of its special importance.The urban planning in the initial stage of the People's Republic of China was remarkably different from old China's and western countries' in both planning theories and practices. Meanwhile, it was also influenced by national and local conditions, although it was learned from Soviet Union. It had its own characteristics for the initial stage.In the initial stage of the People's Republic of China, esp. the First Five-Year Plan Period, large-scale industrial construction and urban construction were unprecedented, and there had been neither any dynasties nor any central governments before that period that had done so much for both the country and Chinese people in such short time in the Chinese history. However, a lot of problems still existed in urban planning itself and its practices for that period because of lacking of enough knowledge about urban development rules, complexityand difficulties of urban planning and construction.Through urban planning and construction, many cities' appearance changed and improved greatly, compared with their past, and living conditions of those workers and city residents were improved remarkably without any doubts in the initial stage of the People's Republic of China. Especially in the national economy recovery period, the living condition changes of workers and city residents were extremely surprising, under the urban construction policy of "serve the working people". However, in the First Five-Year Plan Period, because of many subjective and objective factors, and under the policy of "production first, living secondly", the city infrastructure construction lagged behind, the residents' living environment and living conditions changed and improved very slowly, which, together with too fast city expansion and speeding growth of city population, resulted in very serious house shortage problem. Because the policy-makers had historic limitation in recognition of such problem and no relevant measures and actions were taken timely, the house problem was not solved reasonably for our country's city residents and workers in a very long period.In this thesis, urban planning in the initial period of the People's Republic of China was presented, analyzed and summarized from theories to concrete practices, from macroscopic to microscopic, from whole to cases, from problems to influences. The historic starting point, theoretical foundation, development track, characteristics, problems, experiences, lessons and influences for the urban planning in the initial period of the People's Republic of China were investigated thoroughly. This thesis may have certain theoretical and practical values for the development of history, city history and urban planning history, and also for today urban planning and construction.