Preliminary Study On The Urban Geography Of Dongguan During Ming And Qing Dynasties

Ming and Qing Dynasties is the important period of urban development of Dongguan, the prosperity and development of cities and towns during this time laid the foundation for today's urban development of Dongguan. This paper does a preliminary study on urban geography as well as other issues during this time. This paper mainly studies the urban system of Dongguan, the evolution of urban form and its dynamic mechanism in Ming and Qing Dynasties. This article aims to provide some valuable references for urban planning and construction. Main body of this article reads as follows:The introduction of this paper described and defined the main reason for this thesis topics and research significance (including practical and theoretical value), the basic concepts and theories (including the "Cities and towns," "historical urban geography," "urban form", etc.), research Status and development trends (including urban/urban geography, urban system, urban form and other relevant theoretical and empirical research), the object of study (including the study of the spatial extent of the scope and practice) and research methods and other issues.Firstly this chapter Described and Analyzed Geographical environment of the formation and development of cities and towns in Ming and Qing Dynasties; Secondly the chapter studied on agriculture, handicraft industry, market, the town prosperity and so on, especially urban system of Dongguan and development Dongguan county. Through research, concluded that the prosperity of commodity economy in Dongguan directly led to the town's prosperity and production and development of urban system. Finally this paper studied on the urban form and its evolution of Dongguan from the external morphology and internal spatial structure during Ming and Qing Dynasties. And based on the previous part, this part analyzed the dynamic mechanism of evolution of urban form.This paper also had a preliminary study on economic development and town form of Shilong town—a typical town(non-county resident town) during Ming and Qing Dynasties. And the conclusion is that the prosperity of commodity economy and towns is the main factor of urban scale expansion and great changes of internal spatial structure and morphological of towns. To some extent, geographical location, natural environment, population growth and other factors were also playing an important role, in promoting or hindering.