Research On The Historical And Cultural Context Of Xiangyang’s "Mountain-River-City" Space

China is experiencing a very rapid progress of urban-ism which brings many new opportunities and challenges to rural areas. However, during the process of urban transformation and renewal, traditional local culture and nature had not been taken seriously enough. Thus, in urbanization process, contrived destroy and loss of city memory, characteristics and traditional culture became a common phenomenon. In order to protect historical and traditional culture of the city, the government started to apply some new polices to guide and control urbanization construction. Actually, in ancient time of China, people had their own ways to plan and construct cities, and these ways even were very famous in the world. There are many researches about traditional city plans and constructions. However, there are less amount of materials about historical spatial development strategies, especially about “Mountain- River-City ” strategy.After doing the investigation and study about “Mountain- River- City” strategy, the researcher chose Xiang Yang city as the study sample and used qualitative and quantitative analysis methods. Then, the researcher summarized the characteristics of historical spatial development strategies of Xiang Yang city and also stated her own opinions and feasible suggestions. Firstly, the concept of “Mountain- River- City” had been explained and analyzed in this dissertation, then, the summary of how to inherit historical local culture while innovating and developing the city, especially for Xiang Yang city had been stated as well. Secondly, after studying historical developing process, the researcher summarized the important elements of urban spatial layout according to natural landscapes, urban fringes, streets frameworks, humanistic characteristics and scenery patterns. After doing the research of the relationship between urban planning and natural landscape, the researcher analyzed the characteristics of urban spatial and found out tangible and intangible remaining from city history of Xiang Yang city. Then, according to city history, the researcher classified “Remaining” as three categories: Survival, Persistence and Extinction. And according to current situation, the researcher classified “Remaining” as four categories: Survival, Persistence, Extinction but in people’s memories and Extinction but hardly in people’s memories. After analyzing all these categories, the researcher rendered the following six principles : “ Protection, Label, Renaissance, Domination and Innovation” and the researcher believes, these principles can have guiding walkthrough for Xiang Yang city’s development.Finally, the researcher sincerely considered the protection of history and natural landscape, then made some feasible suggestions and also believes these suggestions can help to protect and inherit historical local culture of rural areas while these areas are on the way to be urbanized. This idea is called “Double City Pattern”.