On Research Of The Cities And Towns’ Geography Of The Middle Region In Gansu Province During Qing Dynasty

City is the symbol of human civilization because it plays a huge role in thedevelopment of society and economy. Thus, city has been becoming the hot spot ofresearch with more and more attention. However, city is formed and developed graduallyin the long process of history. It has a very important practical significance, for urbanconstruction, to discuss the origin, the law of development and features of city from theperspective of historical geography.The history of China urban geography, following the history political geography, isthe second branch of the historical geography that has got a full development. Since1979,in the past30years, the history of China urban geography has been flourishing. However,most of scholars pay less attention on the researches of urban and town of China’sNorth-West region thanYangtze River basin and China’s South-East coastal areas. Themiddle district of Gansu province is secluded inland, which locates in the South-East ofGansu, the north of Longnan Mountain, the west of Liupan Mountain and the east ofWushao Mountain. Its economic condition is well, compared with other regions of Gansu.But there exists a lot of problems in the development of urban, for exampleenvironmental pollution, unreasonable development model, low-level urbanization. Theabove problems restrict the city’s healthy development of the middle region of Gansu.The Qing dynasty is the important period in the development of city in Gansu areas,which basically established the present pattern of this region. The experience and lessonsof ancient towns’development provide beneficial reference for present urban construction.However, scholars have done little researches on this region. So, this article selects themiddle region’urban of Gansu province of Qing dynasty as the research object.In this paper, the content is divided into six parts.The first part is the introduction. It introduces this article’s aim, current situation ofresearch, content and methods of research.The second part mainly introduces natural environment and cultural environment ofthis area, for example the landform, climate, river, population, economic development.The third part is about this region’s modern factors of the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic period by the evolution of towns in the area, based on reviewing andsummarizing the towns’development of this area of Qing dynasty.The fourth part mainly researches the towns’external form and inner structure ofthis area of Qing dynasty. And it analyses the reasons of different urban morphology andformation mechanism of the inner structures from several aspects. In addition, itintroduces the classification of town’s function types of this area.The fifth part studies the distribution of Fuzhou counties and towns’markets andsummarizes the town development’s features by researching the area.And this part alsosystematically explores transportation that is the important factor that influences town’sdevelopment in the area. In the end, it briefly introduces space distribution of this area’stowns.The sixth part discusses the new condition of the development of this area’s townsthrough combining generality and individuality. The new condition is the landscapechanges in the process of transformation from traditional society to modern society. Itputs Hezhou and Didaozhou as examples.