A Tale Of Two Urban Areas—The Evolution Of Port Arthur's Modern Urban Space (1880-1945)

Lu-shun was called Port Arthur by westerners more than a hundred years ago. It is very important in China's modern history. Port Arthur is a crucial naval base of the late Qing Dynasty, as well as the southern branch of the Center Eastern Railway. It had been occupied by Japan for 40 years. Port Arthur left a rich architectural heritage and the modern city. The development of its modern urban space can be divided into two periods:autonomous-development and colonial-development.From 1880 to 1897 is the autonomous period of Port Arthur. The navy base constructed during this time. Its urban space can be divided into two parts:the official office part and the underlying workers'living part. These two parts formed the prototype of the old area of Port Arthur, which played a decisive role in the development of the old area. After generating the modern city, the relationship between urban space and coastal defense system gradually appear. First of all, the most important character of the old area is that it seviced the port totally, therefore the function of it is simple. Secondly, there are two defense lines, the costal defense line and the land defense line, which formed an irregular ring, protecting the city and the port.From 1898 to 1945 is the colonial-development period of Port Arthur. It became a double-core modern city during this time. There are two main charaters of its urban space. Firstly, urban space of the old area matured. The urban space had doubled during the occupation of Russia and Japan, however, the old area still remained its organic and spontaneous urban space. Secondly, the new area appeared and matured in a short time. The new area appeared under plan, with radiative and grid road. Summarily, Port Arthur became a double-core modern city during the colonial-development period.These two areas had different relationship with the navy defence construction. The old area connected very close to the navy port all the time, however, the new area had a very weak connection with the port. The costal forts and the land forts were mainly surrounded the old area, only several were in the new area. This dissertation divide into five chapters. The first chapter is the brief history of Port Arthur, mainly about its navy base construction and the development of urban space. Chapter II and chapter? discuss the development of its urban space during autonomous-development period and colonial-development period, respectively. In Chapter 4,I do some research about the impetus and rules of Port Arthur's modern city space's evolution. It is the development of the former chapter which had already find some result by doing some diachronic study. And do some analysis of the main part of impetus and dynamic mechanism of Port Arthur's modern city space. The final chapter make a conclusion, discussed the future subsequent research and give some recommendations.