Study On The Spatial Changes Of Traditional Towns Around Changsha Area

The Changsha area is a special geographical area with a complex hydrological environment.Its traditional towns settlements have distinctive geographical environment and similar social ecology.In modern times,they have experienced great changes in the transformation of water and land transportation modes with relatively synchronous historical processes.Moreover,because of comparatively low developmental intensity,they have retained historical characteristics of a relatively complete settlements space form,which is a rare sample for studying spatial changes of traditional towns in the Xiangjiang River Basin.First of all,taking the traditional town space as the pointcut,the paper studies the spatial structure and spatial form changes of the traditional Changsha towns in the perspective of changes.After field investigations and historical geography studies on traditional towns in the surrounding areas of Changsha,the paper divides the towns into towns continuing traditional market space,towns coexisting traditional market space,and towns with unbalanced traditional market space,and takes three traditional town settlements as sample collections of typical research.Secondly,diachronic information about the spatial structure and spatial form of the traditional market is obtained after an in-depth field investigation of the samples.Thirdly,on this basis,according to the major time nodes of space changes,the author takes the spatial structure and spatial form of the traditional towns as starting point,divides the spatial form into sacrificial space,folk-custom space and commercial space.According to the classification,the various types of space are analyzed with figures.Finally,change mechanism is explored by comparing the characteristics of every historical period and sorting out the changes of spatial structure and spatial form.Under the overall perspective,the paper summarizes the characteristics of the spatial structure and spatial form evolution of traditional towns around Changsha,compares the differences among the samples,and sorts out the change course.At the same time,the author proposes the corresponding solutions for the current situation in Changsha.Based on the analyses,during the period from the Republic of China to the present,the spatial structure of traditional towns in the Changsha area has changed from a market structure formed to a spatial structure in which small towns are now complicated,that is,from homogeneity and isomorphism to heterogeneity and isomerism.And also,its spatial form shows common characteristics,evolving from organic,complex and traditional rural characteristics to simplification,homogenization and urbanization.The influencing factors and driving mechanisms behind it are also changing.The innovations of this paper are as follows: Firstly,the paper has targeted the difficulties in the diachronic study of the settlements,and explored the selection of the research angle,the acquisition of the research data,and the research methods for the diachronic research of the traditional towns.Secondly,most of studies focus on traditional town settlements and tend to be static.However,the paper place emphasis on dynamic research and add “time” to the spatial research process.