A City Constructed By The Walls:A Study Of Kuming City Wall And Urban Since Yuan Dynasty(1274-1950)

As the most typical spatial component of Chinese cities,city walls have been accompanying-ed the development of ancient cities since the emergence of cities,and have taken on different forms with historical development.The city walls in ancient China mainly existed for military defense and the function of highlighting ritual culture.Since the Ming Dynasty,there have been major changes in the construction of city walls,and the number of brick-clad city walls in China has increased dramatically.In this context,Kunming’s city walls and cities have both changed,and the solid brickclad city walls cast the Yunnan Auxiliary City.At this time,the construction of the new city was not only influenced by general factors such as politics and economy,but also influenced by the ancient human settlement environment-Feng Shui,and finally presented a city form that looked like a turtle.In the Qing Dynasty,with the development of the economy and the increase of the population,the city began to try to break through the boundary of the city wall and extend to the city area.However,this extension fell into a trough several times under the influence of the war.The space is caught in a cycle of destruction and construction.The city wall is the most important barrier of the city.It can be said that urban governance cannot be separated from the constraints of the city wall.After the city began to transform into modernization,the city wall changed from a city barrier to an obstacle to the city’s economic development.The city began to try different plans to renovate and demolish the city wall,which reflected the economic,political and conceptual changes in the background of modernization.change.With the development of the times,people paid more attention to the relic function of the city wall after the 1930 s,and with the start of the AntiJapanese War,the military defense function of the city wall was revived,and the city wall changed from demolition to protection and repair.The end of the war made the plan to demolish the city wall once again put on the agenda,but in the end it was fruitless under the corrupt politics of the Kuomintang.With the founding of New China,the demolition of the Beijing city wall was an example for the demolition of the national city walls,and the Kunming city wall was finally demolished on a large scale.It can be seen that no matter what kind of changes occur in the city wall,it reflects the change of the function of the city wall under different historical backgrounds.The underlying logic is the connection between the political and economic system of the society and urban development,and the city wall acts as a bridge between the two.This article takes the construction,maintenance,transformation and demolition of the Kunming city wall as clues,sorts out the reasons why the Kunming city wall presents different situations in different development periods and the impact of the city wall on urban development,so as to provide a new perspective for the study of the history of the city wall and the urban history of Kunming.