Urban Morphology and the Chinese Urban Landscape: A Cross-Cultural Application of Theory
Over the past two decades or so, there has been a burgeoning of research on urban morphology. A review of publications suggests that this growth is largely associated with the wider recognition of, in advancing the understanding and planning of the built environment, the importance of integrating knowledge on physical urban form from various disciplines and cultural regions. While the new morphological exploration has reinvestigated both the intellectual basis of the morphological concepts and methods and their use in urban landscape management, these developments have, on the whole, yet to crystallise in substantive outcomes. In particular, the operational aspects of urban morphology in empirical studies require greater clarity. The link between urban morphology and non-Western urban theories and practices remains weak. And ambiguities about the practical bases of urban morphology have undermined its wider application in practice. This thesis project addresses these challenges facing urban morphology in relation to exploring a more integrated framework for the Chinese urban landscape. Urban morphology has its antecedents in landscape research. A triad of the epistemological orientations of urban morphology reflects its link to the idea of landscape: 1) the structural study to reveal the spatial patterns of the urban landscape, 2) the morphogenetic analysis to investigate the morphogenesis and subsequent changes of the urban landscape, and 3) the unifying perspective to combine structural and morphogenetic studies for morphological research and practice. By clarifying the structural, morphogenetic and unifying perspectives on urban morphology, its epistemological framework can be extended and reintegrated to form a basis for a more culturally sensitive approach to diverse urban contexts. Understanding the differences in representation and interpretation of landscape is particularly important in the cross-cultural exploration of the morphology of Chinese cities. Instead of seeing landscape as a science, the Chinese sense of landscape is an accumulation of collective knowledge and experiences associated with everyday life, thus germinating a system consisting of correlative, generative and holistic views of its formation and changes. The three perspectives are inextricably intertwined with each other in understanding the landscape in China.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations