The urban form of ancient Chinese capital cities

Abstract

Chinese civilization is unique in terms of longevity, lasting from the late-third millennium BC to the twenty-first century, without interruption. Despite the recent interest on Chinese urban form, knowledge on the subject remains insufficient, lacking both a comprehensive framework and particular contributions on different aspects of its urban forms, agents, and processes of change. This paper addresses the second of these two challenges, contributing to the morphological description and explanation of ancient Chinese capital cities, specifically, the so-called four great Ancient Capitals of China – Luoyang, Xi’an, Nanjing, and Beijing. Due to the scarcity of sources and the complexity of these cities, the paper proposes a simplified analysis of the town plan, including the reading of street systems, plot patterns and building arrangements. This simplified analysis of the town plan can be used as a first approach to understand the physical form of a city. A comparison between the four cities is offered, identifying what is ‘particular’ about them and what is ‘general’, or common, to other ancient Chinese capital cities.