Morphological Research of the Historical Urban Boundary, the Inner Fringe Belt of Nanjing

This research actually is a discussion about the legibility of the Nanjing city, but also a Chinese historical city in general. Basically, there are two aspects needed to be regarded, the urban structure and the morphological units. Tendency of their development is also considered. For the former one, the urban structure, here we have the district along the city wall, the south part of the old city defined as the continuous inner fringe belt, the continuous historical urban boundary. It marks out the historical built-up area, and could be viewed as the starting line to understand the structure of the city. Considering the change of this area, the history can be divided into three phases, first, the formative process of the old settlement, second, the repletion along the belt with coarse-grained units of industrial era, and third, the large scale replacement of the built-up area happening afterward. For the later one, the units, they can be categorised with reading their plot forms, large and small, regular and irregular, with the building types and combining with the functions. And based on the change along the fringe belt and the type of the units, their tendency could be discussed. As to the path leading the research to such result, for the urban structure part, the Conzenian concepts, inner fringe belt and fixation line are used to help the research. But here they are further developed, as the concept of “prospective fixation line” is added to help to analyse the relation between this line and the historical built-up area. In turn the real fixation line together with the continuous inner fringe is located. But as to the understanding of the historical built-up area, we need also the support from the research of the traditional settlement and the historical Chinese cartography. Then after this belt is located, we could know, before 1949 the starting of the socialist period, the history of urban development contains two parts, the formative process of the old settlement and the repletion along the belt with coarse-grained units of industrial era. The buildings in these periods are generally low-rise buildings. As to the story after 1949, it could only be told with regarding the land tenure system and economy. Before the 1987’s separation of land usufruct rights, and the 1990s’ housing privatisation, the constructions here were mainly the factories, institutions together with the facilities and accommodations. The replacements of the buildings happened generally in a piecemeal way. Before 1978, the buildings should still largely be low-rise buildings. This period can be viewed as a continuity of the repletion practice along the fringe belt. Instead, after those changes, the large scale replacements started to take place, mainly as commodity housing and other real-estate developments, together with facilities and services. After the 1978, the buildings started largely to be constructed as multi-story or high-rise buildings. In another aspect, with the moving out and relocation of the secondary industry from 1990s, and the landownership problem left by socialist transformation, 1953 to around 1958, the coarse-grained industrial areas and the old settlement here are both declining or under transformations, while there are different tendencies and directions in front of them. Today, with those preliminarily summarized knowledge of city form, it seems that these replacements or transformations could be carefully considered, discussed, and evaluated again, towards a more integrated city life or, simply, a better place to inhabit.