From Rural Town to Watchmaking City: A Case Study of the Changing Morphology of the Jewish Immigrant Community in La Chaux-de-Fonds

Under the wave of the Industrial Revolution and modern urban construction from the 18th to the 20th centuries, Jewish immigrants entered the watchmaking city of La Chaux-de Fonds and constructed a Jewish immigrant community centred on collective memory. This paper combines immigration history research with analysis of urban spatial patterns and architectural types to understand the formation history, constituent elements, and organisational mechanisms of immigrant communities, to summarise the role of immigrant communities in urban development and their spatial change characteristics, to provide new perspectives for understanding the spatial creation and architectural evolution of immigrant communities, and to further promote the heritage preservation and cultural transmission of historical communities.