A Case Study of Traditional Urban Form Planning in China

There are many solutions! The scale, layout and building scale of a city were stipulated in the Book of Rites. The requirements of Zhou Li Kao Gong Ji for urban layout are specifically centered on the palace, with "square nine miles, three gates beside it, nine meridians and nine latitudes in junior high school, nine tracks in painting, facing the market outlook, and left ancestors and right clubs". The former dynasty takes justice, and the latter dynasty takes profit, showing the dignity of the emperor and flaunting the justice of the king. Nine meridians and nine latitudes divide residential areas into neat communities. Walls should be built around the city, ditches should be dug outside the walls to make moats, trees should be planted along the river to strengthen defense and beautify the environment. In this way, the whole city became a chessboard pattern of symmetry, which fully met the needs of feudal rule and facilitated the lives of residents to a certain extent. However, the court was placed in the middle and was not allowed to pass, which hindered the traffic to some extent. Traditional cities in China are basically built according to this requirement.

It was the Dadoucheng built by the Yuan Dynasty that laid the foundation for Beijing today. The design of Dadoucheng completely follows the urban planning principle of "Zuo Zu You She, Chao Wu" of Zhou Li Kao Gong Ji, but the north and south are slightly longer, with three doors in the south, west and east, and only two doors in the north wall, so there is no door in the north, which is said to be in order not to vent the emperor's anger. The layout of the capital of the Yuan Dynasty embodies the guiding ideology of the minority rulers in the Central Plains to adapt to the situation and implement the Chinese law. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, because the North City was vulnerable to foreign invasion and contracted inward, the South City Wall moved slightly to the south, so there were only two doors on the East City Wall. But the population gradually increased, so an outer city was built in the south, which made Beijing stand out. Inside the capital, Miyagi is in the middle, the imperial city is outside Miyagi, the ancestral temple is in the southeast of the imperial city, and the national altar is in the southwest. The Qing dynasty has remained basically unchanged.

The layout of Beijing basically reflects the requirements of Zhou Li and Gong Ji for urban layout.