Syntactical Morphological Histories Analysis on Top-Down Planned and Self-organised Street Networks of Old City Cores

Abstract

Streets in old city cores not only have important transport and social interaction functions but also reveal the laws of urban and cultural development in a region. Space syntax can improve historians’ understanding of how changes in the shape of habitable space affected people’s lives and urban culture in particular times and places by offering a quantitative description of street patterns; here of two old city cores. The study selects the Altstadt of Zurich (the old city of Zurich) and the Shichahai historical district in Beijing, which have a long history and distinctive street patterns. First, this study digitised the historical maps into axis maps. Then, the study described the characteristics of the syntactic evolution of street networks in two cores over four different development stages. Subsequently, a comparative study of the evolution of different syntactic indicators in the two cases was conducted. Finally, it is concluded that although Shichahai and Altstadt are examples of top-down planned and self-organising areas, their street networks have a similar development trend. However, in their evolution, they show greater differentiation.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the financial support of the Scientific Research Funds of Huaqiao University under Grant 20BS111; Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Urban Design, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture under Grant UDC2019022324.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mengru Zhou

Mengru Zhou is a Ph.D. candidate in the Architecture Department at Tsinghua University. Her study on street space focused on social equity, heritage protection, and promotion of outdoor activities. She has published several articles on street history preservation and pedestrian evaluation.

Kay W. Axhausen

Kay W. Axhausen is a professor and chair of Transport Planning at the Institut für Verkehrs-planung und Transportsysteme at ETH Zurich. His study is mainly focused on transport planning, modelling, and survey methods of travel behaviour. He has published 84 monographs and 291 journal papers on the transportation area.

Hanbin Wei

Hanbin Wei is an assistant professor in the Architecture Department at Huaqiao University. Her research interests include urban renewal, cultural heritage protection, and foreign-density areas. She has won the Korean Urban Design Competition Award and published more than 10 academic papers in domestic and foreign journals and conference proceedings.

Lanchun Bian

Lanchun Bian is a professor in the Architecture Department at Tsinghua University. He is also the vice-chairman of the Urban Design Academic Committee of the China Urban Planning Society, a member of the Historical and Cultural City Protection Academic Committee, and the vice-chairman of the Beijing Urban Planning Society. His main research direction is urban design and urban protection and he has been in charge of many old city preservation projects in Beijing.