The urban parks in Nanjing, 1900s–2000s: a brief introduction

ABSTRACT

During the twentieth century Chinese urban parks germinated and then flourished against the backdrop of fluctuating social and political contexts. This short-narrative outlines the history of Nanjing’s urban parks from the 1900s to 2000s. Its broad chronological phases can be summed up as follows: Initialization propelled by the early modernization (mid-nineteenth century -1911), Embodied nationalism in the capital’s construction (1912–1937), Desolate and stagnant places: the 2nd Sino-Japanese war and the Liberation War (1937–1949), Merit, then evil in the fluctuating propagandas (1949–1979), Commercialized and open space (1980s–2000s). The establishment and transformation of urban parks in Nanjing is mainly attributed to the elite, authorities and planners’ interweaving involvements etching on the urban palimpsest and historical geographical features, conditioned by the unstable social-political process.

KEYWORDS:

• Nanjing
• urban parks
• city beautification
• modernization
• the twentieth century

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this article, Dr Lingyun Han for her insightful suggestions, and Dr Emily Hayes for English editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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29 Ibid.

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42 Zhao, Thirty Years of Landscape Design in China (1949–1979), 49–51, 75–78.

43 Cranz, “The Useful and Beautiful: Urban Parks in China,” 3–10.

44 Institute of Nanjing Gazetteers, History of Nanjing Parks and Garden, 738.

45 Xue, Urban History of Nanjing, 107–113.

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47 Institute of Nanjing Gazetteers, History of Nanjing Parks and Garden, 221.

48 Yang et al., Preserving Scenic Features for Mountain-River, 44–45.

49 Xue, Urban History of Nanjing, 107–113.

50 Zhou et al., Preservation and Regeneration of the Old city of Nanjing during Rapid Urbanization, 22.

51 Liu, Landscape Architecture of China since 1949, 100–103.

52 Chen, “On Transformations of Tourism and Recreation Spaces in the Late Ch’ing Dynasty and The Republic of China,” 93–124.

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54 Han et al., “Open Space and Urban Morphology,” 164–166.

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56 Cranz, The Politics of Park Design, Preface, 3–9; Clark, The European City and Green Space, Introduction.

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanity and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [20YJAZH115], NSFC [52078254, 51208264] and China Scholarship Council.

Notes on contributors

Zhen Xu

Zhen Xu, PhD, State Certified Urban Planner of China, is an associate professor at College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University (China). His field of interests are urban morphology and open space, landscape history, healthy places and historical-GIS. He was PI of NSFC project Research on Open space morphology of Nanjing with historical-GIS approach and visiting researcher at CGA of Harvard University and IURD of UC Berkeley working on open space in Nanjing during the twentieth century. Currently, he is PI of NSFC project Research on physical activity in urban open space with HIA approach, and exploring landscape analytics for urban design and territorial planning.