Opening-up of extra-large blocks in China

Abstract

The scale of urban blocks in Chinese cities is generally larger compared to that in Western. In history, amounts of space that serves daily life is offered by those space within blocks. Today, in a time when the bordering roads of these blocks are gradually occupied by motorized vehicle traffic and the plots within blocks enclose their borders, the structure of public space system is getting vague. This paper claims that there are deep-seated reasons for such this situation which needs to be analysed with typo-morphological methods. Taking Shanghai’s inner city as an example, this paper starts with identifying the BLOCK, then conducts quantitative analysis on all such areas with particular observation on their longest side length and absolute area as two respective parameters and finally concludes with statistic data characteristics of these extra-large blocks, following with selecting a number of these blocks and carrying out Conzen methods on them. The findings are: 1) Two main morphological types can be observed: single-plot block and multiple-plot block. 2) These main types can be further categorized into several sub-types. According to aforementioned typological findings, various urban regeneration strategies on each types are proposed, on basis of both morphological target and feasibility.