Research Of City Cognition And Evolve Regulation From The View Of Living Character

How to understand a city is a question in debate for many years. From ancient time's fuzzy and all-in-one epistemology derived from worship for human life to mid-19th century epistemology revolution which is based on mechanism and return and resulted from the development in natural science, people began to explain city behavior from different points, and thus had a series of urban study fields emerged, such as Urban Economics, Urban Sociology, Urban Geography, Urban Ecology and Urban Ecology, altogether in the effort to search for ultimate scientific truth. After 1970s, when the theory of systems had entered all studies of science, people started to analyze the city with systemic methods, a great number of urban sciences emerged and made impressive progress.However, the questions puzzling urban researchers didn't disappear as the study method of system theories made some achievements. The city is much more complicated than it was thought to be, simply putting all systems together does not give us an entire city. Since 1990s, the development of complex science has let people see the limitation of mechanical and discrete study methods and the concept that city is a self-organizing and complex system has been accepted. It nonetheless doesn't seem to be enough. Not only is city composed of tangible components and self-organizing systems, it also contains factors such as social values, culture history, spiritual aspect and more that too are parts of each system of the city and they become more and more of the key and major factors in city's growth. Then the questions are: what is the city? How do we understand the city?Since 1967 when Saarinen put forward the idea "City is an organism ", people have compared, in one way or the other, the city with biological organism in various occasions or in their individual research projects. The city is quite similar with the living thing. The way how internal units of a city run or how city responds to external impact has continually showed to us the close conceptual similarity between city and a body of life. So, can we use the theory of life science to explain urban phenomenon in terms of its complexity and dynamics? What changes will be produced for city study and plan?The thesis starts with questions and hypotheses through practice observation and experience analysis to explain some phenomena in the evolution of city with animal theory in classical biology in order to put forward a lemma that "city behaves with living character" and "life of a city" which is to supplement another visual angle in understanding the city based on systematic theory, the theories of system, complexity and self-organization. To understand from this visual angle allows us to reexamine our attitude toward the city. The city that used to be reckoned as an entity of "a complex but senseless machine" has now been regarded as one that has "demand to live, mind and ability as well as has self running rules". City research should not repeat the mistake that is "solving the problems of a complicated machine such as a city with more complicated methods." We should respect its needs and natural operating rules and maintain the heterogeneity among its internal components and systems and reinforce their natural relation through effective methods. The core work of urban planning is to maintain and enlarge the life of city and consider fully about its max load and treat the city as a living thing, and we shall never arbitrarily abuse it.In conclusion, the thesis has indicated the changes in urban study and planning concept and introduced the method for city research and city plan that is based on the understanding of living character of city, it has also built a conceptual model for the city which emphasizes main body as well as process. Urban study can learn from the development experience of natural science, which take steps forwardly from macro to micro study and from drawing conclusions with knowledge on the surface to research on the structure of city and its running course. Urban planning as part of the process of the city should be done in consistence to needs of the city in a different period and should integrate and guide the complex systems of a city so that it can run better and have greater viability. The change of this basic idea is very important and has practical significance in the process of today's fast urbanization of China as well as the world.