Study On The Urban Construction And Planning Of Chongqing(1937-1949)

Chongqing is a famous cultural city with a long history which developed into the economic center in the upper stream area of Yangtse River from the regional military and political fortress in the ancient time and into the capital of China during the war period from an inland mountainous city located in the southwest area. The development course of Chongqing is so special and unique. Relying on its advantages in military defense, this inland city was famous for twice during the anti-Mongolian war which lasted for more than 40 years in South Song Dynasty and the modern anti-Japanese war, showing Chinese nation’s preserving and strong willpower. The two wars changed the world, as well as Chongqing. In later south song dynasty, Chongqing not only became the center of fighting against the enemies, its regional economic strength had been developed as well. The city wall and moat built at that time basically determined the general scope of Chongqing ancient city. The anti-Japanese war has made Chongqing the focus in China or even the whole world and the center of anti-fascists from a regional central city. Because of war, Chongqing became the first victim of the strategy of“indiscrimination bombing" in the history of the human war. However, it is also because of war which enabled leaping development of Chongqing during the 8-years’war with the external force of internal migration. The present Chongqing, as the central city of west China, has experienced several chances of developing including reforming and opening, municipalities directly under the central government and west development. When seeking the fundamental reasons, the development of Chongqing now can never be separated with the city pattern formed in the Anti-Japanese War period.In the research framework of modern city history in China, this paper tries to realize a typical case from micro perspective to micro and refined direction. At the same time, still in the anti-Japanese war, Chongqing was the most important and special city among the cities in non-occupied areas. Taking the principle of“site selection and defense system of Chinese ancient cities and moats”,“bottom wave ratio”of city development mechanism, and functional area division of modern western cities, organic evacuation, satellite cities and so on as the theoretical guidance of this paper, through collection and in-depth mining of the existing first-hand data such as“cities established as a second capital besides the capital”, historical literatures, and local chronics etc., this paper performed onsite investigation and interview. Diversified methods such as comparison, deduction, inference, and data statistics analysis are employed to construct the research content of this paper.Proceeding from war and city defense, taking situational change of war as clue, the research objects vary from the material perspective of Chongqing City defense construction (including fire alley construction, reconstruction of old urban area, building of arm-shop, expansion of urban space), to the spiritual level of construction thoughts, architecture theory, construction education in the war period, to the institutional level of compiling Draft of Ten-Year Planning on the Construction of the Second Capital, constitution of rules for city management at war time, to the constructor level (including city managers, city planners and construction designers etc), fully describing the dynamic mechanism, development trade, and operation law in the modernized development process of Chong from 1937 to 1949.The creative points in this paper include four facets: firstly, give an in-depth research on the construction of defensive city of Chongqing during the anti-Japanese war from the perspectives of war and city defense; secondly, through analysis of the natural“self-relief”process of evacuating to the rural area from urban area out of the need of city security, production and construction, the dynamic mechanism for forming the city rudiment of“wide disperse, small concentration and punctiform distribution like plum blossom”; thirdly, through comparison between Draft of Ten-Year Planning on the Construction of the Second Capital and the capital plan before the war, and between the dispersed functional area division in Chongqing and other cities in southwest, the basic features of city planning independently finished by Chinese people and the different planning strategies for different cities are summarized. Fourthly, by analyzing the architectural thoughts and theoretical features at the rear area of the war, as well as the development features of architectural education, it is expected to expand the research scope of modern architectural history in this research.