Research On Evolution And Dynamic Mechanism Of Small Towns’ Morphology In Guangdong Shunde

By utilizing the related theory and method in urban morphology, this thesis systematicanalyzes the form transformation of the10small towns in Shunde District of Guangdongprovince Foshan City, from the beginning of the reform and opening to the outside world in1978to2010, when it’s economic strength and urbanization were the leading in the country. Italso reveals the relationship between the town’s morphology transformation from the overallregional to microscopic, with the social systems, industrialization, technology progress,changing values, and so on. The purpose of this thesis is to summarize the law andmechanisms in the morphology transformation of small town in the developed area.This thesis is divided into7chapters.Chapter1is the introduction, in which it analyzes the important value and the difficultyof small towns in the process of Chinese urbanization; reviews the urban morphologymethods and theories, especially what we will face to different problems in studding Chinesesmall towns’ morphology by using those. Based on this, I get the research framework andmethods in this thesis. Chapter2and3are the background research in the Shunde. Chapter2studies the emergence and the initial form of the settlements in Shunde, which providesoriginal shape for the latter research. Moreover, it points out the natural environment played asignificant role for the form of the towns. Chapter3focus on the process, in which Shunde’straditional markets transformed to the modern towns during those30years of thecommanding economy. It elaborates how the commanding economy system and industrialpreference programmers constrained the urbanization of small towns. Chapter45and6arethe core of this paper. The evolution process which includes the whole district and themicrocosmic plan unit of Shunde, during the different3periods, and the mechanisms ofrelative factors on the spatial morphology are under discussion in these chapters. Chapter7concludes the whole process of morphology transformation in Shunde, which including: thewhole area changes from scattered and surrounded points to axial spread, and then to surfaceexpansion; morphology frame of those towns once depended on the river net changes to referitself to the land transport network now, and finally combined into main roads+cell body; thetowns’ development changes from blindly sprawling to optimize and upgrade inside; the boundary between the city and the rural becomes unclear; the industrial land changes not onlyfrom mixed to dissociative and then to congregating, but also from arranging by the riversideto accounting both the ground and water transportation; the function of living space changesfrom mixed to separation, and the skyline changes from low to high.Finally, based on the analysis of the relationship and mechanisms between themorphology transformation with system physical and spirit planes, the paper concludes: thebottom-up industrialization from villages and towns is core power pushing the morphologyforward; the top-down system reform provides the necessary conditions and support to thetransformation; both river and ground transportation create the material basis for Shunde’scommunity economy and morphology transformation at different phases; the living spacialmode, the multivariate and mixed land-use, and the unique townscape of Shunde are closelylinked to the local people’s ideas and habits.