| The urban population has exceeded that of rural population in China since 2011, defined as the starting point when China has officially becomean “urbanized†society. It is really a milestone for China, a country that had taken village life as the central social subject for thousands of years.Urban life, urban management, and urban services have gradually captured the attention of administrators and the public, and the country has also formulated long-term plans for the development of cities and towns to deal with the continuously increasing size and population of urban areas.Correspondingly, urban administrators, professionals, and ordinary citizens have also paid more and more attention to research on urban planning, construction of urban images, urban design, and methods as well as the urban spirit of China.Visual construction of city images is the most frequently used method for Chinese cities to be developed while at the same time it is also the area with most problemsin its practice. This thesis will discuss the visual construction of the city imageof China from four aspects.Firstly, multi-dimensional research will be adopted to re-interpret Chinese and Western urban research results over the last hundred years, especially in theories of urban developmentparticularly found in the writings of Howard, Geddes, Hoare, Sitte, Saarinen, Corbusier, Wright, Jacobs and Harvey in the west and Fei Xiaotong, Liang Shuming, Liang Sicheng, Chen Zhanxiang and Wu Liangyong in the east. This thesis will discussthe elements misinterpreted and misread for a long period of time; summarize the eastern and western visual images and spiritual images of urban space in an ultimate ideal and dream of cities;and tease out the conflictsin numerous leading urban theories and the central ideas behind the complimentary relationsinurban planning.Secondly, the author will analyze the problems that China has encountered during the initial stages of urbanization at present and will clear up a variety of misreadings in planning for urbanization, such as the blind pursuit of urbanization rate data, the misunderstandingof abandoning villages in favor of developing cities, the consequences of ignoring public services and the problems of a seriously damaged & overdrawn natural environment. The author further explains various misconceptions regarding the visual construction of cities in China at present, such as revealedthroughblind competition, uniform appearances of thousands of cities, values mistakenly placed on the surface of the single building, ignoring individuals and other consequences of urban development on organic renewal.The author will demonstratethat the main reasons underlying chaotic construction of cities in China are foundin the lack of the establishment of a scientific outlook for cities; the continued influence of long-term ancestral ideas in agricultural areas;the unfinished transition of villagers to becoming urban residents;and the outmoded urban outlook under a mode of thinking of the planned economy.The thesis summarizes the unique problems regarding the construction of cities in China, and indicates the special features of particular problems concerning cities in China and the features the western urban experience can provide as a reference.Thirdly, through thinking and analyzing concepts of modern cities, and distinguishing the relations between truly modern cities and the false surfaces of large cities, ‘beautiful’ cities, and ‘wisdom’ cities, the author tries to focus attention on the spirit of well designed modern cities on the lives of individualsas found inthe attention to and services for individuals. The author will put forward the necessity of democratic design; trace the development and evolution of democratic design; analyze the connotation and denotation of democratic design; indicate how democratic design focuses consideration of the individual at its core;indicate how democratic design will improve education to the public, and enable the public to haveimproved communication and a more human existence in a modern urbanenvironment in China.Finally, the author narrates the strategies and methods for a renewed theory of urban design illustrated by cases on visual promotion of the city image at the international level and from personal experience; These strategies will offer arenewed core function of democratic design in the spiritual construction of cities;present cases that are respectively involved in the flexible public management and service system, urban space & urban image in the mind;present a vision of an organic urban interface andpresent a vision for effective public services that activate common resources, and the long-term vision of cities, as well as the promotion of planning for Chinese rural areas associated with cities. |
