Towards Sustainable Urbanism:the Urban Spatial Organization And A Measurement Approach

Accelerated urbanization as the concomitant of Industrial Revolution about 19th century brought a series of social changes and further caused urban spatial crisis.The refurbishing urban Paris by Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann and Napolean III symbolized the coming era of modern city.Ebenezer Howard,Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright afterwards provided compromisers,centrists and decentrists views on urban form in future and ever since have shaped the urban landscape.Today,globalized space unfolds fluidness,such as large-scale immigration,economic production,consumption and reproduction.Meanwhile,radical spatial praxis rewrites the urban history.The dispersed urban space,urban agglomerations coming forth,and dissolved traditional urban center have great impacts on the social life,environment conditions and the energy use.Immigrants and cultural identity,social differentiation and exclusion,exhausting environmental resources...have weakened the social integration.When confronted with new conditions of urban space,the polarized "centrists or decentrists" paradigm for urban form is no longer applicable.Whether or not can sustainability on urban space surpass the debatable urban form itself and response to those crucial social,economic and environmental issues?The question brings up the assumption based on the connection between social space and physical space,such as human movement.The human society(city)and physical city(space)represent a subjective or objective view on urban space.Social physicist believes cities emerge from congregate human behaviors,while phenomenologist discusses how physicist city reflects on the human experience and his activity.They build the bridge between social and physical city from the opposite direction.In addition,the united subject-object and social-spatial structures analyze social behaviors from the perspective of space.The"mental maps" by Kevin Lynch connects the human recognition of urban elements and his activities in space;"Space Syntax" by Fredric Jameson recognizes the position of the individual in the world,which are the local and global and its interrelationship.Following Lynch,Bill Hillier probes the social logic of space.The new development in social physics is"urban spatial networks" by Michael Batty.The meshing model for urban space provides an innovative framework to understand systematic complexity of self-organized behaviors.Michel Foucault defines human city as a network relation,and implies that such a relation come rather from space than time.He also emphasizes "the emplacement of space",and diachronic or synchronous spaoe.Meanwhile Henry Lefebvre pointed out space is no more neutral background,but the existing form of the society.Since then,the"spatial turn" has a deep influence on urban study.The space is not flat,homogenous,solid and abstract geometrical topography,but hierarchical,diverse,various and dynamic spatio-temporal network both as a symbol and the language of space itself.From a spatial perspective,the time embedded in place represents periodic changes involved in evolution of urban space with a timeline in each phase.Torsten Hagerstrand establishes time-space geography.The spatio-temporal network that consists of nodes and links formalizes human behaviors.The study object of dissertation is urban space.The notion of space comprises four spheres.The outer sphere absolute space in void;the second sphere "relative space" is material spatial "environment",so called "the first nature";the third "spatial society"intervenes social life through "representations of space".Space and its self-reflective society represent the urban social spatiality;the core "social space" is representational space submitted to the political institution and the will of power.Relative space,spatial society and social space define the research territory of urban space.Hence,the crucial part is to understand the social-space relations.The integrated urban spatial notion expresses dual meanings,which are human perceptions of urban space and related social intentions,both institutionalized and spatialized social form.The human activity establishes the institution of society,whilst the space as a path enters into social phenomena.The integrated urban spatial theory is the spatial,historical and social trinity.It applies methodology of quantitative analysis,historical genealogy and empiric study.Methods of spatial measurement are not just applicable quantitative analysis or alternative options for empiric study,but as an analytic framework comprehension of the spatial organization and pattern as well.Because the study emphasizes spatial structure and its archetype,the measurement approach suits to exploration of genesis of endless morphologic variations of urban space and the spatial law behind random phenomena.In specific,the topological approach studies connectivity of links and centricity of nodes to find out spatial characteristics while the fractal geometry as a supplementary depicts spatial distribution of participants.In addition,the principles of subject-across-scale and form-non-related apply to both of them.Such properties allow the compare between regular geometry and irregular form to expose their same internal orders.Meanwhile the urban spatial model and index system on actual urban space prototype are under investigations of mathematics and the logic.The urban morphological evolution in long-term comprises a universal rule,which also can detect the structural faultage in urban space.The methodology of historic genealogy replaces a progressive historical view due to spatial turn.The genealogy allows a narrative in discontinuity timeline and focuses on urban conditions and milestone thoughts in result.The main body of the dissertation consists of three parts.The "Introduction" chapter brings up the integrated urban spatial theory.The next part "dynamics" based on urban spatial evolution is about the mechanism that city forms,organizes and evolves and three theoretic dimensions of urban spatial organization including ecologic theory,the functionist city and power relations in chapter two.In chapter three,it studies the relation between urban population and urban spatial process during urbanization.By establishing urban spatial model for urbanization,it can analyze urbanization and its consequence in economic incomes and social equality,formula and tendencies.The part two "topography"about methodology of the study consists of two geometrical approaches for spatial measurement,which are ’the fractal method’ in chapter four and ’topological network’ in chapter five.The "morphology" part refers to urban spatial phenomena from urban fabric in chapter six to the pattern of urban form in chapter seven.The chapter eight on sustainable urban space provides not only the answer for what a good city form looks like,but a key solution as well.In chapter nine "conclusion",the paper summarizes the unsolved questions,new progress and potentials on study.