| The street network, the skeleton of the city, is in the process of urban developmentand evolution, laying the foundation for the development of urban form. Differentgrowth patterns of the streets result in various urban formats, and the growth witnessedthe renovation to the street itself. The spatial form of the street provides the firstimpression concerning the city, and therefore reshaping the street space guaranteesbuilding of the city landmark.The city streets are an important component of the city, in addition to theaccommodation of the features such the transportation and urban activities. The spatialcharacteristics of the entire structure are the memorable cores of the urban formats.After the advent of the automobile era, the traditional streets offering the space for thecity life and traffic, due to the development of urban rapid transit system, were replacedby large-scale rapid transit corridors. There exist the destruction of the city’s historicalformat, the disappearance of the street space vitality and serious damaging to urbanstyle features.Xi’an has a long, rich history. In the core area of historic preservation, the streets inthe old city is also witnessing the conflict between traffic and city life. Although thereare tremendous achievements in the protection of the patterns of Xi’an Old City andheritage buildings, the historical character is slowly disappearing. It is very urgent tomaintain the historical form of the old city while promoting the developmentIn this thesis, Xi’an old city streets were the subject for the study. Development inthe city historical format was systemically analyzed. Much research was conducted toward the status quo street space a lot of research and the references were retrieved.28selected typical selected streets in the survey were examined for their spatial forms.Finally, the overall status of street space in Xi’an’s old city was dissected by the meansof the typology.As a result, a comprehensive understanding of the street network and the spatialform of the old city of Xi’an facilitates an insight into the urban style image of the oldtown, and lays a solid foundation for the future as a guide to the urban design in thehistory of the street system. Hence, it is important to deal with relationship betweenXi’an street space and urban landscape in efforts to improving the traffic, and to obligewith the principle of maintaining the balance between the improvement in urbanenvironment and protection of Xi’An historical landscape. |
