| In recent years, with the continuous urbanization process in China, urban developmenthas gradually transferred from extensive and intensive. In the meanwhile, the quality of urbanopen spaces is getting more and more important for citizens. The trend of building citysquares in middle small scale cities has unveiled a big number of problems. Among thesimilar urban clusters, city squares play an important role to improve people·s living qualityand enhance city image, making a city more vibrant and eco-friendly.This dissertation explores and studies how to optimize the design of small town squares inPearl River Delta. Through thorough case studies by site-visiting city squares in selectedcities in PRD, the writer has researched the structure of city squares and the user activities anddefined the challenges for town square design as a reference. Based on theoretical analysisand on-site researches, this dissertation brings forward the necessity and importance of townsquare design optimization and proposes design optimization methodology incorporating thelocal climate and vegetation characteristics. The design factors under discussion in this paperincludes evaluation of site location and environmental resources, the scale and form of thesquare, solutions for hot humit climate, diversity of square function, sustainability, and artisticfuniture selection.This dissertation pays special attention on ratio of softscape and hardscape and solution forthe hot and humid local climate, and also discusses the eco design approaches of adoptingclean energy and rainwater recycling, which are often overlooked nowadays.Using the landscape design of Zhongshan Nantou Town Center Plaza as a case study, thispaper has combined the proposed design approaches with a real-life project. This dissertationaims to shed some light on the design optimization of small town squares. |
