The Research On Urban Design In The New Central District Of Small Towns

The rapid expansion of China’s urbanization has placed the construction and development of small towns at the forefront of this historical stage. Unlike the large and medium sized cities, the scale of which went out of control due to the long-term extensive development, small towns, as the communication hub between urban and rural areas, have become the new force in the process of urbanization. The city central district is the core area in urban structure, as well as the "engine" for the overall urban development. As the window to exhibit a city’s image and the service center of the city, the construction of urban central district has always been a priority.With long natural history, the traditional small towns in China have unique developing pattern, which cannot adapt to the expansion of construction scale and upgrading of city functions brought by urbanization, thus giving rise to new problems. The downtown area of small towns require diversified designing factors, therefore, the interrelation and restraints among different factors have made the new problems more evident.As one effective approach to handle city problems, urban design has always played a vital role in guiding cities towards healthy development. Due to the lack of targeted guidance on urban design method, there’s no effective way to solve the development problems in central district of small towns. With further expansion of the scale of cities and towns, the construction of central district is necessary. Therefore, this thesis focuses on how to analyze and summarize the problems in the construction and development of central district, and study classical urban design theories, in order to develop a set of specific and feasible urban design methods and strategies which comply with the development pattern of small towns to guide the construction of central districts, so as to avoid the recurrence of city problems.There are five chapters in this thesis. The first chapter introduces the research background, contents and meaning, as well as concrete research methods. Chapter two first identifies and analyzes the subjects and concepts in this study, and then puts forward the author’s understanding of the root causes for problems in central districts of small towns. Chapter three analyzes the concrete forms of construction and development problems in central district of small towns from three different categories of research subjects, namely "space form", "functional vitality", and "city characteristics". Chapter four puts forward corresponding urban design methods and strategies based on the practice of projects. The last chapter summarizes the whole thesis, and then analyzes the innovative ideas in the thesis, as well as its deficiencies.