Study On The Evolution Law Of The Outer Form Of Wanzhou Urban Space

The Wanzhou District of Chongqing City is situated in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River and is nourished by the river.As the urban center of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region,it has witnessed the rapid expansion of urban space in the past few years.In particular,the continuous change of the area’s exterior shape has brought a series of problems such as the disorderly expansion of the urban space,uncertainty about the urban space’s development strategy,inefficient utilization of the urban land,and instability of the city’s spatial structure,all of which have become an obstacle to the orderly development of the city.As such,researching the rule of the evolution of Wanzhou’s exterior urban shape is both important and urgent.Through studying the exterior urban shape of the Wanzhou area,this article aims at summarizing the rule of evolution of the urban shape,analyzing the driving mechanism of the spatial change,and proposing proper measures for Wanzhou’s expansion of urban space in the future.The study results will also provide some insights for the decision-making of the government on urban spatial development and will be of certain practical significance to the orderly development of urban space.The article focused on Wanzhou District as the research object.The article firstly analyzed the evolution of the urban space of Wanzhou using qualitative analysis and the analysis was based on various data sources including major historic events,master urban plans,historical documentation,and urban land usage maps,etc.The urban spatial shape was identified to have experienced five stages of evolution: point-shape dispersion,point-shape aggregation,block-shaped development,single-center belt-shape development,and multiple-center clustered belt-shape development.Next,the article adopted the method of quantitative analysis to analyze the revolution of the exterior urban shape of the Wanzhou area over the 500-year period since the Ming Dynasty,in an attempt to analyze how the urban space’s expansion scale,compactness levels,and expansion dimension have influenced the evolution of the exterior urban shape over the course of different historical periods.The exterior shape of the urban space was identified to have the following characteristics: the periodical feature of the expansion process of the space shape,the fact that the spatial expansion occurs following certain directions,the diversity of spatial expansion modes,the imbalanced distribution of urban land,and the instability of the urban shape.The article then considered a wide range of aspects including the natural environment,transport conditions,economic development,population changes,and government regulations to analyze how these external factors have impacted the evolution of the exterior urban shape as well as the underlying driving mechanism.Finally,the article summarized the evolution rule of the urban space as “southward in-depth progress and northward expansion with auxiliary expansion in the east and the west”,the “ladder-type expansion rhythm”,and the “self-organized and external organized” feature of spatial development.The article also evaluated the evolution process of Wanzhou’s urban space and proposed measures for future spatial expansion of the Wanzhou area.