Research On The Space Design Of Pedestrian Street In Mingcheng District Of Xi'an From The Perspective Of Cultural Perception

As an essential part of urban public space,Pedestrian streets play important roles in enriching the citizens daily life,engraving history,facilitating the economic growth and so on.Xi'an is a well-known ancient cultural capital.In Xi'an,many pedestrian streets were constructed as products of history.Mingcheng district,the historic center in Xi'an,has existed for many dynasties and contained abundant historic relics and cultural elements.The existence of numerous cultural pedestrian streets is the outcome of historic environment,especially those in the core area of the district near bell tower.However,the constructer did not manage to highlight the cultural characteristics and plan comprehensively.The pedestrian streets in Mingcheng district are not well connected and the cultural perception is weak,which makes people hard to experience the historic characteristics of the streets and the cultural connotation of the city.In order to correct the existing cultural pedestrian streets weaknesses including limited connection,weak cultural perception,homogenization and commercialization and in order to refine the pedestrian streets and make them accommodate to the urban economic growth and advance with the times,people's feelings and perspectives should be taken into account and researches on the space design of pedestrian streets should be intensified.At macro level,spatial structure of pedestrian streets needs to be constructed.At micro level,the application of design strategy with the aim to improve human perception of culture needs to be considered.This paper focuses on the cultural perception of the key pedestrian streets in the Mingcheng District in Xi'an,discusses the existing theories of pedestrian street design and cultural perception,reports the current situation and problems of pedestrian streets in the Mingcheng District,proposes the countermeasures in terms of space design of pedestrian streets and further explores the space design application of pedestrian streets in Zhubashi as case study.First,this paper provides a solid theoretical foundation which combines theories of cultural perception and pedestrian street design,highlights the importance of strengthening cultural perception of pedestrian streets and summarizes the cultural perception's subject,content and media.Then,through the investigation of the profile of Xi'an Mingcheng district and the historical as well as the current situation of the pedestrian streets,the conclusion of two main problems of the pedestrian streets in the Mingcheng district,limited spatial connection and weak cultural perception,is made.Further,in accordance with these two problems,the paper analyzes the spatial integration and cultural perception of the pedestrian streets in the Mingcheng district,constructs the spatial structure of the pedestrian streets in the Mingcheng district and gains enlightenment of spatial construction of the pedestrian streets from empirical evidence.Next,the paper presents the space design target and principle of the pedestrian streets in Mingcheng district from the perspective of cultural perception and proposes the potential optimization and promotion strategy of the pedestrian streets space from aspects of overall perception,environmental perception and activity perception to improve people's cultural perception in the pedestrian street.Finally,as study case,the perimeter,planning target and position of Zhubashi pedestrian street are inspected and the approach of space design transformation of pedestrian street in terms of the media of environmental and activity perception is explored,while historic culture of the street is promoted and the cultural perception of the pedestrian street can be improved.This paper,on the one hand,establishes the pedestrian streets route system for cultural perception in the Mingcheng district of Xi'an,finds appropriate pedestrian street design strategies and approaches to strengthen the cultural perception of the Mingcheng district in Xi'an on the other hand.This paper can be adopted as a reference for pedestrian street space design and the expression of cultural elements in other historical cities.