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Architecture of China - City Planning

Evidence of Chinese cities is at least as old as the 6th millennium bce. It survives in the form of group settlements and walled enclosures, both confirmed by ever stronger archaeological evidence since the beginning of widespread government-sponsored excavation in China in 1949. The explosion of bibliographical work on Chinese cities and urbanism is a direct result. Excavation, historical records that include information such as censuses as early as the late centuries bce, and other literature combine to document urban centers in every province and every autonomous region of China from the bce millennia to the 21st century. The majority of those centers have continuous histories, also extending into the 21st century. The continuous history of Chinese civilization through millennia provides evidence, again literary and physical, for unique opportunities to explore social themes such as urban versus agrarian, imperial cities compared to villages, or the relation between religious construction and urban design. At the same time, China has unique international status as home to the world’s two largest cities: Shanghai with a population of more than twenty-four million and Beijing with nearly nineteen million. China is also the only country with ten cities that have populations of more than eight million and thirty cities with a population greater than three million, offering unprecedented opportunity for research on demography, climate control, ecology, and basic human survival. Inclusion of periodical literature in Asian and European languages would produce a list of several hundred thousand titles. The goal of this article is to recognize seminal titles already with or likely to have long shelf lives, as well as to represent the kinds of research and range of topics about the Chinese city.