Feng Shui and Urban Planning

Author: Long Bin (Compiler)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Ancient city construction prioritizes site selection. The site selection of ancient Chinese cities exhibits typical characteristics, deeply influenced by traditional Feng Shui philosophy, with strong intuitiveness and empirical nature, even with certain superstitious elements. However, from the long history of ancient cities, their site selection has laid a solid foundation for their development, demonstrating practical scientific validity, which warrants serious study. The author selects Sanyi, a historical and cultural city in Sichuan Province, as a case study, analyzing its landscape and water patterns based on Feng Shui principles to reveal the scientific rationale behind its site selection. This book conducts research on four aspects: the material foundation of ancient landscape-city construction thought, the formation and development of ancient landscape-city construction thought, practical examples of ancient landscape-city construction thought, and the traditional essence of ancient landscape-city construction thought. It clarifies the developmental trajectory of ancient landscape-city construction thought, summarizes the successful experiences of ancient people in landscape-city construction, and provides valuable references for contemporary landscape-city planning and construction. By reviewing the current research status of water cities and identifying gaps in the study, this book systematically and comprehensively explores ancient Chinese landscape-city construction thought. Its perspective combines philosophical depth with the breadth of literature, archaeology, culture, morphology, and the depth of engineering technology. The main research content of the paper includes the following four parts:
Chapter 1, The Material Foundation of Ancient Landscape-City Construction Thought. This chapter categorizes and organizes the vast historical records of landscape cities and representative ancient landscape cities that remain today, establishing a solid foundation for studying ancient landscape-city construction thought.
Chapter 2, The Formation and Development of Ancient Landscape-City Construction Thought. This chapter first focuses on the origins of ancient Chinese civilization and the birth of cities, tracing the root causes of the original genes of ancient Chinese landscape-city construction thought. It then analyzes the cultural background and the operational mechanisms of traditional landscape culture's influence on ancient urban construction by examining the formation and development of ancient landscape culture and the urban construction activities of cultural figures. Finally, it connects the developmental trajectory of ancient landscape culture to explain its stages and corresponding characteristics in ancient landscape-city construction thought.
Chapter 3, Practical Examples of Ancient Landscape-City Construction Thought. This chapter begins with a classification study of ancient landscape cities, selecting representative examples of ancient capitals and prefecture cities from the intersections of various classification methods, analyzing their urban construction history and the characteristics of landscape-city construction thought.
Chapter 4, Summarizing the Traditional Essence of Ancient Landscape-City Construction Thought. Based on the analysis of foundational literature and typical practical cases, this chapter summarizes the traditional essence of ancient Chinese landscape-city construction thought into five aspects: the philosophical thought of harmony between heaven and humanity, the ecological awareness of sustainable development, the pursuit of integration with nature, the morphological principles of adapting to local conditions, and the complementary technical measures.
Through the above four aspects of research, this book clarifies the developmental trajectory of ancient landscape-city construction thought, summarizes the successful experiences of ancient people in landscape-city construction, and provides valuable references for contemporary landscape-city planning and construction.