Ancient Chinese urban planning
Ancient Chinese urban planning encompasses the diverse set of cultural beliefs, social and economic structures, and technological capacities that historically influenced urban design in the early period of Chinese civilization. Factors that have shaped the development of Chinese urbanism include: fengshui geomancy and astronomy; the well-field system; the cosmological belief that Heaven is round and the Earth is square, the concept of qi; political power shared between a ruling house and educated advisers; the holy place bo; a three-tiered economic system under state control; early writing; and the walled capital city as a diagram of political power.
Urban planning originated during the urbanization of the Yellow River valley in the Neolithic Age. The process in China, as elsewhere in the world, is related to the process of centralizing power in a political state. Although several cultures formed competing states, the direct ancestor of the Chinese state was Longshan culture. Therefore, the earliest Chinese urban planning was a synthesis of Longshan traditional cosmology, geomancy, astrology, and numerology. This synthesis generated a diagram of the cosmos, which placed man, state, nature, and heaven in harmony. The city was planned in the context of this cosmic diagram to maintain harmony and balance.
Urbanization begins at Banpo (4,800-3,750 BC) on the Zhongyuan plain of the Yellow River. Banpo grew from a typical Yangshao village in both size and organization until the construction of the Great Hall ca. 4000 BC. Like Eridu in Mesopotamia, Banpo in East Asia was the first instance of specialized architecture, something other than a house. Physically, Banpo was composed of 200 round pit houses and the Great Hall across 5 hectares and surrounded by a ditch. These pit houses were sited for solar gain by aligning the door to the Yingshi asterism just after the winter solstice. Already, at this early stage the principle of south-facing entry was firmly established.
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