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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient Chinese urban planning | 4/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Chinese_urban_planning | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:00:44.218630+00:00 | kb-cron |
During the Warring States and Han, the beginnings of a classical textual tradition of city planning developed. Although there is little direct evidence that any classical text exerted an important influence on urban design until the late imperial period, the texts themselves have a much longer history. While some important literary evidence concerning Zhou urban construction can be found in the Classic of Poetry and the Book of Documents, during the Han dynasty a text emerged that would later become the locus classicus of the ideal imperial capital. This text, the Kaogongji, is a description of craftsmen's techniques that includes two sections on city construction. It is a late addition to the Rites of Zhou one of three ritual classics canonized during the Han. The Rites of Zhou is a blueprint for governmental administration divided into six offices representing Heaven, Earth, and each of the four seasons. The section for the Offices of Winter, a bureau charged with the oversight of public works, was lost sometime before or during the Qin to Han transition. During the Western Han, the Kaogongji was added as a replacement. The first section on urban construction in the Kaogongji describes ancient techniques for siting a city, including methods for precisely orienting the site to the cardinal directions and determining the levelness of the land. The second section describes the basic features of the ideal capital city:
The carpenters construct the capital city, which is a square of nine li on each side. On each side there are three gates. Within the city there are nine north-south and nine east-west roads; the north-south roads are as wide as nine carriages side by side. The ancestral temple of the ruling house is to the left of the palace, the temple to god of the soil is to the right. The palace faces the court in front and the market is behind it. The court and the market are both one fu in area. This section goes on to describe the structure and dimensions of important buildings (as well as their historical precedents), and the heights of the towers surmounting the palace, inner city wall, and outer city wall. There are several cosmologically significant features of this basic urban outline, including cardinal orientation, square shape, (implied) centrality of the ruler's palace, grid structure, and the prominence of the number nine. The nine-by-nine grid has led some scholars to suggest that the plan is based on the cosmological belief that the Earth is a square divided into nine sections. This structure is reproduced by the magic square, a tool for divination. Although the Kaogongji does not explicitly identify this model with any historical city, it has been traditionally associated with Chengzhou, a city built by the Duke of Zhou soon after the Zhou conquest of the Shang. The “Proclamation at Luo,” a chapter of the Book of Documents, describes how the Duke of Zhou traveled to Luo (near the site of present-day Luoyang) to establish a secondary capital for the new Zhou dynasty, further solidify the Zhou receipt of the Mandate of Heaven, and relocate the former subjects of the defeated Shang.
== Imperial Era == The imperial era of urban planning was marked by an attempt to extend imperial authority uniformly across China by creating an economic and political urban hierarchy. In the Han, this integration was imagined as the resurrection of an idealized memory of the golden age of the Zhou dynasty. Each province was divided into prefectures and each prefecture into counties. The network of imperial administrative cities was overlaid on an existing network of unwalled villages and townships. One county therefore ruled over several townships and many more villages. At the apex of this administrative hierarchy was a new creation, the imperial capital.
=== Formation === Historically, the cities of the Seven Warring States were combined into one unified regional system under the Qin dynasty unification of China. Also under the Qin dynasty Chengzhou lost its status and was renamed Luoyang in 236 BC. The Qin dynasty destroyed most of the Eastern Zhou urbanization to concentrate its collected wealth at the capital Xianyang. Colonization of the Lingnan and Ordos regions began at this time, using a modified version of the Zhou classical standard of urban design. The Qin created a national system of military garrisons on a three-tier administrative hierarchy as a practical measure to control the population according to strict legalistic principles. The Qin soon lost power in a revolt and were replaced by the Han dynasty, who continued many aspects the Qin system of imperial administration, including its system of laws. At its inception, the Han dynasty was immediately faced with the task of rebuilding the urban infrastructure which had been destroyed by Qin dynasty purges and the war of succession after its downfall. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, Gaozu, the Han founder, initially desired to establish the new capital at Luoyang, the former site of Chengzhou, in order to associate the Han with the illustrious early Zhou. However, it was ultimately decided that the new capital, Chang'an, should be built near the old Qin capital at Xianyang.