The Chinese city in mountain and water: shaping the urban landscape in Chengdu

AbstractAlthough natural features like mountains and rivers are widely recognised as key factors in developing ancient Chinese urban strategies, their active role in orderly-planned cities on vast plains has rarely been thoroughly examined. Further insight into this topic is critical to comprehending the formation of Chinese mountain-water-city imagery and its physical manifestation. Chengdu, an ancient plain-dwelling city encircled by mountains and rivers from afar, is an ideal example of this inquiry. This article explores the two-millennium history of how the city responded to its natural surroundings and incorporated the landscape imagery into the architectural and urban forms, which includes the alignment of the city's orientation with distant and neighbouring mountains, the construction of waterway networks to emulate surrounding rivers, and the strategic placement of tower-pavilion architecture to integrate with the nature. Revealing the diversity and complexity of Chengdu's urban-landscape experiences can enrich the intellectual framework of the Chinese mountain-water-city ideal.Keywords: Mountain-water-cityancient Chinese cityShanshuiurban landscapeChengdu Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [51708322].Notes on contributorsLin YuanLin Yuan is Associate Professor of Urban and Rural Design and Planning School of Architecture at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His research involves the ecological wisdom of traditional human settlements and urban and rural ecological planning and design.Zhu XuZhu Xu is an architectural historian and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen. His research interest lies in understanding Chinese architecture and built environment in relation to particular ritual-spiritual contexts.Ningjing XuNingjing Xu is an urban planner and researcher at China State Construction Engineering Corporation(CSCEC), Beijing. Her research interest lies in cultural gene of traditional urban space and conservation and renewal of hisroric cities and towns.