Deliberation on the Centrality of the Chinese Culture and the Sociability of Spatial Form - In View of Transition of the Intuitional Li-Fang Walled-Ward of the Historical Capitals

• Main Authors: Ming-WeiLiu, 劉銘緯
• Other Authors: Kwang-Pang Lai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12509069388978979975

博士 === 國立成功大學 === 建築學系碩博士班 === 101 === With the West’s colonial movements orientated to the East, early modernization disregarded context locally, on the contrary, Westernization was superficially and broadly conducted in the East World. Furthermore, after experiencing the two World Wars in the 19th and 20th centuries, “modernization” thereby has led the new world into the status of cultural conflicts in our modern world. Such a fact was noticed and indicated by certain scholars, Samuel Huntington is one of them, who suggested an agenda towards consensus unanimity, that is, local culture is to be an actor to be respected while towards modernization. Then, started from the 1960s, the theoretical views gradually adjusted from the past “simple Westernization”, turning its focus to “community” with cultural foundational basis . Else, some reflection has been made, urban planning in the grand-scale has been proclaimed its failure, as well been proclaimed its failure and led in the new method, neoliberal planning, to take the place for substitution. All in all, nowadays “urban theory” is waiting to be constructed and deconstructed. For instance, the policy of the United States now emphasizes much more over community empowerment, and the United Kingdom’s Community Architecture Movement is alike. These are local practices carried out in “neighborhood” (community) scales underwent a century’s planning experimentation. In which the three actors, the inhabitants, the architects, and the planners, acted from the opposite position against each other, fighting for their urban positions. At the end of the last century, the inhabitants and the architects again won over the planning rights in the first round (Hall, [1988] 2002, p. 419). Based on the “postism” the new strategic position has been set, while culture is used as a new factor for emphasis in the process of spatial practice so as to reconsider over the form in spatial construction, institutional empowerment and cultural reproduction. Focus our view back to the Far East, a chronically continuous process, as illustrated above, with “local” and “community” that based the foundation for theory and its empirical practice that nowadays, has molded out the Chinese city culture understanding in common. That is, traditional neighborhood, which was based the society in concrete, thus constructed “culture” in reality. Even hybrid with the colonial experience in the past two centuries, it led the Western rhetorical form imposed from the West to the East. Besides, in view of the global localized interactive context, we urgently need to construct the urban historical view with “community” in a perspective scope and theoretically empower Chinese community in actions, thus continuing Chinese planning practice in the context of “re/post” modernity. Thus, my focuses stress “community” for the perspective of Chinese planning institution – from the qualitative analysis between the “public” and “private” of urban space in order to attract future researchers to reflect on “local” from the dimension of spatial practice of modernity on the basis of cultural understanding. In sum, while introducing the scenario of postmodern , I attempt to construct the public realm as a strategic position, through the sublimation of traditional culture (toward modernism), and it is hoped that “paradigm shift” would be the conclusion. The theoretical construction on the public realm has recently become an approach for creating new cultural agendas, and the main contributors are the German American liberal thinker Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas, inheritor of the Frankfurt School. The latter’s work especially identified the perspective theorem on “communication” (and social relations). However, we must also note that those academic accomplishments that have been established after the 90s are significantly contributed in the theorem on “ration of communication” for the Eastern World (even, including South European) society. In addition, rather than the Western society that emphasizes on rigid laws and civilization of individualism, “Eastern” society is identified with “relationships”, meaning that the long-term operation of Eastern society has surpassed the failure of “individualism,” leading to another context of resisting risk, which is certainly not seen by these scholars, in another form of “public realm.” In terms of methodology, that first consideration is my academic background, which concerning to spatial research. Theoretically, I cannot surpass the rule that cultural scholars have made in the perspective which “using historical evidence to verify the facts in history” through examining the facts from the volumes of historical documents. Even, these evidences had undergone the process to make them officially limited within the perspective of each dynasty of Chinese Empire. Certainly, as Chinese history was chronically written by a “later dynasty” to take place of the previous one, history must be reinterpreted in order to be “politically correct.” Thus, history was definitely a pretended and a reinterpreted one. However, for us, the spatial scholars, who abide by the rule of “using historical evidence to verify the facts in history”, we are bond to the duty of interpreting the hidden knowledge by taking the advantage of architecture and planning tools of spatial studies and sociology, thus to explore the quality and quantity among urban structure within this certain space boundaries for the purpose of revealing civilization from the other dimensions which ever existed and have long been given. My research fixes on a viewpoint from “institutional enclosure of Li-Fang walled-ward” and perspective on the planning practice of capital cities of the previous dynasties, which has long been practiced to establish an ordinary interpretation for the ordinary people to construct a general historical understanding for a common purpose. In this way, we may thus verify the theory of the West, and thus regard “culture” as a factor to intervene in the planning process that can penetrate spatial meaning in the turning points and come out in superficial appearances. My academic work works out the following outcomes: 1. This paper argues that autonomous “Cheng Yi” (walled-cities) that found Chinese urban society’s fundamental basis was before Qin dynasty (221 BC). The holistic walled-city (cheng yi) later on differentiated its functions into “Gong Shi” (palace), “Li” (residential neighborhood), “Shi” (market place), and “Fang” (residential block) in the following hundred years. Until the beginning of Tang dynasty, those subdivisions were institutionally termed in “Li-Fang” (walled-ward) in order to generalize the enclosure conception of urban structure. Li-Fang was accordingly considered necessary in traditional Chinese urban society to make up of a Chinese city (thus turning out a metropolis). 2. Li (in a walled-ward city,) with its cultural features, is to be regarded an independent unit to formulate urban structure in the earliest Chinese city. Walled-ward, in terms of macro and micro urbanization process, developed into the urban axes and regions that we recognized as the feature of the formal structures of the Chinese capital today. Accordingly, “Li” is granted for ordinary people to structure the historical perspective of Chinese cities. 3. By studying the collapse of the institutional wall-ward system between the Tang and Song dynasties, this paper claims the requirement to reaffirm the value of “neighborhood” in Chinese society, from the dimensions including its spatial system and its social meanings, in order to establish the scale that can be “ordinarily practiced” with flexibility. In terms of neighborhoods, I do not believe that “individualism” is proper to adapt in contemporary society. On the contrary, the orientation that I propose is to adopt the sense of “communication” and “relationships” in the norms of culture in the context of everyday life (elsewhere “family” is still under- estimate) as the meaning and content of the spatial structure is taken into consideration. While we are able to reinterpret the currently meaning of culture and to reevaluate the cultural feature of a traditional neighborhoods, where people share space among governmental authority, ordinary people, and the clan of families that may end up with the establishment of “social capital” as purpose, and respond to “neighborhood contexts” with the intervention of local culture. 4. In converging these research results, this paper is turning “institutional enclosure of Li-Fang Walled-Ward” into the metaphor, and concludes that we may take a “paradigm shift” establishing the orthodox for Chinese community theory as its local agenda. Although this research has attempts listed above and sums up in “paradigm shift,” regardless of Li, Fang, or Xiang (district, a larger system than Li-Fang after the collapse), even the construction of the Great Wall were all undertaken for the institutional proposes, in hopes that inhabited dwellers can live in well-being within the enclosed margins, boundaries were fix both to enhance social capital and establish identity individually and collectively. Such a division of “community scale” is essential for “neighborhood community” from the past to present, for the purpose of seeking the institutional cost and transactional cost of its margins and minimum. My research begins with the reflection in theoretical perspective, in an attempt to establish a method for understanding urban function and its operation in Chinese society in the perspective of ordinarily viewpoints with metaphor used, thus to attract further discussion of cross-discipline. Likewise, the cultural orientation of this research as well as attempts to strengthen theoretical framework before by the century-old practice, while it started in the status of the lacking understanding so as to adopt strategies materialistically such as the case of early modern in the West World. I avoid the perspective from the loyal that hopes to establish the urban narrative of the ordinary, in order to create an orthodox understanding of urban narrative based on institutional enclosure of Li-Fang Walled-Ward for the urban history of the Chinese societies, else, establishing a theoretical view of cultural evidentiary analysis for theorem of Chinese communities.