Spatial–temporal distribution and evolution of the socialist built heritage in China, 1949–1978

The socialist built heritage (SBH) is a product of the great and typical socialist construction and is considered to be one of the unique contemporary legacies. However, due to political controversy and a shorter history, its conservation status is dire. In order to better understand and promote future conservation, this study explored the typology and evolution of SBH, using representative socialist China as an example. Based on the official People’s Daily, the spatial term database of various socialist construction fields was generated by utilizing Python and Excel software. Through qualitative logical induction and quantitative word frequency statistics, the basic types and evolutionary characteristics of SBH were obtained. It was found that (1) the composite, multiscale, and extensive SBH were identified as twenty-six basic types. It was most widespread in the industry and agroforestry fields, while factories and facilities, collective organization buildings, government agencies, and assembly buildings were the most common basic types. (2) Related to social development, the fastest growth stage for SBH was from 1953 to 1960 and vice versa from 1966 to 1975. The evolution of SBH in technology field shifted from a non-significant increase to a sudden increase, while those in the finance and trade, and diplomacy fields fluctuated. The remaining fields were marked by large fluctuations to smoothness. The nature of SBH has become more modernized over time. These results further illustrated the distinctive value of the SBH, and can provide positive targeted support for their conservation.

Basic types and evolutionary characteristics of the socialist built heritage in China, 1949–1978: bibliometrics analysis of the People’s Daily

Ma,

Zhang,

et al. 2024

Scenery deconstruction: a new approach to understanding the historical characteristics of Nanjing cultural landscape

Zhang,

Wang,

et al. 2024

The “Eight Scenic Views Paintings” represent crucial visual materials for investigating the history of cultural landscapes. However, traditional methods of interpreting materials struggle to discern the inherent connections between different landscape elements. This study proposes an approach for deconstructing historical images, taking the example of the Forty Scenic Views in the Late Ming Dynasty in Nanjing, China. To explore the co-occurrence structure, hierarchical clustering, and correlation features among various elements, various digital humanities quantification methods were applied, including spatial analysis of ArcGIS, co-occurrence and clustering of KH Coder, and correlation analysis of SPSS. This study reveals the characteristics of the landscape construction of Nanjing in the Late Ming: natural landscape as the foundation, artificial landscape as the core, and advocating tradition as the fashion. It also uncovers the landscape order: mountains, waters, and scenic views interweaved and coexisted, as well as nature and culture intertwined and clustered. In addition, multiple information graphs of the subordinate and co-occurrence relationships of 20 landscape elements were constructed, 5 landscape paradigms were extracted, and 36 pairs of related relationships were discovered, deepening the historical understanding of the urban landscape construction of Nanjing in the Late Ming. This paper puts forward the idea of analyzing historical images by digital method, which provides some essential and detailed historical basis for explaining the value of cultural landscape heritage and shaping contemporary urban landscape.

Mapping the past with historical geographic information systems: layered characteristics of the historic urban landscape of Nanjing, China, since the Ming Dynasty (1368–2024)

Bai,

Jiao,

Sakai

et al. 2024

The layering process of the historic urban landscape (HUL) has spatial and temporal characteristics. With the help of digital technology, building a database to collect and manage spatial information on HUL is an effective research method. Taking Nanjing since the Ming Dynasty (1368–2024) as an example, our paper proposes a framework for constructing a historical geographic information system (HGIS) for HUL. The results show that (1) ancient Chinese historical archives have good potential for use in the construction of historical landscape databases. The HGIS can visualize the evolution of HUL and realize the storage, expression, querying, and analysis of information in different formats. (2) The Republic of China is a turning point in the evolution of Nanjing’s HUL. In terms of spatial evolution, the main distribution areas of urban form and characteristic places, as well as the NACH (normalized angular choice) and NAIN (normalized angular integration) cores of the road network, all moved from the south to the north of the city. In terms of typological evolution, the urban form changes from a predominantly residential area to one that emphasizes residential, administrative, educational and industrial areas. The main types of characteristic places shifted from house gardens, temples and ancestral halls to scenic buildings and public gardens. (3) Political factors, urban planning, commercial ports, and land prices influence the layering process of the HUL. The constructed database guides the preservation of HUL from the digital heritage perspective and the construction of other historical databases with spatial characteristics.