The earliest urban planning in modern China turned out to be a little-known

Author: Liu Su, Professor of School of Architecture, Hunan University

Ancient China also had urban planning, and as early as more than 2,000 years ago, there were relevant systems for capital planning in the "Book of Rites". The most famous one is in "Kaogongji": "The craftsmen built the country, which was nine li square and three gates on the side. There were nine longitudes and nine latitudes in the country, and nine tracks on the longitudes. The ancestral temple was on the left and the community temple was on the right. The market was facing the back, and the market and the court were one man." This planning system continued for more than 2,000 years in Chinese history, and the planning of Beijing in the Ming and Qing Dynasties that we can see today still has the shadow of this system.

Since modern times, scientific urban planning methods have been introduced from the West. The earliest urban planning in modern China began in the 1920s.

The earliest urban plans compiled by China in the 1920s that can be seen now are four: Suzhou City "Public Works Plan", Nanjing "Capital Plan", "Greater Shanghai Central Area Urban Plan", and "Tianjin Special City Material Construction Plan". Nanjing Capital Plan and Greater Shanghai Central Area Plan have been introduced in many books and papers in the past. However, the planning of Suzhou City and Tianjin City is rarely mentioned, or even unknown.

Suzhou City's "Public Works Plan" is the earliest urban planning in China that we can find in the data we have now. Among the four urban plans in the 1920s, the most famous are of course the Nanjing Capital Plan and the Greater Shanghai Central Area Plan. Both of these plans started in 1928 and were completed in 1929. Another "Tianjin Special City Material Construction Plan" (urban planning) was completed from 1929 to 1930. The Suzhou City "Public Works Plan" was started in 1927 and completed in 1928. It is the earliest urban planning in the modern sense that can be seen at present, and many people may not know this history.

1927 Suzhou "Public Works Plan" urban development plan map (Source: "Suzhou Municipal Preparatory Office Half-Yearly Bulletin", "Public Works Plan and Implementation", published in 1928.)

The person who led this plan was an architect, Liu Shiying, a remarkable figure.

In his early years, he participated in the Revolution of 1911 and the Second Revolution against Yuan Shikai. After the failure, he fled to Japan and entered the Tokyo Higher Industrial School (now Tokyo Institute of Technology) to study architecture. He graduated in 1920 and returned to China, first engaged in architectural design in Shanghai. In 1923, he founded an architecture department in his hometown, Suzhou Industrial College, which was the first architecture major in Chinese history. In ancient China, there was no specialized architectural education. All teachers taught apprentices one by one. The architecture department of Suzhou Institute of Technology founded by Liu Shiying was the first architecture major in China, and Liu Shiying was the first person in Chinese architectural education. In 1927, Suzhou City prepared to implement the engineering plan (urban planning) and hired Liu Shiying as the chief engineer to preside over the plan.

Although the Suzhou city plan is called the "Public Works Plan", it is actually a complete and scientific urban plan in the modern sense.

The content of the plan is very complete and detailed, covering almost every aspect of our general urban planning today. The main contents and features of this "Works Plan" are as follows:

1. Complete government action

The planning text contains many government documents, including various government orders, such as "Order of Jiangsu Civil Affairs Department", "Order of Jiangsu Construction Department", etc., as well as various commissions, instructions, petitions, official letters, notices, instructions, etc. These show that this planning is a very cautious and rigorous government behavior.

2. The planning content is complete

The content of the planning text covers the master plan and detailed plan. For example, there is the "urban area", which includes the "urban environment", "urban boundaries", etc., and there is a phased construction plan, which obviously belong to the content of the master plan.

Suzhou's overall urban layout and construction phases

The latter part includes several parts such as street improvement, river improvement, parks, vegetable markets, buildings, etc., which belong to the content of detailed planning. And it is very detailed. For example, the street improvement plan includes "road construction method", "street widening method", "street remediation method", etc. This shows that the urban planning of that era did not distinguish between the general plan and the detailed plan, and put them together. This was the starting stage of China's urban planning, and of course it could not be as rigorous and standardized as it is today. But on the other hand, the care for people's daily life was also very detailed, such as there was a special vegetable market plan, which was not achieved in some later urban planning.

Vegetable market distribution

3. Detailed and thoughtful planning

The planning text is accompanied by a large number of drawings and regulations, including the overall urban layout and hierarchical construction planning drawings on a large scale, and the road classification section design drawings and the sunlight spacing planning and design drawings between buildings on a small scale.

Traffic shape (road section) diagram

Suzhou is a famous ancient city, and the city walls and gates left over from history are still well preserved. However, with the development of the times, the increase in cars and people has led to the need to improve transportation. Therefore, in the planning document, several major city gates at that time were renovated and remodeled accordingly, and there are also planning and design drawings.

City gate renovation plan

In addition to planning and design, some regulations have also been formulated, such as the "Land Evaluation Committee Regulations", "Regulations on the Removal of Buildings on Both Sides of Main Roads", "Regulations on Street Widening", etc. Issues related to planning have rules to follow and are not determined arbitrarily.

4. Special content

The most peculiar and incredible thing about this plan is that some things that we think should not be part of urban planning have been included in the planning text. For example, in the "education and health facilities" item, there are "children's summer school", "civilian night school", "civilian weekly plan", etc., and even "censoring movies", "free cholera vaccination", "physical examination of elementary school students in the city", etc.

Directory of “Educational and Health Facilities”

If the establishment of schools, hospitals and other educational and health institutions is part of urban planning, then the above projects are purely social management and public welfare undertakings, and are also included in the content of urban planning. This may be a feature of the system at that time.

5. This is a formally implemented plan

We can see the real-time status of the public works plan in the "Suzhou Municipal Planning Semi-annual Bulletin" published in 1928. It contains various tax data statistics, such as "housing donation tickets" and "rickshaw donation receipts", various expense statistics and income and expenditure comparison tables, and various signed engineering contracts, such as a certain engineering project contracted by a certain contractor, etc. All of these show that this urban planning project has begun to be implemented, and it can be seen that the implementation process management is very rigorous. At the same time, this also shows that this Suzhou "Public Works Plan" is the first formally implemented urban planning in modern China.

The urban planning of Suzhou in 1927 has very important historical significance.

First, it is the first urban planning in modern China, and its planning content and planning methods are almost the same as our current urban planning. It is a truly modern and scientific urban planning.

Second, this planning laid the foundation for the urban structure of Suzhou and the protection of the historical city today. The main roads in the central area of ​​Suzhou Ancient City that we see today are basically the same as the road planning layout in this planning.

Road planning map

The rivers preserved in the ancient city today are still the rivers selected for preservation in the original plan. The scenic spots and parks planned at that time are still there today; the strict measures on house demolition and reconstruction proposed in the original plan provided a basis for the preservation of a large number of historical buildings in the ancient city. The planning measures for the improvement of the streets and rivers in the city proposed at that time still have important practical significance today.

The inner city waterways of modern Suzhou