东天山北麓城邑营建空间秩序研究OACHSSCD

The human settlements in China's northwest frontier regions have long embodied a profound correlation with surrounding topographical features from the aspects of survival and construction consciousness due to the unique natural geological environment.In China's northwest frontier region,the close relationship between human settlements and the surrounding topographical features has long embodied a profound consciousness of survival and constructional practice.The traditional principle of"assessing the terrain and examining the situation"guided site selection,aiming to not only harmonize with mountain and water systems to secure resources and natural defenses but also simultaneously address military defense and administrative control.As a result,stable and orderly living spaces were built in extreme environments.The northern foothills of the Eastern Tianshan Mountains have historically served as a critical transportation corridor connecting the interior with the Western Regions,and they are often known as the"throat of the Western Regions".[1]During the Qing dynasty,the Zhenxi Prefecture was established here,and the Barkol Manchu-Han Twin Cities were constructed,forming a strategic military and administrative center.These twin cities constitute a typical case of urban construction in the region,and their site selection,spatial layout,and historical evolution profoundly reflect the strategic relationships with mountain ranges,intermontane valleys,lake systems,and spatial corridors,embodying the idea of"commanding strategic terrain and controlling remote frontiers".[2] In this study,the Barkol Manchu-Han twin cities in the Qing dynasty were chosen as a historical spatial reconstruction sample.Based on period-specific historical investigation,the regional landscape-construction patterns and the spatial order of urban construction were investigated systematically through field investigation,critical historical textual analysis,and ArcGIS-based geospatial mapping and interpretation.Historical materials mainly included Qing-dynasty local gazetteers(e.g.,Zhenxi Ting Xiangtu Zhi and Xiyu Zongtong Shilüe),maps,and archival documents.A relatively complete historical spatial information basis was established by combining modern survey records and field survey data.The spatial registration and overlay analysis of multi-source data were completed using the ArcGIS platform.Moreover,the cartographic representation and spatial interpretation of city walls,water systems,transport corridors,and defense facilities were realized,thus achieving a multi-dimensional reconstruction of the historical spatial pattern. The research first systematically collated foundational information on the evolution of the humanistic space of cities,traced the changes in their spatial elements and functional layouts from initial construction to the late Qing dynasty,and summarized diachronic evolutionary characteristics.Then,a synchronic analysis of the spatial structure at given time sections was conducted to extract the compositional patterns of boundaries,axes,skeletons,and nodes.Based on this,it derived and identified the underlying spatial orders in urban construction and validated the indicative role of"assessing the terrain and examining the situation"as a fundamental tenet of spatial construction.The study concluded that the site selection and layout of the Barkol twin cities were not accidental but were instead a collaborative product of the overlapping effects of natural geographical conditions,military defense requirements,and humanistic construction traditions. Methodologically,the study constructed and applied a three-tier analytical framework composed of environmental basis,pattern framework,and order generation,integrating natural geographical constraints,functional military logic,and humanistic symbolic meanings into a unified analytical path.Several theoretical insights were extracted based on the historical reconstruction,thus offering a transferable methodological approach to understand the human-environment evolutionary trajectory and construction logic of multi-settlement urban systems in the broader northwest frontier region.The study confirms that urban spatial order is the outcome of multi-layered interactions among physical geography,historical culture,and construction experience.Its inherent stable structures and adaptive transformations have collectively shaped the cultural heritage landscape of"remote wilderness"in the northwestern frontier.It also provides technical means and guiding principles for the localized understanding and transmission of historical spatial patterns in similar county-level territories.