Streets & Settlements

Streets & Settlements concerns how streets and lanes are arranged, how rivers and bridges connect, and the directions in which settlements extended during different periods. Under the ward arrangement, a central avenue divided the city into sections, residential areas formed a checkerboard of blocks, and walls separated the wards. Ward gates opened at sunrise and closed at sunset to six hundred drumbeats, and a curfew applied at night. Tang Chang'an used this ward arrangement. In the Song dynasty, the market-and-ward arrangement and the curfew were abolished. This class covers the division, enclosure, and opening and closing of streets and lanes; the enclosure and arrangement of buildings within a house compound remain with Courtyard Compounds.

In Yuan Dadu, main roads defined rectangular residential areas, with east–west lanes inside them called hutongs. Prescribed widths had three grades: approximately 37.2 meters, or 24 bu, for major streets; approximately 18.6 meters, or 12 bu, for smaller streets; and approximately 9.3 meters, or 6 bu, for hutongs. Hutongs connected with courtyard houses, joining lanes and compounds spatially. In 1949, Beijing had 6,074 named streets and lanes. Pingyao's ancient town has streets arranged in the shape of the character tu, with South Street as its central axis, four major streets, eight smaller streets, and seventy-two lanes. Pingyao's city wall was built in 1370, the third year of the Ming Hongwu reign; the ancient town was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997.

Zhouzhuang's settlement development can be described by period. In the Yuan dynasty, households clustered on the east bank of the Shihe River. In the middle of the Ming dynasty, the settlement expanded westward. In the early Qing dynasty, Nanbei Street and Zhongshi Street formed a T-shaped junction centered on Fu'an Bridge. Settlement on the east bank, westward expansion, and the meeting of streets beside the bridge correspond to these successive spatial arrangements. Zhouzhuang's Twin Bridges were built in 1843. This class concerns the distribution of households, the direction of streets, and the position of bridges; the arrangement of buildings within individual compounds falls outside its scope. Bridges as built structures, with their form and construction, belong to Bridges; this class covers only how a bridge joins the streets and lanes.

In Wuzhen, streets follow rivers, bridges connect with streets, and houses stand beside the water, alongside river landings, covered galleries, and buildings spanning streets. Its old streets and lanes include East Street and Guanqian Street. Settlement at Xitang began during the Tang and Song periods. Nine waterways converge in the ancient town, which has twenty-seven stone bridges and covers approximately one square kilometer. Covered walkways along the rivers join together for a total length of nearly one thousand meters. Ming and Qing buildings survive in the town, and the architectural group was designated a provincial protected cultural heritage site in 2011. Wuzhen's riverside streets and lanes and Xitang's waterways, stone bridges, and covered walkways fall within this class's treatment of settlement layouts.

Lineage halls, ancestral shrines and guild halls are also part of the fabric of a settlement; this class concerns where they stand among the streets and lanes and how they join them, while the timber work inside a building belongs to Timber Building. The Wangkou Yu Clan Ancestral Shrine in Wuyuan, the Jing'aitang in Xidi and the Wudianshi Cai Clan Ancestral Shrine in Jinjiang are examples this class can take.