Abstract
In 1980s, the urbanization progress of Shanghai developed more rapidly than the past. This resarch tries to explai the process of settlement space change and the problems of new village planning in the riverside district from the case of Wang Jia Qiao Settlment (WJQS) .
WJQS is twenty kilometres away from the central city of Shanghai, and now there are one hunderd fifty-five people, It was formed by getting various advantages from a small river. Naturally, each family area (including housing lots and farmland) called Basic Family Unit (BFU) was divided by the river.
The development of WJQS has experienced three main periods as follows:
1) Had extened along the river since it was formed.
2) Enlarge to the south and north began in the 1960's.
3) When the twelve families moved to new housing lots of the settlment in 1983, the each traditional housing lots rebelonged to another family.
From analysing above, we found the reason of the change was the increase of the number of population firstly. At the each time the local people decided the size of housing lot by using the bay of traditional house. So that the bay be-came a Basic Space Unit (BSU) not only for housing but also for definning the outside space, and even to be kept in mind by the local residents.
The BFU and BSU were not changed. Still, the river has separated from the central of the settlment.
In the new village planning, the local goverment planner wants to centre twenty-seven settlments of the village and save the land for production. In the planning, each traditional settlment will be destroyed and the life of the residents will leave from the river by and of this century. The residents just had rebuilt new houses in the 1980's, so that only three percent people accept to move the new housing lots. From analysing above, this project has many problems.
Obviously, we must develop the another planning method to reconstruct village, paying much attentions to the re-gional and traditional composition of socity, space and culture in the village.
