Nota sulle morfologie urbane transizionali come critica agli studi urbani in ambito cinese: la mappa tipologica di Hehua Tang a Nanchino

The aim of this paper is describing the epistemological background, the critical context and the scientific outcomes of some morphological studies on the urban fabrics of the Southern area of Nanjing (Jiangsu Province, China) driven by the “Transitional Morphologies” Joint Research Unit (based at Southeast University Nanjing and Politecnico di Torino).
The Hehua Tang area is located at the interior of the ancient city’s walls, as part of Nanjing’s Precious Historical City Conservation Zone. Its urban fabric is made by small courtyard-houses (shacks and old and permanent building artifacts) and it is the subject of some regeneration’s initiatives.
The residents are local people belonging to the low-income working class and migrant workers. The social status of inhabitants is the focus of the debate between developers, government and scholars, together with the new questions of real-estate ownership in China, the strongly-market-led urban regeneration in the fast capitalistic development of Chinese economy, and the role of urban heritage in policy strategies of the Chinese government.
The joint research unit worked on a typological map of the entire area in order to use it to describe its development, to understand its vocations and to figure out future regenerating projects. The result is here shown for the first time in its complexity, describing the urban structure based upon layers (substrata) of the ancient Ming capital city, paying a specific attention to the critical aspects of this experiment into the field of studies upon the urban morphology of the Chinese cities, masterfully opened by Jeremy Whitehand and Kai GU fifteen years ago.

Keywords: transitional morphologies, typological map, Chinese city, urban form, Italian morphological studies.