ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a social-spatial analysis of the relations between the natural landscape, urban space, and social life of Hangzhou – capital of China during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279). Focusing on the transformations of key landscape sites in and around the city, it reveals an urban–rural dynamic essential for daily life of the population and social development of the city. It argues that a new “paradigm” in Chinese urbanism emerged in Hangzhou of Southern Song, one in which free combinations of the city and the landscape generated an open and vital realm in which urban societies could prosper and be sustained.
