Abstract: In the process of rapid urbanization in China, urban landscape aesthetics has become an academic blank that we need to fill urgently. Urban personality is the main factor of urban landscape aesthetics. The pre-existing original ecological natural landscape constitutes the natural attribute of urban personality, and the historical and cultural accumulation constitutes the social attribute of urban personality. Returning nature to the city cannot be simply understood as planting rate and large lawn, but includes recreating nature and preserving wilderness.
Keywords: urban landscape aesthetics/urban personality/original ecological natural landscape/historical and cultural accumulation/recreating nature/preserving wilderness
I. Introduction
Since1960s, environmental aesthetics has risen in western academic circles. 1966 Ronald? Ronald Hepburn published his groundbreaking book Contemporary Aesthetics and Its Neglect of Natural Beauty, which is considered to be of fundamental significance to the development of environmental aesthetics. Before this journal, "this theme almost did not exist in philosophical aesthetics in the 20th century" [1]. In 2004, The Aesthetics of Natural Environment, edited by AllenCarson and ArnoldBerleant, was published. There is often a misunderstanding about environmental aesthetics in domestic academic circles, which holds that environmental aesthetics mainly focuses on the aesthetic problems of natural environment. In 2007, The Aesthetics of Human Environment, edited by Carlson and Burlington, was published. In the "introduction" of the book, the editor clearly pointed out: "The article" Appreciation of Aesthetics of Human Environment "edited in this volume was published in the sister collection of Aesthetics of Natural Environment edited by us earlier." So, why publish this book? The editor said that because "environmental research has been very clear, we are unlikely to find places that are not affected by human activities, and there are almost no real wilderness areas left on the surface of the earth" [2].
What is involved here is a basic problem of environmental aesthetics, that is, the understanding of the concept of environment. Different from the environment usually understood by domestic ecological aesthetics, the environment mentioned by environmental aesthetics is mainly human environment rather than natural environment, because most of the earth's surface we face is the environment transformed or influenced by human activities, and the core of these environments is the unique landscape formed by human living and activity areas such as cities, villages, factories and pastures. The logical conclusion is that the content of environmental aesthetics research certainly includes the aesthetics of natural environment, but more importantly, the aesthetics of human environment. In the humanistic environment influenced by human habitation and activities, the urban environment is the first, and the urban landscape and its aesthetics deserve our special attention. Urban landscape aesthetics is the core component of humanistic environmental aesthetics.
Cities are not modern phenomena, but are accompanied by the history of human civilization. "Several ancient civilizations have their representative great cities, but their main bodies are not cities. Urban civilization can be said to be an island surrounded by agricultural civilization in the sea of Wang Yang at most." [3] The industrial revolution marked the transformation of human history from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization, which led to worldwide urbanization, a large number of people concentrated in cities, and the scale of cities continued to expand, and cities quickly became the main body of civilization. Cities are not only the center of people's economic, political and social life, but also the symbol of human civilization. The degree of urbanization is regarded as an important symbol to measure the degree of social organization and management in a country and region, and urbanization is an inevitable process of human progress. At the beginning of the 20th century, about 65,438+00% of the world's population lived in cities, which reached 37.8% in 65,438+0975 and 45.3% in 65,438+0995. In 2006, about half of the population lived in cities, and this number will exceed 60% in 2030 [4].
The difference between developed countries and developing countries is that the degree of urbanization in developed countries is generally high; The similarity between developed and developing countries is that developing countries are experiencing the urbanization process experienced by developed countries. "Urbanization is the result of the industrial revolution and a symbol of modernization. In developed countries in Europe and America, urban residents account for about 70% ~ 80%, and even non-urban people are strongly influenced by cities. Today, the modernization of the third world is also a process of urbanization. " [5] Urbanization is the only way to modernization. As a rising developing country, China is in the process of rapid urbanization with a vast territory and a large population. At present, the urbanization level of China is only a little over 30%, and nearly 900 million of the 654.38+03 billion people live in rural areas. Modern agriculture in China needs the most farmers 1 100 million. In addition, the population of China will reach its peak in the middle of this century, about 654.38+0.5 billion, which means that in the next few decades, about 654.38+0 billion people will flow from rural areas to cities in China.
This has led to the rapid expansion of China city, and its spatial environment and material form have undergone great changes. Many problems, such as housing, employment and environment, emerge one after another. Among them, there is an urgent problem that has not attracted our attention because it is at the intersection of aesthetics and urban theory. This is the urban landscape aesthetics that needs our efforts to build due to the remarkable changes in the urban landscape, which has become an academic gap that needs to be filled urgently in our current academic research. According to the author's search results on CNKI Academic Journal Network, Yahoo, Baidu and other Chinese webpages and Yahoo English webpages, there are few related works on the topic of "Urban Landscape Aesthetics", which is extremely disproportionate to the current situation of rapid urbanization in China. With China society getting rid of general poverty and stepping into a well-off society through a well-off society, due to the practical needs of China's urban development, people require the city to change from livable in the past to living and living happily, and from functional city to aesthetic city. The important value of urban landscape aesthetics is increasingly prominent, and its development prospect is increasingly broad. The exploration and construction of its basic theory has been put on the agenda of China's aesthetic construction today.
Second, from practical to beautiful.
Cities are the fruits of human transformation of nature and the core of human environment. From the ecological point of view, the relationship between man and nature is a problem that urban construction must face, and the contradiction between human environment and natural environment runs through the whole process of urban construction. From the aesthetic point of view, how to evaluate the urban environment itself and how to deal with the relationship between the human environment and the natural environment, are they antagonistic? Can we achieve harmony from opposition? This is the basic theoretical premise that urban landscape aesthetics must consider. In recent years, the deterioration of domestic ecological environment has caused more and more extensive criticism. Starting from such a realistic context, domestic ecological aesthetics research is often devoted to expounding the modern significance of Laozi and Zhuangzi's "inaction" thought, forming a gradually stereotyped concept, namely "naturalization", which advocates that human attitudes towards nature should start with nature and not end with human intervention, and the conclusion is that human practical activities are bound to be harmful to the natural environment.
This understanding is based on the misunderstanding of western environmental aesthetics and ecological thought, and it is also inconsistent with the views of Carlson and Berliners. From the perspective of environmental aesthetics, human activities also participate in the creation of environmental diversity [2]. No matter in the city or the countryside, the heavy ears of wheat, the white sheep on the pasture, the rippling Summer Palace and the white pagoda in Beihai Park are all proofs of the diversity of human creation of environmental beauty. Even from an ecological point of view, nature can't and can't provide what human beings need. Only through human practice can the ultimate harmony between man and nature be achieved. From a global perspective, European countries, including France, have a long history of civilization and are regarded as ideal areas for global environmental protection, so they have special demonstration significance. ReneDubos, an American scholar, took France as an example to explain this problem: "The agricultural area in the French island region is located in the north of Paris, where human beings have lived since the late Stone Age and brought about profound changes. Before human habitation, this area was full of forests and swamps; If it weren't for the arrival of human beings, it would still be a wilderness. Under the influence of human beings, it has become a vibrant farmland, transforming forests and rivers, parks, gardens, villages and towns. Despite the war and other disturbances, the region has maintained its ecological diversity. At the same time, the region has always been rich. From the human point of view, this area is getting better and better. Compared with keeping this area in a wild state, everything today is not only more pleasing to the eye, but also feels better for most people. French island region is a typical example to reveal the relationship between man and the earth. The historical development of this area proves that human beings can profoundly change the earth's surface without destroying it. In fact, human beings can create new and lasting ecological values in harmony with nature. " [6]
This passage is of great significance to the ecological interpretation and urban landscape aesthetics in northern Paris, France. Including understanding the basic principle of the relationship between human environment and natural environment, we can adjust and correct our related misunderstandings: (1) In the relationship between human and nature, human beings are not doing nothing and not interfering, but sometimes they must profoundly transform the wild state of nature; (2) While transforming nature, human beings need to strive to maintain the ecological diversity of nature; (3) From the point of view of benefiting mankind, artificially transformed nature can be obviously superior to wild nature, and it is getting better and better; (4) From the aesthetic point of view, the transformed nature can be more pleasing to the eye and feel better than the wild nature; (5) More importantly, human beings can profoundly change the earth's surface without destroying it; (6) The conclusion is that human beings can live in harmony with nature because they have created new and lasting ecological values. From the perspective of urban landscape aesthetics, the following contents can be added: (7) Humans can create unique and lasting aesthetic values and live in harmony with nature; (8) Since this can be carried out in vast agricultural areas, it can also be carried out in smaller urban areas; (9) In addition to striving to maintain and realize the diversity of natural ecology, urban landscape also needs to be able to maintain the diversity of human landscape.
Cities are developed according to people's needs, and many problems and changes in urban construction today are closely related to people's understanding of cities. It is not easy to understand the city, because the city is a constantly flowing category, which lasted for thousands of years and spanned the east and west, involving complex historical, geographical and cultural factors. Up to now, the understanding of cities in domestic academic circles is mainly functional, and it is considered that cities are "areas with concentrated population, developed industry and commerce, where non-agricultural residents live together, and are usually the political, economic and cultural centers of surrounding cities" [7]. Cities are considered to include areas with high population concentration, areas with dense buildings and infrastructure, the result of high concentration of industry and services, and the center of market exchange [8]. These viewpoints mainly focus on the practical functions of the city in life, work and transportation, while the entertainment and aesthetic functions of the city, such as happy life and suitable travel, have failed to enter our field of vision.
There are objective reasons for this understanding that existence determines consciousness. Judging from the historical development of the city, the early cities were the product of royal politics, and the functions of the city were mainly administrative centers or military towns, magnificent palaces and towering and heavy walls. As a big book open to us, it is a historical interpretation of people's understanding of urban functions there at that time. After the industrial revolution, modern cities centered on production and exchange, and after the middle of the 20th century, cities developed rapidly into knowledge production and information distribution centers. As the birthplace of cotton textile industry, Manchester started the industrial revolution and became the pioneer of a big industrial city. Detroit, as the capital of the world automobile industry, once flourished; As the financial center of the United States, new york has a decisive influence on the world. These metropolises have written people's understanding of urban functions.
The same is true of China's urban development. In the early stage of urban development, due to the low level of productivity and the lack of material wealth, both the technical level and the investment in urban construction funds are mainly concentrated on the practical functions of the city. Even in the early stage of China's modern social development, this urban construction mode is also true. As a poor and backward developing country, it is not difficult for us to understand that in an era of great construction after long-term turmoil and war, the contemporary urban construction in China mainly focuses on practical functions. According to plekhanov's observation, the revolution has a special influence on contemporary people's aesthetic consciousness. Content replaces form, politics replaces art, and utility replaces aesthetics, which has become a remarkable feature of the revolutionary period [9]. In the radical era from China 1950s to 1970s, it is a fashion for women not to dress up, and new aesthetic concepts have not yet formed, and the aesthetic taste of historical traditions has been fiercely rejected. Any pursuit of aesthetic form and appearance is regarded as a stale interest associated with the exploiting classes in history, which is not allowed by the revolution. In such an atmosphere of the times, it is tantamount to dreaming to think about urban landscape systematically and deeply from the aesthetic point of view. However, with the improvement of China's economic strength and building technology, urban construction is upgrading from practical function to aesthetic function. The unity of practicality and beauty, and the harmony between man and nature are the inevitable trends of China's urban development in the future.
Third, the natural attribute of urban personality.
The appreciation of natural environment is based on the diversity of natural ecological landscape, and the appreciation of humanistic environment is based on the diversity of humanistic landscape. The natural landscape and human landscape in the city are closely related and interdependent, because the basic feature of the city is that human beings have established urban human landscape on the basis of natural primitive landforms, and nature and humanity, original landscape and reconstructed landscape in the city are inseparable. This determines that the basic feature of urban landscape is that different cities should have their own unique landscape, that is, aesthetic formal appearance, which constitutes the diversity of urban landscape, and the diversity of urban landscape requires people to understand the unique personality of the city. At present, China's urban landscape often leads to "aesthetic fatigue", because many cities give viewers an aesthetic psychology, that is, "practice makes people tired". Repeatedly watching similar or identical aesthetic objects will inevitably make viewers feel tired. The basic feature of aesthetic psychology is innovation and change, but many urban landscapes in contemporary China are just disappointing. Small and medium-sized cities often imitate big cities, and big cities imitate Hongkong and new york. At present, many cities in China have invested heavily in the construction of city squares, green spaces and buildings, which are monotonous and monotonous, and it is difficult to produce aesthetic feeling.
According to Kant, the first important difference between art and nature is that art is the creation of human beings [10]. The city has never been a purely objective thing. As a creation of human beings, it has been spiritualized by human beings. After thousands of years, it has developed from a relatively simple town in the early days to a metropolis today. Urban landscapes, including buildings, roads, bridges, parks and squares, are no longer in the rough practical stage, but are created according to the laws of beauty. There are endless street gardens and gardens in China today. The beauty of art lies in originality. Imitation and simple reproduction are taboos of art, and the life of art lies in its unique and distinctive personality. From this perspective, we can easily find that Venice is a water city, Bangkok is a Buddha city, and Los Angeles is a movie city. Many famous cities in the world have strong and distinct personalities. Different artistic personalities include both the diversity of natural landscapes and the diversity of human landscapes. The organic unity of the two is one of the main factors that constitute the beauty of urban landscape. Looking back on the contemporary urban construction in China, in the stumbling process of pursuing modern urban construction, provincial capitals imitate the capital, prefecture-level cities imitate the provincial capitals, and towns imitate the county towns. Many cities have lost their precious personalities, fallen into mediocrity and found it hard to be attractive.
Although the urban landscape is artificially constructed, the rich content of a city's personality is not given by people at will, but is bound to be restricted by objective conditions, including the specific geographical environment in which the city is located, the cultural and artistic traditions inherited from history and many other factors that define the city's personality. The specific geographical and environmental factors, that is, the original natural landscape, largely determine the personality of the city and constitute an inseparable and important part of the urban landscape. Venice must be a water city, because it is surrounded by the sea, and Lhasa, as a world-famous high-altitude city, can only be the Sunshine City. The natural features of the two cities are quite different, which is determined by the specific and pre-existing geographical environment. American scholar Richard? RichardHartshorne used the word "original landscape" in Nature of Geography, which refers to the original natural landscape of a certain area before human beings entered. It is the sum of all natural factors in a certain area, which is specifically interpreted as the visible and touchable surface outside the earth, including vegetation, bare land, ice and snow, and water [1 1]. Specifically, the elements of primitive natural landscape include topography, soil, climate, vegetation, water source, traffic location, etc., which have a vital impact on the emergence and formation of life and human activities, and also directly determine the appearance of the city.
Cities must be based on the original natural landscape, which cannot be selected and changed, and largely determines the appearance of different cities. Chongqing is a mountain city. Houses are built on mountains, and roads meander on winding mountains or consist of bridges and tunnels. Located in the North China Plain, the urban landscape of Beijing for hundreds of years is the Forbidden City and Hutong, the flat and straight Chang 'an Avenue and the endless skyline, which is very different from the natural terrain of Chongqing. There is an important concept in China's traditional aesthetics called "the help of mountains and rivers" and "carving dragons with a literary mind" "Looking for" said: "If it is a high mountain and dense forest, it is an Austrian house for real writing and thinking, but short words are scarce and detailed words are complicated. However, if Qu Ping can supervise the coquetry, it will still help him! " Taking Qu Yuan as an example, this paper clearly affirms the direct effect of natural geographical environment on literature. With the urban landscape increasingly becoming a public art built according to the law of beauty, we can safely say that in the process of urban landscape construction, the important role played by "the help of mountains and rivers" is surpassing and will far surpass the literary creation such as poetry, novels and movies.
Different from the natural landscape, because the city is the product of human historical activities, human ideas, aesthetic tastes and the level of scientific and technological development have a strong impact on the urban landscape. Even the original natural landscape must play a role in the city more and more through human activities. The main function of a city is to live, work and rest, which determines that urban landscape must be dominated by human landscape. The main parts include houses, office buildings, opera houses, cinemas, schools, hospitals, churches and other buildings, as well as public facilities such as roads, bridges, parks, vehicles and urban green belts. If in the ancient society with low productivity, the urban landscape was deeply and powerfully restricted by the local native natural landscape, forming different urban features and naturally having distinct personality, then today's advanced science and technology enables the urban landscape to carry out and implement people's subjective intentions to a greater extent, and people can get rid of the shackles of the local native natural landscape to a greater extent, push mountains and fill lakes conveniently, and copy and copy between different cities more conveniently.
These changed conditions put forward higher requirements for urban builders. We must restrain our subjectivity and consciously enhance our grasp and understanding of urban individuality. The pre-existing natural landscape constitutes the natural attribute of urban personality. The planning and construction of urban landscape should fully respect the original local topography and show its own characteristics in comparison with other cities. Chongqing is a famous mountain city, Chengdu is an inland plain city, and Guangzhou is the largest coastal city in the south. It has its own distinctive characteristics in the primitive geographical environment. From these aspects, we should grasp the natural attributes of urban personality and the basic orientation of style and features, strive to seek the harmony and unity of urban buildings, highways and other cultural landscapes with the original natural landscapes such as mountains, rivers, plains and oceans, and seek the further planning and development of urban landscapes on this basis. If only the personal interests of the rulers spoof the achievements project or the face project, distorting, castrating or even running counter to the natural attributes of the city's personality, it will cause irreparable damage to the future development of the city.
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