NANJING'S GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITION AND PRESERVATION OF ITS ANCIENT LANDSCAPE

Nanjing's geographical condition caused it to become a well-known capital many times in the history. Its mountains and rivers once bred great historical events and heroes. Nanjing as a city originated from 2 500 years ago, after then ten dynasties set up their capital in the land. Nanjing's mountain ranges and rivers were praised as a dragon stretching and a tiger couching by poets and artists for thousands years in Chinese history. From the beginning to the last dynasty the planning ideas of Nanjing's landscape had depended on the nature environment of mountains and rivers. Today we still can find some historical relics. Nanjing's natural landscape and human heritage are treasure resources for its future development. It is very important for contem-porary planning to construct a preservation system for the ancient's capital landscape and continue to display its tradition with mountains, rivers, lakes, ancient wall and historical avenues. But recent years there are sharp conflicts between heritage preservation and construction modernization. The continuous natural ranges historically titled “collected emperor's atmospere” had been destroyed. When new skyscrapers are built up one by one in the cities, it seems for us to feel much were lost. This paper suggests developing a new territory nearby the suburb for city modernization construction and conserving the historical landscape strictly. The new urban planning must destablish natural preservation zones around Nanjing to display its excellent cityscape tradition. There are Purple Mountain ranges and Black Dragon Lake in the east, the Rocky Hill in the west, the Rain Flower Terrace in the south and Yangtze River in the north. It is necessary to construct the green space system along the urban avenues and rivers.