Conformity and variety: city planning in Taiwan during 1683–1895

This article examines the planning intentions and practices of sixteen administrative cities in Taiwan during 1683-1895, focusing on their relationship with the giant city system of Qing Dynasty. Since Taiwan was brought under Qing’s rule in 1683, sixteen cities were gradually planned and constructed as government seats to achieve spatial governance of new territory. These cities thus became a small but typical group within the entire city system, which included over 1500 members at that time. How were these cities planned and constructed in such remote, undeveloped territories? What principles and methodology had been strictly complied with or actively adjusted in their planning, facing the reality of various topography, unstable policies, diverse social demands, and changing situations of different times? This article attempts to answer the questions from four aspects: city site selection, city-wall shaping, functional facility configuration, and planning and construction sequence. Multiple study materials were employed in this research to reconstruct and analyse historical planning practices, including officially compiled local gazetteers, multisource historical records, digital elevation model(DEM), and field survey data. This study aims to enrich the understanding of city planning history in Taiwan, and to reveal these cities’ conformity and variety to the age-old Chinese city-planning tradition.