Abstract

‘City’ is now a terrain inviting hot debates. The popularity of the issue of ‘city’ in China today might have something to do with the popularity of it worldwide, since books written by writers like Lewis Mumford have been translated into Chinese. Yet, more importantly it is an issue of Chinese characteristics. I mean, questions about city development are real and serious for the Chinese people. These questions have stimulated experts to think hard about city design and construction, and the questions have aroused the interest of aestheticians as well. The range of the discussion about city construction is very broad, since different disciplines can scrutinize it from different perspectives and thus arrive at conclusions of different types. Diversified as the researches might be, there is a question which seems to me very fundamental, and that is: what is the beauty of a city? When this question is proposed, aesthetics makes its way into the study of city development.