6. The Confucian code and city planning

For most of Chinese history, China was under the centralized rule of feudal dynasties. City planning was a function of the government, and unplanned city development was extremely rare. Consequently, city planning was based primarily on the Confucian code that held up the feudal system.

Starting in 1267, Kublai Khan (1215-1294), the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), spent twenty years building his capital city of Dadu on the site of present-day Beijing. The city was laid out on a square grid, and covered an area of approximately 50 square kilometers. A high wall surrounded the entire city, with three gates on the east, west, and south walls, and two gates on the north wall.

Archeological evidence indicates that the main thoroughfares, which formed a north-south and east-west axis through the city, were 28 meters wide. The secondary streets were 14 meters wide, and the alleyways were 7 meters wide. The layout of the city was extremely orderly, with clearly demarcated streets and districts. Dadu was planned on a grand scale. Beijing, the capital of the subsequent Ming and Qing dynasties, was built on the foundation of the Yuan capital.

Plan of Dadu, capital of the Yuan Dynasty 

The 13th century capital city of Dadu was built using the architectural principles of the Confucian classic Zhou Li: Kaogong Ji (Rites of the Zhou: Engineering References). This work, written 1800 years earlier, states: "When designing a capital city, it should be laid out in a square grid measuring nine by nine li (about 4.5 kilometers) per side, with three gates on each of the city walls. There should be nine streets and nine avenues, each wide enough for nine horse carts to pass abreast. The palace should be in the center of the city, with the ancestral temple on the left, temples to the deities on the right, office buildings in front, and a marketplace behind."