Study on the morphological evolution of Chinese urban cemeteries in the process of rapid urbanization: a case study of Nanjing

As an important element of fringe belt, urban cemetery has been studied by urban morphologists to reveal the evolutionary process of urban expansion. In China, with the reform of housing system in 1990s, Chinese cities have entered into a period of mushroom growth. Urban cemeteries, which were originally located on urban fringe belts, have been surrounded by new accretions, and then, inevitably, migrated continuously under economic pressures and planning controls. Taking Nanjing as a case study, this paper aims to study the general migration characters of urban cemetery in China with the concept of fringe belt and then analyze its motivations in context of economy, policies, social psychology and cultural customs. The study reveals that the migration of urban cemeteries in China has shown diversity and complexity: as fixation line features, large urban cemeteries had limited the free urban expansion in the Oriental concept of life and death but, under the great pressure of the last round of urban development, they have been broken through and disintegrated, then formed and acted as elements of new fixation lines after migration. The gap of morphological study in urban cemetery between China and the West is mitigated in this paper.