Study on the Morphological Evolution and Regeneration Strategy of Streets in Guangzhou's "Nancheng" Area: From the Perspective of Social Anchor Network

"Nancheng" is a historical district with a special form, located in the center of Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, which was historically enclosed by the southern city wall of Guangzhou. Shaped by multiple factors such as the evolution of natural geography, the construction of urban facilities and the change of business formats in different eras, this area has formed a complex and organic street fabric. In the evolutionary history of Nancheng, there have been many anchor spaces to maintain public life, attracting the gathering of different groups of people, carrying the public life of a variety of people, facing some urban problems but also full of potential for urban regeneration. From the perspective of "social anchor network", this study aims to analyze the evolution process and mechanism of the street system in Nancheng, the relationship between space and social interaction, and explore related practical strategies by using urban morphology as a tool. "Anchor" is a common phenomenon in human society, and the correlation between social anchors and geographical space has been preliminarily discussed in the previous theoretical construction and community revitalization practice, and the positive role of "anchor institutions" in local communities has been widely demonstrated. Therefore, this paper mainly focuses on exploring two questions: first, the relevance of street space and social anchors in the Nancheng area, and what kind of interaction mechanism exists in the historical evolution of the city; The second is to respond to the current urban problems faced by the Nancheng area based on social anchors and historical experience. In response to the first question, this paper analyzes the documents related to the Nancheng area in the history of urban construction in Guangzhou, combined with important historical events such as the city's water system, city walls, roads, and urban modernization. It is observed that the influence of street publicity and anchor points adjust to each other to reach balance or get out of control in the urban evolution cycle, and this paper proves that the streets of Nancheng are the external spatial medium for constructing the social anchor network. In order to solve the second problem, this paper uses the methods of historical pattern extraction, current situation analysis and design strategy deduction. This paper proposes the design idea of using the campuses that are widely distributed in the region as anchor institutions, and the spatial mode of "gateway", "corridor" and "bridging" that closely combines the street space with the social anchor. Then, the plots where the three campuses including Guangzhou No. 3 Middle School are located are selected for design strategy deduction, and the anchor activity form of campus + community of "Theme Week" is proposed, as well as the design method of building the street through elastic strategy, visual strategy and interactive strategy. In general, this study re-extracts the historical concept of "Nancheng" into the study of contemporary urban problems, and finds some commonalities of urban morphological characteristics in the region, which makes up for the shortcomings of related research. Based on history, some spatial models that can still be used for reference in the contemporary era are proposed, which provides some new urban design ideas for the community construction of anchor institutions.