On the other hand, the question on types and typological processes are still neglected due to the complete lack of exploration of the concepts of Muratori and Caniggia

This deficiency had certainly influenced the contemporary absence of awareness towards the value of vernacular urban heritage, that produced dramatic effects. Just like many Italian historical centres of the 50s, threatened by modernists anti- traditional projects, today the old Chinese cities are demolished to leave room to international style skyscrapers or fake neighbourhoods. As Hao Deng says, in fact, "there are conditions that existed in the 1950s in Italy with which Chinese architects may be familiar, such as rapid urbanization, population mobility, threatened traditional urban fabrics, massive amounts of public housing, and urban Construction fluctuating with political pressures". At that time Caniggia and Muratori literally saved many Italian historical quarters starting to introduce urban typo-morphological studies. Maybe an improvement of the urban morphological studies on the Chinese city, adopting the Italian Typological school's methods can be very fruitful. This approach can really represent a more sensible and socially sustainable way to restore identity and to establish continuity with the past in local areas progressively de-contextualized by the market- driven development. However, it is important to highlight that the Chinese cities are ontologically different from those faced by Muratori. Starting from the radically different conception of the city, that in China traditionally has always highlighted concepts like "cosmology" rather than "morphology" and where it is the exception or the symbol to describe the urban form rather than ordinary buildings. This translates first into a practical scarcity of data, in fact, "true ground floor plans of cities in historical periods have been largely absent, which makes the plans' analysis of Chinese cities extremely difficult". Secondly, some concepts particularly crucial in Italian and Western cities may not be essential to analyse the urban blocks in the Chinese context. For these reasons, the method needs still to be reconsidered to the specific conditions of Chinese historical urban areas.

PROBLEM FIELD

The vernacular district of Hehua Tang in the Old South Town of Nanjing represents an endless source of information to understand what really means tradition in Chinese cities. This area, in fact, is one of the last authentic residential areas of Nanjing and it is still rich in architectural heritage embedded in a clear historical pattern. However, as a result of the rapid development of urbanization, the area is nowadays suffering the consequences of a progressive urban marginalization. Due to the problem of physical ageing and loss of intangible culture, the Hehua Tang district is starting to lose its unique historical and cultural features. In a certain sense, it sums up, as emblematic case, the precarious conditions of historic neighbourhoods in contemporary China: suffocated by coarse-grained high rises, symbols of the market-oriented economy; threatened by "conservation" policies, which have already denatured the surroundings; degraded by a continuous status of marginalisation, that gives to the settlement a "slum-like" appearance. It is within this background that first, the Design Unit of professor Marco Trisciuoglio and then this master degree thesis, started to think a new way to renew Chinese historical districts through the use of a targeted typo-morphological study.

The research overlaps two points, the first it is about exactly the morphological principles on which the area has evolved over the centuries and so it considers reasons inherent to the architectural shapes. The second instead, look to the scenarios through which the development of the areas could be realized, considering factors related to urban economy and politics. In this second part, the concepts of ownership and real estate market are particularly crucial elements to understand how to face an urban regeneration in a Chinese context. In conclusion, to sum up, all the knowledge acquired by the analysis, a new strategy for the urban renewal of the area is defined. Having as basis the common interests of the different stakeholders, four design suggestions are finally outlined with the aim to became the starting point of a gradual, sustainable renewal of the whole Hehua Tang.