Digital Spatial Analysis of Non-Protected Historic Guild Halls in Beijing under the Historic Urban Landscape Framework

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-737-8_76How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Historic Urban Landscape; GIS; guild halls; cultural heritage; urban spatial design

Abstract

Rapid urbanization has accelerated the transformation of historic urban environments, creating new challenges for cultural heritage research and urban design. In Beijing, many historic guild halls from the Ming and Qing dynasties remain outside official cultural relic protection despite their important role in the city’s historical social and spatial structure. Their collective spatial characteristics and socio-spatial relationships have received limited attention in existing studies. This study investigates the spatial distribution of non-protected guild halls in Beijing’s outer city under the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) framework. Rather than treating guild halls as isolated architectural objects, the study interprets them as spatial nodes embedded within historical migration networks, urban functions, and layered urban development. To support this analysis, the research applies GIS-based spatial analysis and visualization methods to examine historical urban layering at the building scale. The results reveal significant clustering patterns associated with guild hall scale, functional type, and provincial origin. These patterns reflect how migrant social networks, urban functions, political regulations, and historical development jointly shaped the spatial organization of Beijing’s outer city. The findings further demonstrate that combining the HUL framework with GIS-based spatial analysis can reveal hidden socio-spatial relationships among dispersed everyday heritage sites. The study also suggests several implications for heritage-informed urban renewal and spatial design. Preservation strategies may consider maintaining the spatial clustering of small-scale guild halls around larger ones and using spatial mapping to connect same-origin guild halls into cultural routes. This research expands the understanding of non-protected guild halls within urban heritage studies and demonstrates the potential of integrating HUL theory with GIS-based spatial analysis for the interpretation of historical urban space.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yifan Yang
AU  - Jingyi Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/18
TI  - Digital Spatial Analysis of Non-Protected Historic Guild Halls in Beijing under the Historic Urban Landscape Framework
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Art Design and Digital Technology (ADDT 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 646
EP  - 654
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-737-8_76
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-737-8_76
ID  - Yang2026
ER  -