Up-Down Nine and Five-Foot Way: Characteristics of Cityscape in a Cultural Perspective

The paper explores the central question of how to identify architecture and its meaning that crossed the territory line in a cultural perspective. By analyzing the buildings and spaces with certain key dimensional aspects, the authors have studied one of the most typical streets in Canton, the Up-Down Nine and its Five-Foot Way. This paper argues that the characteristics of cityscape covers aspects of surface structure, flexible compressive components, pattern forming process, material proto-structure, exactitude of the connections between components, as shown in the case study, all weave together to form the image and identity of the city in history. By exploring the cultural characteristics of urban space in Canton, as well as the genes that produced the Up-Down Nine street of Five-Foot Way pattern, this study aims to explain the street forming process by comparative study on Canton cityscape with Singapore’s since the 19th century linked with culture.