Abstract

Old town is like living fossil which has accumulated rich historical connotations; the one carrying the history of a region’s political, economic, cultural and ecological changes as well as the formative art created by collective labors and wisdoms of generations. The preservation of ancient Chinese dwellings and old towns began late; many historical architectures and traditional country fairs are forcibly removed during the transformation of old cities and towns, thus ancient towns with their original historical looks are becoming less and less. In comparison, the preservation and development of old western towns started earlier than China; with rich experience, they offer good examples for China, especially the successful developing way: eco-tourism. By comparing the preservation and development of traditional Chinese towns’ landscape features to that of western ones, this paper points out that the future development of old towns rely on proper handling of the relation between preserving and the feasibility of renewing, so as to maintain the landscape features of old towns in the course of sustainable development.

Key words: Traditional Changzhen, landscape environment, sustainable development, preservation.