Mosques and Markets: Traditional Urban Form on China's Northwestern Frontiers

The Chinese have long been known for their ancient and well-defined urban traditions. This article explores the ways in which those traditions were both maintained and transformed on China's multicultural northwestern frontiers in the Late Imperial period, and provides a brief overview of the contemporary situation. After a general discussion of traditional Chinese urban form and urban design on the frontier, the article uses case studies of four frontier cities — Lanzhou, Xining, Hohhot and Urumqi — to illustrate ways in which divided settlement morphologies, culturally distinct neighborhood landscapes, functional differentiation of space along ethnic lines, and cross-cultural diffusion of architectural and ornamentation styles contributed to the development of distinctive urban forms.