Challenges and Strategies of Spatial Form Control in Regulatory Detailed Planning for Historic Urban Areas: A Case Study of Regulatory Planning in Wuhan’s Historic Urban Areas

Formulating regulatory detailed plans for historic urban areas consistently faces a central challenge: balancing preservation and innovation while addressing practical issues such as functional decline, environmental risks, loss of vitality, and cultural discontinuity. Accordingly, in response to spatial form control requirements of territorial and spatial planning in the new era ‒ namely, integrating fragments into a coherent whole, harmonizing differences while seeking commonality, preserving authenticity, and guiding micro-level spatial development through macro-level spatial imagery ‒ this paper proposes a series of planning strategies. These include figure-ground control to restore urban fabric, typological control based on spatial form division, prototypical control by tracing origins, and imagery control to maintain cultural continuity. The application of these strategies in the regulatory detailed planning of Wuhan’s historic urban areas demonstrates their feasibility and practicality, offering a reference for similar planning efforts in other historic urban areas.