3.1 Urban development and living conditions in Xi’an

From the end of Qing dynasty to the mid 20th century, the Xi’an Walled City (XWC) equal to the city of Xi’an on the physical sense. The housing inside the city is traditional courtyard house with wooden and brick materials with private ownership. After the Republican Revolution of 1911, the total floor area of housing is 1500,000 sq.m. Since 1931, Xi’an was stepping into a high-speed road on the urban development point of view\cite{西安市档案局1995筹建西京陪都档案史料选辑}. (Central government started to consider alternatives for the capital city in 1937 while Republic of China officially declared war with Japan. Xi’an was planned to be the secondary capital of China. They initiate an auxiliary capital project in 1937, and a master plan in 1934).According to the data in 1949, the housing in total has reached to 2315000 sq.m, the average floor area per capital is 3.32 sq.m. We could see that each land plot size is rather small around 500 sq.m, with a average coverage of the land around 70%.