Yintai — Yintai Map Poster & Print

ແຜນທີ່

Yintai Map Poster & Print

Yintai is one of the older urban districts of Tongchuan, a prefecture-level city in the hills north of Xi'an, on the southern edge of the Loess Plateau. The district grew with coal mining in the second half of the twentieth century, and its layout follows the terrain very closely: streets run along narrow valley floors, and buildings climb the lower slopes wherever the ground allows.

From above, the result is a linear city rather than a grid. Roads, a railway line and river channels run together in the valley bottoms, splitting and rejoining where valleys meet, and the built-up area forms long ribbons between steep, eroded hillsides. The loess terraces and gullies around the district leave broad blank areas that make the street pattern look almost like a river system itself.

As mining declined, Tongchuan has worked to reshape itself, planting bare slopes and developing newer areas further south. A Yintai map poster records the older valley city, a place whose form was dictated by coal and ridgelines, and it suits people with family ties to the mines or anyone drawn to maps where terrain rather than planning sets the shape.