Review on Main Characteristic of Historical City as an Urban Design Alternative: A case study in Cakranegara City, Indonesia

The main problem of conserving old Indonesian cities is how their changes are still accepted without eliminating their main characteristics. Cakranegara is one of the old cities in which its main characteristic should be known. The griddesigned pattern of Cakranegara is an architecturally beautifulHindu Balinese pattern with its own unique identity. The study of the main characteristic of Cakranegara was done by matching the basic principle of the social culture and religious beliefs with the empirical field data. The research adopted four methods: questionnaire, cognitive mapping, interview, and visual observations. The data of the questionnaires wasanalyzed by descriptive statistics, while the data of the cognitive mapping, interviews, and visual observations were analyzed qualitatively. The next was then the assessment of the design of settlement blocks, the crossroads, the urban design, the spatial orientation and hierarchy by triangulation process. Thus, the basic principle of the social culture and the religion results in the realization of the main characteristic of the historical city of Cakranegara