The Spatial Signature of the Enclosure Paradigm in Chinese Housing: Evidence from Twelve Housing Areas

‘Enclosure, hierarchy and repetition’ became a leading paradigm for housing design, especially in the West after WWII. This paradigm began to be questioned in the Anglophone literature, notably in early space syntax research. However, enclosed housing forms were a commonplace architectural solution for the past centuries in China. Consequently, little attention has been paid to date to the social constitution and spatial layout of Chinese enclosed housing areas, particularly from a configurational perspective. Therefore, this paper aims to unravel the spatial signature of the enclosure paradigm in China by comparing six pairs of gated and non-gated housing schemes in the city of Wuhan. We compared the paired cases in relation to: (i) their setting within the city; (ii) tensions between peripheral and internal measures of centrality; (iii) multi-scale spatial cores; and (iv) overlap between potential to- and through-movement. We also aggregated land-use data at the junction segment level and compared functional density and diversity as an additional measure of local vs. neighbourhood vitality. Our evidence suggests that compared with their non-gated counterparts, the gated housing estates are overall more segregated. Even if the gated estates occasionally demonstrate higher centrality on the periphery, their internal spaces are relatively isolated. Additionally, the gated compounds reveal a weaker overlap between movements, implying a lower likelihood of encounters. Furthermore, the gated estates tend to be mono-functional enclaves with lower functional density and diversity. We conclude that designing housing with the enclosure paradigm may contribute to an absence of internal vitality