Study on Historic Urban Landscape Corridor Identification and an Evaluation of Their Centrality: The Case of the Dunhuang Oasis Area in China

With the development of international cultural heritage, the positive shift from historic environments to historic urban landscapes has been explored in China. At the same time, China is also trying to extend its heritage corridors to historic urban landscape corridors; thus, the spatial organization characteristics and themes of historic landscapes are being explored. This study took the Dunhuang Oasis area as an example and, based on regional, cultural, and natural heritage sites and man-made environmental characteristics, identified and evaluated historic urban landscape corridors. The least cumulative resistance model was applied to identify historic landscape corridors, and the multicenter evaluation model was used to classify the historic landscape corridors. From the perspective of corridor identification, the military defense and historic landscapes of the city ruins together reflect the human need for “city administration–border defense–ancient trade and commerce”. Grottoes and scenic landscapes are more dependent on the Gobi Desert, mountains, and other areas intertwined with the oasis. The drainage system and water conservancy landscape consists of four stable landscape corridors containing east, west, north, and south canals, which are the basic driving force for the growth of the town. From the corridor hierarchy, we studied layer formation from the Dunhuang urban area, the western and northern local oasis dry canal, Mingsha Mountain–Crecent Spring, etc., as interconnected trunk corridors. The periphery of the Dunhuang urban area encompasses the southern trunk canal, southeastern Mogao Grottoes–Sanwei Mountain road, and other branch corridors. This study determined the composition and level of importance of historic landscape corridors, while at the same time enhancing the visual representation and skyline organization, which can be used for territorial spatial planning and research in functional urban areas.