Multi-Dimensional HGIS Analysis of the Taiyuan Historical Urban Area: Morphological Evolution, Road Accessibility, Land-Use Transformation, and Conservation-Renewal Implications

Historic urban areas in inland resource-based cities are often reshaped by overlapping changes in roads, public services, industry, housing, and everyday land use. However, these changes are not always clearly connected to differentiated conservation and renewal decisions. Taking the Taiyuan historical urban area as a case, this study aims to clarify how multi-period historical spatial evidence can be used to interpret morphological evolution, road accessibility, land-use transformation, and their conservation-renewal implications. Standard deviational ellipse analysis, kernel density estimation, and space syntax were used to separately examine urban form, land-use concentration, and road-network accessibility. Taiyuan changed from a compact walled city into a complex urban structure involving internal infill, local extension, and functional reorganization. The historical core retained its importance for commercial services, public administration, and highly accessible streets. New clusters appeared near peripheral transport nodes and residential expansion areas. The road network became more regular and better connected. Land use shifted from residential-administrative embeddedness to a differentiated pattern. Based on the three lines of evidence, four conservation-renewal zones are identified: key conservation, fabric repair, adaptive reuse, and coordinated renewal. Beyond the Taiyuan case, the study provides a case-based approach for linking historical map translation, HGIS analysis, and conservation-renewal zoning in inland historic urban areas.