Contemporary place memory amid diachronic structural change: Guoyang Ancient town, 1923–2023

In corridor-led urbanization, historic small towns risk a mismatch between spatial structure and local memory. Using Guoyang, China, as a diachronic case, this study reconstructs 1923/1966/2023 street networks and integrates Muratorian School, space syntax, and structured free recall into a framework centered on the Memory – Morphology Index (MMI) with LISA. Structural advantage shifts from the historical matrix route to a highway belt; system-wide, the median MMI is negative, indicating mild structure-leading, memory-lagging. Generational slices show young cohorts form an “old core and new axis” dual core, while overall migration is limited. These findings refine Cataldi’s “double urban life cycle” and motivate a dual-track strategy: structural optimization and memory gain.