中国历史城市地理的研究不仅关注历史时期城市的选址、形态与空间结构，也探索特定时空环境下的人对城市地理空间的认知。为提高福州历史城市地理的研究精度，需要在充分把握中国古代传统文献的同时，合理利用近代出版的大比例尺城市地图、中外各类人士的观察记录和近年来的城市考古发掘报告。从城市的外在形态及其内部的空间结构上看，清末福州的城市地理格局延续了中国古代治所城市的特点，也开始染上近代沿海口岸城市的色彩。这一时期，福州本地城居士人林枫撰写的《榕城考古略》和美国来华传教士卢公明出版的《中国人的社会生活》，各自从不同视角描绘晚清福州的城市风貌，反映出不同人群因文化背景和生活环境的差异，对福州城市地理空间形成了不同的认知。

The study of Chinese historical urban geography not only focuses on location, form and spatial structure of a city in historical periods, but also explores people's cognition to urban geographic space in a specific space-time environment. In order to improve research accuracy of historical urban geography of Fuzhou, it is necessary to make rational use of large-scale urban maps published in modern times, observation records from all kinds of people at home and abroad, and archaeological reports of Fuzhou city in recent years while making full use of Chinese traditional documents. Urban geography of Fuzhou in the late Qing Dynasty retained some characteristics of an ancient Chinese administrative city on the aspect of its external form and internal spatial structure, and began to have some factors of a modern Chinese coastal port city. During this period, Rong Cheng Kao Gu Lüe written by Lin Feng, a local resident of Fuzhou city, and Social Life of the Chinese written by Justin Doolittle, an American missionary came to China, respectively depicted Fuzhou city in the late Qing Dynasty from different perspectives, reflecting that different cognition of different people about geographical space in Fuzhou was formed because of their differences in cultural background and living environment.