Focused on realistic problems of the spatial and functional conversion of Chinese historic towns during the new urbanization period, the article puts forward the preservation thought based on motivations of urban culture, through the analysis of internal causes of urban culture. In the four aspects of human settlement culture and living space, functional culture and functional space, historic culture and archeological site space and spiritual culture and humanity space, the article discusses specific preservation strategies concerning preservation and inheritance, hoping to enrich theories of the existing methodologies on the preservation of historic towns.