A New Method for Identifying the Central Business Districts with Nighttime Light Radiance and Angular Effects

Abstract

Central business districts (CBDs) play a crucial role in urban economic activities. Thus, the location and boundaries of CBDs identified by the unified standards are essential for comparative analyses in urban geography. However, past research mainly applied specific data or sensitive methods to delimitate CBDs within local knowledge in the case study, there remains no automated standardization technique for identifying and delimitating CBDs across the globe. This paper proposed a new method for identifying CBDs based on nighttime lights (NTL) to overcome the above limitations. The main advantages of this method include (1) the use of available high-quality global Black Marble products, which are the basis of a standardized delineation of CBDs and (2) the use of more characteristics of CBD (i.e., the brightness) and NTL negative angular effects that can reflect high-rise building. The proposed method was employed in 14 cities in China and the U.S., and the results showed that China cities needed five NTL indexes and U.S. cities needed two NTL indexes to distinguish CBD and non-CBD successfully. Therefore, our approach is recommended for CBD detection and delineation over large areas.