Analyzing the Spatiotemporal Patterns in Green Spaces for Urban Studies Using Location-Based Social Media Data

Ullah Ullah,Khan Khan,Ebrahimpour Ebrahimpour,Wan Wan,Haidery Haidery,Luo Luo

doi:10.3390/ijgi8110506

Abstract

Green parks are vital public spaces and play a major role in urban living and well-being. Research on the attractiveness of green parks often relies on traditional techniques, such as questionnaires and in-situ surveys, but these methods are typically insignificant in scale, time-consuming, and expensive, with less transferable results and only site-specific outcomes. This article presents an investigative study that uses location-based social network (LBSN) data to collect spatial and temporal patterns of park visits in Shanghai metropolitan city. During the period from July 2016 to June 2017 in Shanghai, China, we analyzed the spatiotemporal behavior of park visitors for 157 green parks and conducted empirical research on the impacts of green spaces on the public’s behavior in Shanghai. Our main findings show (i) the check-in distribution of users in different green spaces; (ii) the seasonal effects on the public’s behavior toward green spaces; (iii) changes in the number of users based on the hour of the day, the intervals of the day (morning, afternoon, evening), and the day of the week; (iv) interesting user behavior variations that depend on temperature effects; and (v) gender-based differences in the number of green park visitors. These results can be used for the purpose of urban city planning for green spaces by accounting for the preferences of visitors.

Highlights

Urban green spaces and public green parks are strategically important for the quality of life in our increasingly urbanized society
We aimed to answer the following study questions: (i) What are the spatial characteristics of the selected parks, and how do these characteristics relate to park visits? (ii) How does the time of day and season of visits to green spaces affect the general public’s behavior toward parks? (iii) How does the temperature affect the general public’s behavior toward green park visits? In order to better understand the connection between green space and user behavior, we investigated the spatiotemporal patterns of users in urban green spaces using a large-scale dataset from July 2016 to June 2017
After filtering the data collected from Weibo, 157 green parks were selected for this study

Summary

Introduction

Urban green spaces and public green parks are strategically important for the quality of life in our increasingly urbanized society. Urban areas currently account for half of the global population and are expected to grow to two-thirds of the world’s population by 2050 [2]. With this fast urbanization of cities, an emphasis is being placed on ensuring the well-being of urban residents [3]. Urban planners are attempting to integrate green places into urban areas since green spaces are believed to enhance the health and quality of life of residents in urban areas. Given the significance of green spaces, researchers have shown interest in this subject, increasingly so in recent years [9]

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