Abstract
When a public health emergency occurs, a potential sanitation threat will directly change local residents’ behavior patterns, especially in high-density urban areas. Their behavior pattern is typically transformed from demand-oriented to security-oriented. This is directly manifested as a differentiation in the population distribution. This study based on a typical area of high-density urban area in central Tianjin, China. We used Baidu heat map (BHM) data to calculate full-day and daytime/nighttime state population aggregation and employed a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model and Moran’s I to analyze pre-epidemic/epidemic population aggregation patterns and pre-epidemic/epidemic population flow features. We found that during the COVID-19 epidemic, the population distribution of the study area tended to be homogenous clearly and the density decreased obviously. Compared with the pre-epidemic period: residents’ demand for indoor activities increased (average correlation coefficient of the floor area ratio increased by 40.060%); traffic demand decreased (average correlation coefficient of the distance to a main road decreased by 272%); the intensity of the day-and-night population flow declined significantly (its extreme difference decreased by 53.608%); and the large-living-circle pattern of population distribution transformed to multiple small-living circles. This study identified different space utilization mechanisms during the pre-epidemic and epidemic periods. It conducted the minimum living security state of an epidemic-affected city to maintain the operation of a healthy city in the future.
Highlights
Under the concept of people-oriented urban design [1], the interaction between human behavior and urban material space is the most important dimension to study the regulation of urban processes [2,3,4,5,6]
The population distribution and flow in a high-density urban area are the consequence of material space, functional space, and public policy
According to the technology roadmap, the results were obtained from the perspecAccording to the technology roadmap, the results were obtained from the perspective tive of population distribution and population tide characteristics during the pre-epiof population distribution and population tide characteristics during the pre-epidemic and demic and epidemic periods
Summary
Under the concept of people-oriented urban design [1], the interaction between human behavior and urban material space is the most important dimension to study the regulation of urban processes [2,3,4,5,6]. Researchers from different countries have begun to study the interactive relationships among population distribution and other factors, including urban function [13,14,15], urban spatial structure [16,17,18], and regional policy [19,20]. These studies have revealed many aspects of urban population distribution, but have concentrated on its static characteristics, which has limited value in actual daily life.
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