Exploring the Relationship between Urban Vitality and Street Centrality Based on Social Network Review Data in Wuhan, China

Han Yue,Xinyan Zhu

doi:10.3390/su11164356

Abstract

This study investigates the association between urban vitality and street centrality in Wuhan, China. Urban vitality was measured with social network review data. Street centrality was evaluated in terms of closeness, straightness, and betweenness in walking and driving mode. We constructed a square mesh to convert datasets of street centrality (segments) and urban vitality (points) into one unit for analysis. Geospatial visualization, a chi-square test, and correlation analysis were first employed to obtain an initial understanding of the spatial coupling relationship between urban vitality and street centrality. Then spatial regression models were applied to evaluate the significances and directions of the influences of street centrality on urban vitality. A geographical detector technique was utilized to further evaluate the magnitudes of these influences. The results suggest that street centrality plays an important role in shaping the spatial organization of urban vitality, and various street centralities presented marked differences in their association with urban vitality. More specifically, when considering street centrality in walking mode, betweenness affected urban vitality the most, followed by closeness and straightness. When considering street centrality in driving mode, straightness had the greatest influence on urban vitality, followed by closeness and betweenness.

Highlights

The performances of the Ordinary least square (OLS), spatial lag model (SLM), and spatial error model (SEM) were compared in terms of three metrics: log-likelihood at convergence, Akaike information criterion (AIC), and R-squared (R2)
Spatial models could better fit the observations than OLS could: the AIC of the OLS was much larger than in the SLM and SEM, while the log-likelihood and R2 of the OLS were smaller than those of the SLM and SEM
This study examined the association between urban vitality and street centrality in Wuhan, a megacity in China

Summary

Introduction

Urbanization processes in most Chinese cities share common characteristics, such as rapid and poor-quality sprawling, while vitality has commonly been underappreciated by urban planners and designers [1]. With a rise in income and enrichment in material wealth, people have begun to reconsider previous city development patterns and have called for creating vibrant and energetic urban space [2]. Jacobs [5] described urban vibrancy as the intensity of pedestrian activity on city streets, and well-organized dense functional spaces could generate adequate interactions and activities for creating vibrancy. Urban vitality has been regarded as the raw power and energy within a city [7], human activities in different places [8], and essential elements for achieving an urban quality of life [9]

Methods

Results

Conclusion