Featured Graphic. How Mixed is Beijing, China? A Visual Exploration of Mixed Land Use

Abstract

The combination of a legacy of socialist urban planning and the more recently established market economy in Beijing, China, is likely to create a mismatch between urban land-use plans and actual land use. Before China’s economic reforms of 1978, Beijing’s landscape reflected a more egalitarian premise and was dominated by large parcels and single-purpose zoning. In contrast, the city’s recent economic success, as evidenced by mushrooming financial districts, retail malls, and technology centers, might be expected to have resulted in more mixed development than was planned (Yang et al, 2013). In order to capture this mismatch, we compute a mixed land-use index (Frank et al, 2004) to try to address the question: “will the zoning plan and the actual land use reveal different levels of mixed development in Beijing?” The mixed index (M ) of a land lot is calculated as (, ... ,) , ln M pp in 1 ii R