Hotspot Detection and Spatiotemporal Evolution of Catering Service Grade in Mountainous Cities from the Perspective of Geo-Information Tupu

Abstract

Catering services are an essential part of urban life. The spatial structure and evolution of catering services can reflect the characteristics of an urban structure to a certain extent. In this study, we selected the main urban area of Chongqing, a typical mountainous city, as the research area. According to data sources for 200,000 catering POI data points in 2015 and 2020, we extracted the hotspots according to catering service grade based on kernel density. We quantitatively analyzed the spatiotemporal structure of catering services in the mountainous city. In addition, we used digital field hierarchical structure Tupu and generalized symmetric structure Tupu to identify the spatial morphology and evolution characteristics to enhance the understanding of geoscience trends. The results showed that (1) the distribution of catering services was statically consistent with the “multi-center group” distribution of the mountainous city and dynamically similar to the “sprawling leap” development of the mountainous city where it developed from independent points to cross mountains and rivers. Moreover, we found that there was a tendency of adhering development between groups. (2) From the perspective of symmetrical distribution, the symmetrical distribution of the catering industry reflected a certain generalized symmetrical structure with mountains and rivers in the mountainous city. Furthermore, the city tended to develop symmetrically along the topography, thus forming the symmetry of economic geography.