Living Convenience in Daily Life and Its Interactive Relationship with Urban Form: A Data-Informed Measurement

Abstract

As a perceptual quality of life, living convenience is an essential social indicator in contemporary urbanism. A high degree of living convenience in daily life means people can meet most of their needs within a short travel time, bringing a series of bene fits in terms of liveability. However, it was diffi cult to measure this intangible, subjective issue quantitatively. Therefore, analysis of the relationship between various elements of urban form and living convenience is needed. This study explores an analytical approach to measuring living convenience using new urban data and geographic information system techniques. Following a city-scale computation in Shanghai and China, further exploration of urban form and living convenience were conducted. Speci fically, a building-level analysis covering the whole of Shanghai was achieved by computing the level of access and diversity of living services for each building within a 15-minute journey. Diff erent travel pa erns are involved, such as walking, bus, metro, and the distance decay of living service facilities. The largescale spatial distribution of living convenience is mapped to verify the validation of living convenience. Meanwhile, morphological features, block size, intensity of land use, and street pa erns on the street block level were mapped together with their living convenience. Further geospatial statistical analysis helps to bring indepth understanding. In short, this study provides a continuous measurement of an 'unmeasurable' social perception across large-scale areas, which helps to identify neighbourhoods requiring urban planning intervention. The insights into the spatial interaction pa erns between urban morphological features and living convenience can assist in urban design strategy and lead to a more liveable urbanism.