Urban public space quality evaluation methods and practices in China

Abstract

As the focus of human settlements in China shifts from incremental to quality improvement, scientific assessment and quantitative research on urban public space quality are urgently needed. However, there is no research to review and summarize the progress of urban public space quality evaluation of Chinese publications. Through a systematic review, this study screens the relevant literature of China National Knowledge Infrastructure and conducts statistical analysis on the 43 included studies, including the publication time, authors’ field, study area, study dimension, index system, method and purpose. It is found that Chinese studies on urban public space quality evaluation have developed rapidly in the last five years, and the study objects mainly focus on street space. A few studies (17, 32.6%) can focus on both physical space characteristics and human perception. Compared with traditional methods such as questionnaire survey and field survey, street view images combined with machine learning technology is now the most commonly used method to measure public space quality. The purposes of the existing studies mainly focus on the space quality evaluation itself (22, 51.2%), and the optimization of measurement methods and the externalities, influencing factors and mechanisms of public space quality need to be further studied.