Creating a vital and lively urban environment is an inherent requirement of urban sustainable development, and understanding urban vibrancy is helpful for urban development policy making. The urban vibrancy theory needs more empirical supplementation and more evidence for the effect of the built environment on urban vibrancy. We use multisource urban spatial information data, including real-time population distribution (RPD) data and small catering business (SCB) data; quantitatively measure urban vibrancy; and build a comparative framework to explore the effect of the built environment on the urban vibrancy of a northwestern emerging city in China. The results demonstrate that the two urban vibrancy metrics present a spatial distribution pattern that is high in the south and low in the north areas of the city with significant spatial aggregation. Land-use intensity and diversity have strong positive effects on urban vibrancy but present a different pattern of effects on the two vibrancy measures. The influences on urban vibrancy of distance to the district center and distance to the nearest commercial complex are spatially complementary in the study area, and the effect of accessibility factors is weak. Our findings suggest that a somewhat cautious approach is required in the application of these classical planning theories to Urumqi.
Considering various challenges and complexity in sustainable development, there is a need to enhance our understanding of the multidimensionality of spatial inequality (SI). This study proposed a multidimensional equality development index and empirically examined this using a case study of China. The dominant mode of SI has gradually changed from coastal–inland inequality to core–marginal inequality. The five dimensions of SI—economic vitality, innovation capacity, green growth capacity, social amenities, and inclusion and natural amenity—are correlated, and inequality in innovation capacity and economic vitality are major contributors to overall SI in China. A catching‐up effect in development exists across cities. The multidimensional inequalities are rooted in a geographical context and related to size, leading to differentiated evolutionary paths and trends. The proposed multidimensional assessment framework can be applied to other countries to reveal the complexity of inequality and enable the identification and management of barriers.
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