How Leisure Venues Are and Why? A Geospatial Perspective in Wuhan, Central China

Abstract

Urban leisure venues proffer spatial carriers for citizens' leisure activities and their functions rely heavily on the spatial configuration, which have largely been ignored. The increasing needs for healthy leisure life and the availability of geospatial open data provide a rising opportunity to fill this gap. To examine the spatial distribution of leisure venues and explore its underlying dominating factors, we adopt geospatial analysis techniques-point pattern analysis and cluster analysis with multi-sources geospatial data in Wuhan, Central China. Results conclude interesting spatial discrepancy based on a three-level clustered pattern of 86,520 leisure venues. We find that (1) most clusters are in urban center along the Yangtze River with all 1st-level clusters and plentiful 2nd-level and 3rd-level clusters; (2) There are just sporadic clusters in suburban areas-no 1st-level, merely one 2nd-level and some few 3rd-level ones. Moreover, we demonstrate three underlying dominating factors (i.e., the policy, population and economy) and identify that (1) No systematic (spatial-relevant) leisure policy framework is formed; (2) Population density and commercial centers have positive correlation with the distribution of leisure venues. This study contributes to spatial-relevant leisure policy-making for facilitating healthy leisure life, optimizing leisure space, guiding people-oriented urbanization transition and promoting urban competence.

Leisure Motivation and Satisfaction: A Text Mining of Yoga Centres, Yoga Consumers, and Their Interactions

“…Yoga was long studied primarily as a medical therapy that treats physical pain [1,2] and illness [3,4], as well as mental anxiety [5,6] and depression [7,8], enhancing the sustainability of personal lives in terms of both physical wellness and mental happiness. However, yoga is seldom investigated as a leisure service or business [9][10][11][12], which affects the sustainability of consumers' personal lives by fulfilling their motivation and triggering their satisfaction [13][14][15][16]. This leaves a challenging but meaningful research gap for both academic scholars and industrial practitioners especially in China, because, according to Krishnan [17], there are more than 10,800 yoga schools and millions of yoga practitioners in this country, which is quite a huge leisure service market that is yet to be effectively explored or accurately understood.…”

Identification of Distorted Official Hospitality Statistics’ and Their Impact on DMOs’ Funding’s Sustainability: Case Notes from Slovakia

“…Gago et al identify taxation's important role among public policies affecting tourism as a sector [11]. The necessity of reliable, precise governmental and public open data has been demonstrated for use in the spatial modelling of environmental risks, modelling of administrative procedures, but also in partial tourism industries [12].…”

Decoding the Street-Based Spatiality of Urban Gyms: Implications for Healthy City Planning

“…In China, people's awareness of physical fitness has been continuously strengthened in recent years, with an obvious increase in the number of people taking part in physical exercises [10]. Further, plenty of research uncovers that the spatiality of sports facilities (e.g., gyms) is able to determine human well-being and quality of life as well as urban cohesion, vitality, and justice [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. In a sense, it is promising to optimize the urban design for healthy city development with a specific focus on spatially characterizing sportive facilities.…”