Re-Examining Urban Vitality through Jane Jacobs’ Criteria Using GIS-sDNA: The Case of Qingdao, China

Abstract

This study focuses on the assessment of historic city vitality to address increasingly fragmented urban patterns and to prevent the decline of livability in older urban areas. In 1961, Jane Jacobs theorized urban vitality and found the main conditions that were required for the promotion of life in cities: diversity of land use, small block sizes, diversity of buildings with varied characteristics and ages, density of people and buildings, accessibility for all people without depending on private transport, and distance to border elements. Jacobs’ criteria for urban vitality has had an indisputable influence on urban researchers and planners especially in the Anglo-American context. This perspective has influenced the development of New Urbanism and similar planning policies, such as neo-traditional communities and transit oriented development, yet her theories have to be more substantiated in Asia’s developing cities, especially in China’s historic cities. In order to verify the significance of Jacobs’ urban vitality theory in Chinese historic cities, we develop a composite measure of 16 variables of built environment, and we test it using GIS-sDNA in a historic city with an aging population and low-income in Qingdao. A systematic approach to urban spatial analysis allows us to provide a detailed spatial interpretation of a historic city form. The results emphasize that historic cities vitality, far from being homogeneous, followed a multi-centered distribution pattern, which is related to the previous European planning of the region, where a grid-type pattern was more likely to disperse urban vitality. The results can serve as a useful framework for studying the livability and vitality of different areas of the city in different geographical contexts.

Jane Jacobs’s Criteria for Urban Vitality: A Geospatial Analysis of Morphological Conditions in Quito, Ecuador

“…However, the use of a small-scale unit of measurement, such as a 50 x 50-meter raster cell, has shown promise in identifying hot and cold spots. On the other hand, the use of a block (polygon) representation as a unit for calculation has been shown to clearly connect the specific urban layout to urban vitality, albeit at the expense of excluding some street and plot characterization [18,19,33,45,65,77]. In light of these findings, it is noteworthy to consider a combined approach that leverages both rastering and polygonal results, for instance by descending to the plot analysis, to comprehensively understand urban dynamics at a block scale.…”

“…Most studies of urban vitality have been developed in Asia, more specifically in China, Shenzhen [26][27][28], Hong Kong [29], Shanghai [27,30,31], Tianjin [27,32], Chengdu [27,33,34], Wuhan [27] and Qingdao [18,27]; in South Korea, Seoul [7,[35][36][37]; in Singapore, Singapore [20]; in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh [38], and in Turkey, Kayseri [39]. To a lesser extent, similar investigations have been conducted in North America, more precisely in the United States, with special attention in Seattle and Washington [11], followed by Manhattan [14,40], Portland, Brisbane, Indianapolis, and Chicago [14].…”

“…[48,49] approach the block scale but only examine the accessibility dimension. [18] proposes a decrease in scale, but not exactly defining the conditions per block. The fact of not accentuating the importance of the block scale could lead to a misunderstanding of the closest environment, the belonging space, and the essence of urban vitality [50].…”

Computational Analytical Methods for Buildings and Cities: Space Syntax and Shape Grammar

“…The 14 articles were authored by 41 international scholars, with a research focus on buildings and cities in Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Greece, Germany, Hungary, France, Sweden, South Africa, and the United States. The eleven original research articles on Space Syntax explore a range of built environments-courtyard houses [4], laboratories in history [5], art museums [6], mega-shelters [7], public libraries and their surrounding areas [8], a subway station [9], historic streets [10], rural settlements [11], and urban districts [12][13][14].…”

“…Wang et al [14] also use the GIS-sDNA method to examine the liveability and vitality of Qingdao's historical city in China, providing a detailed spatial interpretation of the city. The authors specifically developed a composite measure of 16 built environment variables, which they call a "JANE index" (derived from Jacobs' theory of urban vitality), and then analysed the spatial distribution and correlation of urban vitality.…”