The Relationship between Urban Vibrancy and Built Environment: An Empirical Study from an Emerging City in an Arid Region

Abstract

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.

Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease and Their Influencing Factors in Urumqi, China

“…The average annual temperature is 7 °C, the average annual precipitation is 280 mm, and the evaporation is 2730 mm [ 23 ]. Urumqi is an oasis city located in an arid region, and one of the most important rising cities in northwestern China and Central Asia [ 24 ]. Benefiting from the One Belt and One Road policy, Urumqi as important node city, has witnessed rapid economic development [ 25 ].…”

Urban Food Takeaway Vitality: A New Technique to Assess Urban Vitality

“…Second, areas suitable for urban small-scale catering industry development will often promote other activities, such as recreation and rest [76]. Finally, compared with the large-scale catering and service industries, urban small-scale catering industry has a greater spatial flexibility [77,78]. With this kind of space flexibility, the transportation of catering industry can be more convenient, and the existing vitality of the city can be more accurately expressed, which is the direct embodiment of urban spatial quality.…”

Spatial Distribution and Mechanism of Urban Occupation Mixture in Guangzhou: An Optimized GeoDetector-Based Index to Compare Individual and Interactive Effects

“…However, the mechanism of a geographical phenomenon (residents' spatio-temporal distribution in this study) is comprehensive and complex, this is, it is not caused by a single aspect [21]. Therefore, few existing studies were able to analyze the coupling or interactive effects between factors [37][38][39][40][41], which was essential to the exploration of the mechanism. A popular quantitative mechanism uncovering technique called geographical detector model (GeoDetector) was adopted in this study to explore the individual influences and interactive effects of potential driving factors [49][50][51][52].…”

“…Meng et al, explored the association between urban vibrancy and landscape characteristics with review data via a regression model in Shenzhen [40]. Fu et al, measured the urban vibrancy with real-time population distribution data and small catering business data, and its mechanism was explored with a geographically weighted regression model in Urumqi [41]. Generally, occupation is the basic diversity and classification of residents, and residents from all walks of life together form the society and city [10].…”