Evaluation of Urban Spatial Structure from the Perspective of Socioeconomic Benefits Based on 3D Urban Landscape Measurements: A Case Study of Beijing, China

• Published in: Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 14; no. 21; p. 5511
• Main Authors: Liu, Yujia, Meng, Qingyan, Zhang, Jichao, Zhang, Linlin, Allam, Mona, Hu, Xinli, Zhan, Chengxiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.11.2022
• Subjects: Buildings; Cities; city functions; Construction; Coordinate transformations; Delphi method; Economic growth; Evaluation; GDP; geographical detector; Gross Domestic Product; Land use; Land use management; Light; Light intensity; Luminous intensity; random forest; Remote sensing; socioeconomic benefits; Socioeconomic factors; Socioeconomics; Software; Sports facilities; Statistical analysis; Subjective assessment; Urban areas; Urban development; Urban environments; Urban planning; urban spatial structure; Urban structures; Urbanization; Beijing China; China
• ISSN: 2072-4292; 2072-4292
• DOI: 10.3390/rs14215511

Urban spatial structures (USS) play an essential role in urbanization. Understanding the impact of USS patterns on their socioeconomic benefits is crucial to evaluating urban structure quality. Previous studies have, primarily, relied on statistical data and have significant temporal consistency and spatial accuracy limitations. Moreover, previous evaluation methods mainly determined the weight of indicators based on subjective assessments, such as the Delphi method, without integrating the actual socioeconomic benefits of complex urban systems. By measuring the two-dimensional (2D) urban functional landscape patterns and three-dimensional (3D) building forms of the city and considering the level of urban socioeconomic vitality as revealed by nighttime light intensity (NTLI), this study explores the influence of urban spatial structure on socioeconomic vitality. It provides a new perspective for evaluating the USS level. Furthermore, a comprehensive index, namely the Spatial Structure Socioeconomic Benefit Index (SSSBI), was constructed to quantify the socioeconomic benefits of USS. The results showed that (1) the impact of spatial structure on NTLI differs significantly with the distribution of urban functional landscape patterns and building forms. (2) The combined effect of any two spatial structure factors on NTLI was higher than the effect of each factor separately, indicating that multiple dimensions can improve urban spatial construction. (3) This study quantitatively extracts the characteristics of USS from multiple scales, which helps to find the optimal evaluation scale and build a scientific and objective evaluation model. The results showed that the USS assessment based on the SSSBI index is practical. This study could provide a reference for the government’s urban planning and land-use decisions.