Identifying subcenters with a nonparametric method and ubiquitous point-of-interest data: A case study of 284 Chinese cities
Ying Long, Yimeng Song, Long Chen
Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 49(1), 58-75
Urban spatial structure, which is primarily defined as the spatial distribution of employment and residences, has been of lasting interest to urban economists, geographers, and planners for good reason. This paper proposes a nonparametric method that combines the Jenks natural break method and the Moran’s I to identify a city’s polycentric structure using point-of-interest density. Specifically, a polycentric city consists of one main center and at least one subcenter. A qualified (sub)center should have a significantly higher density of human activity than its immediate sur- roundings (locally high) and a relatively higher density than all the other subareas in the city (globally high). T reating Chinese cities as the subject, we ultimately identified 70 cities with polycentric structures from 284 prefecture-level cities in China. In addition, regression analyses were conducted to reveal the predictors of polycentricity among the subjects. The regression results indicate that the total population, GDP , average wage, and urban land area of a city all Corresponding authors: Yimeng Song, Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China. Email: yimsong@polyu.edu.hk EPB: Urban Analytics and City Science ! The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2399808321996705 journals.sagepub.com/home/epb Long Chen, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, China. Email: longchen@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn 2022, Vol. 49(1) 58 –75 Long et al. 59 method for identifying main centers and subcenters across cities and to reveal common predic- tors of polycentricity. The proposed method avoids some of the potential problems in the con- ventional approach, such as the arbitrariness of threshold setting and sensitivity to spatial scales. It can also be replicated rather conveniently, as its input data, such as point-of-interest data, are widely available to the public and the data’s validity can be efficiently checked by field trips or other traditional data sources, such as land-use maps or censuses.
