Identifying and Evaluating Urban Centers for the Whole China Using Open Data

Abstract

The urban center is the core component of urban structure. Its identification and evaluation have long been a concern of the urban planning discipline. However, the central city areas (urban centers) have never been well delineated for the China city system, leading few urban studies on urban centers due to data unavailability. To address this gap and based on reviewing existing identification methods of the urban center, this chapter proposes a novel approach for identifying urban centers using increasingly ubiquitous open data points of interest (POIs) and evaluating the identified nationwide urban centers using various types of open data from four dimensions, respectively. These dimensions range from scale, morphology, function, to vitality aspects, thus providing opportunities for exploring the overall development characteristics of nationwide urban centers. We hope this chapter may shed light on future urban studies on urban centers of China.