Four Transformations of Chinese Quantitative Urban Research in the New Data Environment

Abstract

The paper provides an overview on the transformation of Chinese urban study driven by the emergence of new data environment in China in recent years. We firstly give a brief introduction on the new data environment, which has been made possible by the availability of big data and open data in recent years, as well as a review on the research progress both in China and abroad. It is followed by an analysis on four major transformations in quantitative urban study, supported by typical research cases, which are (1) transformation in spatial scale from high resolution but small coverage or wide coverage but low resolution to wide coverage with high resolution; (2) transformation in temporal scale from static cross-sectional to dynamic consistent; (3) transformation in granularity from land-oriented to human-oriented; (4) transformation in methodology from conventional research group to crowd-sourcing. The paper also points out that quantitative urban research is faced with problems like data bias, lack of long term analysis, lack of linkage to planning practice, etc.