The center of city function in Guiyang, China: An evaluation with emerging data

Abstract

In recent years, the center of city function has increasingly come into notice of the scholars, conforming to their purpose to describe the spatial structure of the city center more comprehensively. In this study, points of interest (POI) served as observation data to construct a framework for identifying and evaluating city function centers. As a typical plateau mountain city in western China, Guiyang possesses extremely special research value in urban planning and construction. The results of this study show that: the number of city function centers increased from 2016 to 2018, which manifested as polycentricity; their changes can be described in terms of quantity, pattern, and location; their morphological types were "relatively concentrated" and "relatively dispersed" in the process of urban evolution; and the types of location change were mainly displacement and splitting; spatial statistical analysis indicates that the change trend of city function centers will also be polycentric growth. In addition, the results of the study will have a positive impact on the subsequent urban planning and construction of Guiyang.