The Potential of 3-D Building Height Data to Characterize Socioeconomic Activities: A Case Study from 38 Cities in China

Abstract

Urban forms are closely related to the urban environment, providing great potential to analyze human socioeconomic activities. However, limited studies have investigated the impacts of three-dimensional (3-D) urban forms on socioeconomic activities across cities. In this paper, we explored the relationship between urban form and socioeconomic activities using 3-D building height data from 38 cities in China. First, we aggregated the building footprint data and calculated three building indicators at the grid scale, based on which the spatial patterns of building height and road density were analyzed. Then, we examined the capacities of two-dimensional (2D)/3D urban forms in characterizing socioeconomic activities using satellite-derived nighttime light (NTL) data. Finally, we analyzed the relationship between road density distributions and building heights across 38 cities in China. Our results suggest that the building height information can improve the correlation between urban form and NTL. Different patterns of road distribution were revealed according to the distribution of road density change from the building hotspots, showing the capacity of 3-D building height data in helping characterize socioeconomic activities. Our study indicates that the 3-D building height information is of great potential to support a variety of studies in urban domains, such as population distribution and carbon emissions, with significantly improved capacities.