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As low and lower-middle social groups account for a great proportion of the total population in China and their status in society is special, it is of great social and practical significance to study their housing conditions and characteristics. Based on research at home and abroad, this paper defines the basic characteristics of low and lower-middle social groups in China, and elaborates the definition and connotation of housing marginalization, thereby proposing that these residents in the Chinese city are facing a problem of housing marginalization. According to data from the fifth and sixth population census and statistical yearbooks of Chengdu, it reveals changes in housing location, housing tenure structure, and housing quality of the study group between 2000 to 2010 by means of spatial and statistical analysis, which indicates that the low and lower-middle social groups are facing the three trends of "living in outskirts," "predicament in tenure selectivity of housing," and "impoverishment of housing quality." In response to these trends, three planning suggestions are proposed: 1 to establish "housing policy areas" suitable for the group of residents to reside and work; 2 to innovate policy measures to support the low and lower-middle social groups to rent and purchase houses within these areas; 3 to guide the residents to integrate into the community life circle in these areas so as to avoid poverty concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of neoliberalisation is increasingly applied to China to explain its unprecedented urban transformation. This paper argues against fitting China into a prototype neoliberal model. Instead it proposes a fresh interpretation of its urban planning particularities within a continuity-contestation framework, embodied in the context, governance and practice of planning. Chengdu, the gateway in West China, is chosen as a case study to illustrate this framework. Analysing the successive city Master Plans of Chengdu, it was found that there was a strong path dependency in Chengdu's plan-making process. Yet contestations from the planning context and planning practice pressured for planning transformation. Interestingly, inconsistencies within its Master Plans sometimes worked in line with the market and mediated the conflicts between plan-led and market-led development logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are currently confronted with many urban problems, such as water shortages, water quality pollution, floods, and the loss of habitats of aquatic organisms, and badly in need of a more comprehensive solution. In this context, the concept of "sponge city" is proposed. This paper, based on the theory of sponge city and low impact development, elaborated the origin, development, connotation, and construction method of "sponge city" concept. In this paper, the urban design scheme of Renbei District in Chengdu was taken for example to analyze the geographical environment and climate characteristics of Chengdu and explain the formation and verification of the scheme. It is considered that the "sponge city" is different from the traditional urban infrastructure. It is essentially an ecological approach. It's core is to build a cross-scale urban water ecological infrastructure to comprehensively solve the prominent water-related problems of urban and rural areas in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PM2.5 particles with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm are receiving increasing attention in China. Understanding how complex factors affect PM2.5 particles is crucial for the prevention of air pollution. This study investigated the influence of meteorological factors and land use on the dynamics of PM2.5 concentrations in four urban agglomerations of China at different scales from 2010 to 2020, using the Durbin spatial domain model (SDM) at five different grid scales. The results showed that the average annual PM2.5 concentration in four core urban agglomerations in China generally had a downward trend, and the meteorological factors and land use types were closely related to the PM2.5 concentration. The impact of temperature on PM2.5 changed significantly with an increase in grid scale, while other factors did not lead to obvious changes. The direct and spillover effects of different factors on PM2.5 in inland and coastal urban agglomerations were not entirely consistent. The influence of wind speed on coastal urban clusters (the Pearl River urban agglomeration (PRD) and Yangtze River urban agglomeration (YRD)) was not significant among the meteorological factors, but it had a significant impact on inland urban clusters (the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration (BTH) and Chengdu–Chongqing urban agglomeration (CC)). The direct effect of land use type factors showed an obvious U-shaped change with an increase in the research scale in the YRD, and the direct effect of land use type factors was almost twice as large as the spillover effect. Among land use type factors, human factors (impermeable surfaces) were found to have a greater impact in inland urban agglomerations, while natural factors (forests) had a greater impact in coastal urban agglomerations. Therefore, targeted policies to alleviate PM2.5 should be formulated in inland and coastal urban agglomerations, combined with local climate measures such as artificial precipitation, and urban land planning should be carried out under the consideration of known impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design and optimization of urban form has always been a hot topic in urban planning and development research. Besides, the creation of continuous vitality in urban areas is of critical importance in the development of urbanization. However, due to the lack of data, it is difficult to measure the effects of urban form on neighborhood vibrancy. Additionally, no uniform conclusion has been drawn regarding to what degree urban form can contribute to neighborhood vibrancy. Taking advantage of emerging new data sources, the depth and breadth of related research can now be improved. Therefore, this paper uses high-precision positioning social media check-in data to approximate the vibrancy of 658 neighborhoods, and uses a geographical information system (GIS) to quantitatively measure the urban form indicators in the central area of Chengdu City, China. A quantitative exploration and analysis of the relationships between neighborhood vibrancy and urban form is conducted. The results of three regression models considering different explanatory variables show that socio-economic factors account for approximately 23% of neighborhood vibrancy. In addition, the correlation between the shape characteristics of a neighborhood and the vibrancy is weak. However, when the inner urban form indicators of neighborhoods are introduced into the regression model, the goodness of fit (R2) is nearly doubled. This finding indicates that strong associations exist between urban form and neighborhood vibrancy. Specifically, building density and functional diversity are positively correlated with neighborhood vibrancy. Unlike existing studies, this study finds that the road network within the neighborhood plays a positive role in the creation of neighborhood vibrancy. However, the impact of a road density indicator is not as powerful as the impacts of building density and functional diversity. This research can help urban designers to better design urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface urban heat islands (SUHIs) are mostly an urban ecological issue. There is a growing demand for the quantification of the SUHI effect, and for its optimization to mitigate the increasing possible hazards caused by SUHI. Satellite-derived land surface temperature (LST) is an important indicator for quantifying SUHIs with frequent coverage. Current LST data with high spatiotemporal resolution is still lacking due to no single satellite sensor that can resolve the trade-off between spatial and temporal resolutions and this greatly limits its applications. To address this issue, we propose a multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) coupling the comprehensive, flexible, spatiotemporal data fusion (CFSDAF) method to generate a high-spatiotemporal-resolution LST dataset. We then analyzed the SUHI intensity (SUHII) in Chengdu City, a typical cloudy and rainy city in China, from 2002 to 2022. Finally, we selected thirteen potential driving factors of SUHIs and analyzed the relation between these thirteen influential drivers and SUHIIs. Results show that: (1) an MGWR outperforms classic methods for downscaling LST, namely geographically weighted regression (GWR) and thermal image sharpening (TsHARP); (2) compared to classic spatiotemporal fusion methods, our method produces more accurate predicted LST images (R2, RMSE, AAD values were in the range of 0.8103 to 0.9476, 1.0601 to 1.4974, 0.8455 to 1.3380); (3) the average summer daytime SUHII increased form 2.08 °C (suburban area as 50% of the urban area) and 2.32 °C (suburban area as 100% of the urban area) in 2002 to 4.93 °C and 5.07 °C, respectively, in 2022 over Chengdu City; and (4) the anthropogenic activity drivers have a higher relative influence on SUHII than other drivers. Therefore, anthropogenic activity driving factors should be considered with CO2 emissions and land use changes for urban planning to mitigate the SUHI effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of studies on Chinese urbanization have been focused on coastal areas, with little attention given to urban centers in the west. Western provinces, however, will unquestionably undergo significant urban change in the future as a result of the 'Go West' policy initiated in the 1990s. In this paper the authors examine the relationship between drivers of urban growth and land- use outcomes in Chengdu, capital of the western province of Sichuan, China. In the first part of this research, remotely sensed data are used to map changes in land cover in the greater Chengdu area and to investigate the spatial distribution of development with use of landscape metrics along seven urban-to-rural transects identified as key corridors of growth. Results indicate that the urbanized area increased by more than 350% between 1978 and 2002 in three distinct spatial trends: (a) near the urban fringe in all directions prior to 1990, (b) along transportation corridors, ring roads, and near satellite cities after 1990, and, finally, (c) infilling in southern and western areas (connecting satellite cities to the urban core) in the late 1990s. In the second part of this paper the authors connect patterns of growth with economic, land, and housing market reforms, which are explored in the context of urban planning initiatives. The results reveal that, physically, Chengdu is following trends witnessed in coastal cities of China, although the importance of various land-use drivers differs from that in the east (for example, in the low level of foreign direct investment to date). The information provided by the land-use analysis ultimately helped tailor policies and plans for better land management and reduced fragmentation of new development in the municipality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on the literature review and field investigation, studied the status quo of maker spaces in main urban district of Chengdu at a time when the development of the maker spaces has received strong support from national and local governments. In addition to introducing the related concepts and policy support of the maker space, it summarized its distribution characteristics, audience characteristics and status quo as well as problems and presented the direction for the development of the maker space in main urban area of Chengdu grounded on a survey of the status quo of national maker spaces in main urban area of Chengdu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban vitality is a key indicator for measuring urban development. This topic has been trending in urban planning and sustainable development, and significant progress has been made in measuring single indicators of urban vitality based on parcel or block units. With the continuous development of smart sensing technology, multisource urban data are becoming increasingly abundant. The application of such data to measure the multidimensional urban vitality of street space, reflecting multiple functions of an urban space, can significantly improve the accuracy of urban vitality analyses and promote the construction of people-oriented healthy cities. In this study, streets were taken as the analysis unit, and multisource data such as the trajectories of taxies and shared bicycles, user reviews and cultural facility points of interest (POIs) in Chengdu, a city in southwestern China, were used to identify spatial patterns of urban vitality on streets across social, economic and cultural dimensions. The correlation between the built environment factors and the multidimensional urban vitality on the street was analyzed using a multiple regression model. The spatial distribution of the different dimensions of urban vitality of the street space in Chengdu varies to a certain extent. It is common for areas with high social vitality to have production and life centers nearby. High economic vitality centers are typically found along busy streets with a high concentration of businesses. Areas with high cultural vitality centers tend to be concentrated on the city's central streets. Land use, transportation, external environment, population and employment are all closely linked to urban vitality on streets. The crowd counting and POI density have the greatest impact on multidimensional urban vitality. The crowd and the level of service facilities profoundly affect social interaction, trade activities and cultural communication. The goodness of fit (R2) of the regression models for social, economic and cultural vitality are 0.590, 0.423 and 0.409, respectively. Using multisource urban data, our findings can help stakeholders better understand the spatial patterns and influencing factors of multidimensional urban vitality on streets and provide sustainable urban planning and development strategies for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]