The Urban Facilities Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic: Spatial Association Patterns Mining in Wuhan, China.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant global impacts on human society. With the evolution of cities during this period, urban facilities can rise and fall, showing different spatial patterns and function structures in local areas. Analyzing the change of urban facilities before and after the pandemic can assist to understand the impact of the COVID-19 on cities, which is especially important for the Wuhan city. In this paper, we first characterized the "birth", "death" and "retention" of urban facilities through matching POIs (Points of Interest) before and after the pandemic, and then examined their spatial distribution patterns across the city. In addition, spatial association patterns mining was applied to explore the interactions between the change of urban facilities and the environmental factors. The results revealed that the catering service has decreased the most in the wake of the pandemic, while accommodation service has grown the most. The state changes of catering service, living service and shopping service frequently appear together in the data mining results. During the pandemic, these types of urban facility changes are closely linked to each other. Many regional urban functions have also changed due to the epidemic, which are most obvious in the community. This update can facilitate the management of gated communities after the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]