Urban Commercial Spatial Structure Optimization in the Metropolitan Area of Beijing: A Microscopic Perspective

Urban commercial districts (UCDs) are the concentrated areas for commercial activities in a city, which provide shopping, leisure, business, and other functions. Urban planners usually face problems in how to plan and design UCDs. The layout of UCDs should not only be appropriately concentrated to realize economic benefits, but should also be properly dispersed to accommodate the distribution of the population. Using Beijing as a case study, this study conducted research into UCDs from a microscopic perspective by utilizing open source big data. A recognition and classification method of UCDs was proposed based on the data of POI and road networks. The proposed model combines Huff's model and the Voronoi method to analyze how various UCDs should be distributed within a city according to the spatial pattern of the population. The results showed that different kinds of UCDs had different spatial distribution features. Problems were also found, for example, UCDs on the urban outskirts served a large population; there were limitations to the spatial distribution of UCDs in the downtown area; and there was incongruity between the UCD types and the population layout. Based on these findings, suggestions regarding the optimization of the urban commercial spatial structure were also put forward.