Spatiotemporal Transformation of Urban Social Landscape: A Case Study of Wuhan, China

For decades, urbanization has been a major topic of discussion among academics and professionals when investigating issues such as social segregation, spatial inequality, and urban sustainability. However, little attention has been given to the relationship between social characteristics and the ever-changing development of urban spaces. This paper seeks to investigate progressive changes in the social stratification structure in Wuhan's urban development zone (UDZ) while focusing on their associated spatial transformations, based on census data of Wuhan in 1990, 2000, and 2010. To obtain this objective, the study will answer two key questions: (1) What are the characteristics of urban social spatial evolutions of Wuhan the second-tier city in China? (2) What are the mechanisms of social spatial evolution? And (3) what role does the social spatial evolution play in urban social planning and management? We used varimax rotated principal component analysis (PCA) to extract social dimensions along with ArcMap to enhance spatial analysis while visualizing the distribution of social factor scores. The results show that since 1990, the local population (particularly the aging population) has reflected a hollowing trend. Industrial relocation and population mobility have become the main social dimensions in the 1990s and 2000s respectively. The characteristics of socio-spatial transformations are from concentric rings as well as combinations of concentric rings, axial aggregations, and multiple clusters. These transformations are formed by the push-pull force of the large area and the centripetal and centrifugal forces inside the city. We have concluded that top-down systems dominate socio-spatial transformations in the early stages, while public participatory management plays a more important role in the later stages, which will become inclusive governance.