In the context of rapid urbanization in developing countries, the spatial organization of cities has been progressively restructured over the past decades. However, little has been done to understand how the physical expansion affected the reorganization of socioeconomic spaces in cities. This study explores the association between various street network metrics and urban vitality and how it changes across different scales using geographic big data through a case study of Wuhan, China. Urban vitality is characterized by four components: concentration, accessibility, livability, and diversity. The new technique of spatial design network analysis (sDNA) is employed to characterize street network metrics, including connectivity, closeness, betweenness, severance, and efficiency, with 16 localized network variables. Furthermore, the stratified spatial heterogeneity between street network metrics at multiple scales and the four components of urban vitality is investigated using the Geodetector tool. First, concentration, accessibility, and diversity decline with distance from the urban center, whereas livability has a fluctuating upward trend with distance from the urban core. Second, the correlation between street network characteristics and urban vitality is sensitive to different spatial scales. Third, connectivity explains the largest amount of the variance in urban vitality (over 40%), while both betweenness and closeness explain roughly 28% of urban vitality. Efficiency and severance contribute 22 and 10% to the spatial heterogeneity of urban vitality, respectively. The study sheds light on the mechanisms between street configurations and urban vitality from the multi-scalar perspective. Some implications are provided for the improvement of the streets' urban vitality.

Equity has been a major concern of urban green space provision. Whether the urban green spaces are equitably provided for socially disadvantaged groups is an important issue in the field of social and environmental justice. This topic is particularly significant in fast-growing Asian countries like China experiencing widening income disparity. This paper examines whether and to what extent the different green spaces (including public parks and urban vegetation) are equitable for all populations (referring to horizontal equity) and also for different social groups (referring to vertical equity) in this typical inland city—Wuhan, China. A novel indicator combining proximity and quality is presented to assess the supply of public parks. The Theil index provides a decomposable measure of overall equity across different regions and vulnerable groups. Both horizontal and vertical perspectives are compared to characterize the spatial equity of urban green spaces (including public parks and urban vegetation) across all population and across different social groups. The empirical analysis of the inland city showed that the overall supply of public parks is far more unequal than mixed or woody vegetation. The distribution of public parks is more inequitable in the outer area, whereas the distribution of mixed or woody vegetation is more inequitable in the inner area. Furthermore, the geographic detector analysis is employed to investigate the spatial relation between socioeconomic contexts and urban green spaces. The spatial heterogeneity of education and age groups is statistically significant for explaining the distribution of public parks. Meanwhile, population density clearly plays a role in the distribution of both public parks and urban vegetation. Per capita income can explain 26% of the distribution of public parks but is not significantly associated with mixed or woody vegetation. Finally, the vertical equity of urban green space is also examined in this paper that the vulnerable groups in the inner area, such as females, residents with low education, children, and the elder suffer from highly unequal accessibility to parks, whereas the vulnerable group in the outer area, such as the migrants gets unequal access to parks.

The impact of objective and subjective environmental factors on health outcomes has been a topic of significant debate, with a growing body of research acknowledging the role of a physically active lifestyle in promoting health. However, consensus regarding their precise influence remains elusive. This study contributes to these discussions by exploring how individual health outcomes correlate with transport and leisure walking behaviours, set against both the objective and subjective aspects of environmental influences in the context of Wuhan, an inland Chinese megacity. Street view images, multi-source geospatial data and a questionnaire survey were employed to characterise the “5D + Greenery” objective and perceived characteristics of the neighbourhood environment. Multi-group structural equation modelling was utilised to unravel the complex relationship and gender heterogeneity among environmental factors, purpose-specific walking, and overweight. Our results suggest that both objective land use diversity and perceived convenience are significantly associated with overweight. The accessibility of local service facilities and visible greenery promote both transport and leisure walking. While perceived neighbourhood safety encourages transport walking, perceived walkability is positively correlated with leisure walking. Notably, leisure walking, usually considered beneficial, presents a positive association with overweight conditions, acting as a mediation. Gender disparities exist in pathways between the environment and purpose-specific walking, as well as weight. The findings lend support to the planning of an activity-supporting built environment as a crucial strategy for obesity prevention.

Ecological conservation has long been a hot topic in land-use planning. However, ecological conservation conflicts with economic development in the process of urbanization, which has been noted in a great many studies. In existing studies of land-use planning, a sum-weighted method (SWM) has usually been used to combine several objectives into one objective, and only one solution generated. However, with the SWM, the trade-offs between conflicting objectives are ignored. In this paper, faced with the shortcomings of the existing approaches, a genetic algorithm–based multiobjective optimization (MOO) approach is proposed to search for the Pareto solutions of the land-use structure, followed by a cellular automaton model to represent the spatial land-use distribution. A rapidly developing city in central China, Wuhan, was selected as the case study area. Maximizing the gross domestic product (GDP) value generated by the land use and maximizing the ecosystem service value (ESV) were taken as the multiple objectives for land-use planning in Wuhan. The Pareto solutions are compared with the solutions of three different single objectives: one, maximizing ESV; another, maximizing the sum of GDP and ESV; and the last one, maximizing GDP. It is concluded that the Pareto solutions can reflect the potential possible values of GDP and ESV. Moreover, the Pareto solutions can represent a trade-off between economic development and ecological conservation.

The interactive relation between transportation and urban spatial structure remains a significant yet challenging issue in transport engineering and urban planning. Most previous studies indicate that the coordination of transportation and urban structure is conducive to solve urban diseases and promote urban sustainable development. Grounded in the theory of city-region spatial structure, this study examines the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban spatial structure from 2006 to 2019 and investigates the impact of transportation on shaping urban spatial structure in prefecture-level cities in China using spatial Durbin model. Major findings include: first, the nighttime light remote sensing data is employed to characterize urban spatial structure with the mono-centricity index ranging from 0.26 to 0.48. The coastal cities tend to exhibit the polycentric structure, while the cities in western region often display the monocentric structure. Second, there is a gradual decline in mono-centricity structure in these cities. Spatial heterogeneity in urban spatial structure is evident in eastern, central, western and northeastern China. Third, transportation significantly and positively influences spatial structure, however, the impact varies across regions and city sizes. Finally, policy implications are proposed based on these findings, such as promoting the integrated land use-transportation development, implementing targeted regional policies, and enhancing land use spatial planning.