University College London UNDERSTANDING FUNCTIONAL URBAN CENTRALITY SPATIO-FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION AND ITS SOCIO- ECONOMIC IMPACT IN CENTRAL SHANGHAI A thesis submitted to the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London, in candidacy for the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy Bartlett School of Architecture By Yao Shen London 2017 I, Yao Shen, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2017 To Liuchi and Simiao. ABSTRACT A deeper understanding of the structural characteristics of urban settings is a prerequisite to evaluating the effects of urban design and planning proposals more efficiently. This thesis aims at shaping a new, comprehensive approach to uncover the structure of cities through the investigation of a diachronic spatio-functional process and the socio-economic impacts of such a process. It proposes a spatial network-based framework, in which individual street segments, indexed by space syntax centrality measures, are utilised to develop a series of more complex urban function connectivity measures by an analysis of the spatial network and land-use patterns in tandem. The specific application of this approach in Central Shanghai is conducted with a threefold focus: firstly, to trace the evolutionary interdependence between the spatial grids and the land-use distribution; secondly, to explain the varying economic value of the spatio-functional relationship in the housing market; and thirdly, to capture the impact of the spatiol-functional interaction on the variation of co- presence. The outputs confirm that the centrality structures of the spatial network and the land-use distribution affect each other over time; however, certain degrees of inconsistency are observed, suggesting a distinct complementary relationship between these two systems, which is further validated by the improvement of the proposed model’s predictability of urban performance. The findings verify the hypothesis that urban spatio-functional synergy is a strong determinant of the formation of urban function regions, the delineation of housing submarkets, and the discrepancy of the spatial co-presence in the city. These results demonstrate that urban performance is directly affected by the way the spatial and functional structures of the city interact. Such findings support the proposition that understanding the complexities of the spatio-functional interaction in a morphological analysis can enhance the efficiency of urban design and planning interventions, which aim to improve socioeconomic conditions in cities. I CONTENT ABSTRACT I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT IX LIST OF TABLES X LIST OF FIGURES XIII CHAPTER 01 INTRODUCTION 1 1 The motivation 2 2 Research settings 5 2.1 Research aims 5 2.2 Research questions and hypothesis 8 2.3 Research scope 11 3 Structure of this thesis 13 CHAPTER 02 LITERATURE REVIEW 17 1 Introduction 18 2 Conceptualisation of centres 19 2.1 Recognition of centres 19 2.2 Nodality, flows and centrality 23 II 2.3 Dimensions and typologies of centrality/accessibility 30 3 Geographical centrality 34 3.1 Definitions of land-use systems 34 3.2 Interaction between land-use and transport systems 35 3.3 Typical measures and settings 37 3.4 Geographical accessibility as a socioeconomic indicator 40 3.5 Limitations 43 4 Configurational centrality 44 4.1 Definition of spatial configuration 44 4.2 Movement economy 47 4.3 Typical measures and settings 49 4.4 Configurational centrality as a socioeconomic indicator 50 4.5 Limitations 54 5 Combining geographical and configurational centralities 55 CHAPTER 03 THE METHODOLOGY 58 1 Introduction 59 2 The structure of research methodology 59 2.1 The research framework 59 2.2 Case study location 63 III 2.3 Data and method specification 65 3 Space syntax centrality– spatial accessibility measures 66 3.1 Basic models and concepts 66 3.2 Basic measures in the segmental model 68 3.3 Result examples and frequency statistics 69 4 Urban function connectivity – functional accessibility measures 72 4.1 Preliminary definition 72 4.2 The analytical procedures 75 4.3 Result examples and frequency statistics 83 5 Limitations 93 5.1 Other effects on the demand and supply sides 93 5.2 Distance decay 94 5.3 Bias of social media data 94 CHAPTER 04 URBAN EVOLUTION AS A SPATIO-FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION PROCESS 96 1 Introduction 97 2 Background 97 3 The framework and data 99 3.1 Research framework 99 3.2 Centrality computation 100 IV 3.3 Data 101 3.4 Identification of urban transformation in Central Shanghai 104 4 Empirical results 106 4.1 The spatial centrality process 106 4.2 The functional centrality process 114 4.3 The spatio-functional interaction process 124 5 Summary and discussion 131 CHAPTER 05 SPATIO-FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION AND HOUSE PRICE PATTERNS 134 1 Introduction 135 2 Background 135 3 The method 137 3.1 Research design 137 3.2 Indexing streets with spatial and functional context 138 3.3 Network-based mixed-scale hedonic model 140 3.4 Network-constrained clustering analysis 141 4 Study area, data and model specification 141 4.1 Study area 141 4.2 Asking house price data 142 V 4.3 Road network, POIs and social media check-in data 143 4.4 Variable selection 144 5 Empirical results 146 5.1 Preliminary findings 146 5.2 Regression results 150 5.3 Street-based submarket detection 154 5.4 Related implication 160 6 Summary and discussion 161 CHAPTER 06 SPATIO-FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION AND THE PATTERNS OF CO-PRESENCE 163 1 Introduction 164 2 Background 165 3 The method 166 3.1 The framework 166 3.2 Measuring physical co-presence in streets 167 3.3 Indexing the centralities of the spatial configuration 173 3.4 Regression analyses 173 4 The materials 174 4.1 Study area 174 4.2 Street network and checked-in POIs 174 VI 4.3 Trajectories in social media check-in data 175 4.4 Gate counts 177 5 Empirical results 177 5.1 Preliminary validation 177 5.2 Spatiotemporal co-presence patterns 179 5.3 The configurational logic of spatiotemporal co-presence 184 5.4 Modes of physical co-presence in streets 187 5.5 The configurational logic of co-presence modes 191 6 Summary and discussion 193 CHAPTER 07 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 196 1 Introduction 197 2 Overview of findings for each chapter 198 3 A comprehensive spatio-functional interaction model 202 3.2 How does spatio-functional interaction effect urban performance? 202 3.3 How does spatial network interact with land-use system? 203 4 Potential contributions 207 4.1 Contributions to space syntax theory 207 4.2 Contributions to socioeconomic theory 208 4.3 Contributions to urban design and planning 209 VII 5 Limitations 210 5.1 Data availability 210 5.2 Generalisation for other cases 211 5.3 Variable structure and advanced models 211 6 Further research 212 6.1 Spatiotemporal urban function connectivity 212 6.2 Function visual graph analysis 213 6.3 Dynamic modelling of urban change 214 7 Closing words 216 REFERENCES 218 APPENDICES 248 VIII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is a summary of a long academic journey. It would not have been finished without the sincere help given by many gifted people. I own my first and deepest gratitude to my principle supervisor, Dr. Kayvan Karimi. Without his supervision and encouragement from the preliminary to the concluding stages, this research would not have been possible. His brilliant theoretical thoughts, immense advice, long-lasting patience through these years helped me grow the idea of this research and opened the door for my future academic life. I am grateful for the tremendous opportunities he provided to developing my teaching skills. My heartfelt thanks also go to my second supervisor, Professor Laura Vaughan, for her insightful comments on my research and academic writing, continuous encouragement and shared interests. My sincere thanks are also given to Tao Yang, Stephen Law, Chen Zhong, Ye Zhang, and Ying Long for their endless support on enhancing my study and their invaluable friendship in my daily life. My gratitude is extended to all of the talented staff and fellow students in Space Syntax Laboratory for their selfless sharing of experience. I am extremely grateful to the Chinese Scholarship Council for funding my doctoral research fully. This financial support reduced my family burden and enabled me to be a better pilot of my academic research. I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Michael Batty for offering me an opportunity to participate in an exciting project as a post-doctoral researcher and giving me much treasured supports. I am sincerely thankful to my family members for their warmth, love, support and sacrifice over years. I am deeply indebted to Liuchi and Simiao, my wife and son, my intimate partners in life, for staying by my side always. IX LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER 02 Table 2-1 39 Location-based accessibility measures (Geurs and Van Wee 2004) Table 2-2 50 Commonly used measures of space syntax centrality Table 2-3 56 Comparison between the spatial accessibility measures (geometric accessibility metrics) and the functional accessibility measures (geographical accessiblility metrics) in various aspects CHAPTER 03 Table 3-1 65 Data and method organisation in the analytical chapters Table 3-2 79 Classification of active land-uses in Central Shanghai according to the social media behaviour CHAPTER 04 Table 4-1 102 Historical POI classification and numbers in Central Shanghai Table 4-2 105 Descriptive statistics of stages in Central Shanghai’s urbanisation process Table