The Restructure of Amenities in Beijing's Peripheral Residential Communities By Meng Ren Bachelor of Architecture Master of Architecture Tsinghua University, 2011 Tsinghua University, 2013 Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in Partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of ARGHNE8 Master in City Planning MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOLGY at the JUN 29 2015 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY LIBRARIES June 2015 C 2015 Meng Ren. All Rights Reserved The author hereby grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of the thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature redacted Author Department of U an Studies and Planning May 21, 2015 'Signature redacted Certified by Associate Professor Sarah Williams Department of Urban Studies and Planning A Thesis Supervisor Sianature redacted Accepted by V Professor Dennis Frenchman Chair, MCP Committee Department of Urban Studies and Planning The Restructure of Amenities in Beijing's Peripheral Residential Communities Evaluation of Planning Interventions Using Social Data as a Major Tool in Huilongguan Community By Meng Ren Submitted in May 21 to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in Partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master in City Planning Abstract China's rapid urbanization has led to many big metropolises absorbing their fringe rural lands to expand their urban boundaries. Beijing is such a metropolis and in its urban peripheral, an increasing number of communities have emerged that are comprised of monotonous housing projects. However, after the basic residential living requirements are satisfied, many other problems (including lack of amenities, distance between home and workplace which is particularly concerned with long commute time, traffic congestion, and etc.) exist. New remedy plans are undertaken to mitigate such problems. Huilongguan is a typical, representative case of amenity scarcity and improvement dynamic. The initial aim of this thesis is to investigate whether planning intervention can be evaluated from a crowdsourcing perspective. Using Huilongguan as a case study, research data are obtained from the Huilongguan Community Forum and Dazhongdianping website. The addition of amenities, such as transportation, shopping malls and work zones, is examined to discover how their restructuring affects the daily lives of residents. Posts on the Huilongguan Community Forum are extracted and categorized according to a specific scheme. The distribution of posts is researched to determine the amenities that have drawn the most attention of residents of this community, as well as the reason. Based on an analysis of sequential content, the attitudes and opinions of residents with regard to amenities are collected and compared to show which amenities are the most satisfactory and those that are problematic. Finally, assessments are made to evaluate amenities from the perspective of users. Using community forum and public reviews is one approach among numerous others to evaluate planning intervention. In general, traditional evaluations investigate the outcome of planning at a certain time. However, since urbanization is a dynamic process, obtaining prolonged and real-time feedback from different interested parties has become a challenge of traditional evaluations. This thesis is an attempt at using crowdsourced data to evaluate planning intervention. Moreover, this tool provides a more transparent and less time-consuming way to analyze first-hand data in order to assess the outcome of planning. New communities such as Huilongguan are popping up throughout China. Many of these new communities face similar problems as Huilongguan. By evaluating the quality of life in Huilongguan, effective methods can be discovered for decision makers and planners to alleviate such problems. Thesis Supervisor: Sarah Williams Thesis Readers: Tunney F. Lee Acknowledgement After the defense, I suddenly notice that this will be the end of the life in MIT and a starting point for another episode. Recalling the time here when I thrilled, struggled, and enjoyed, all the memory become a treasure that I will always appreciate. I would like to thank all these people for their help and support: Thank you Sarah and Tunney, for your patient, guidance, and all of the great ideas you give me. I will never be able to go this far without your help. You have set me an example of getting academic achievement with dedication and happiness. Thank you DUSP community for the caring, inspiration, and fun. I didn't realize how diverse and passion a community can be before I met you folks. I am proud to be one part of it. Thank you Lei Dong, for your help and inspiration of the scripts. Thank you Zhe Wu, for your tireless help of script and debug. The data grabbing process will be more miserable without your intelligence and expertise. Thank you my dear friends, Luxi, Fei and Xinyu, for your friendship, endless support and accompany, and all the wonderful discussion about Chinese urban issue. Thank you my parents and my boyfriend, for all the love and support. It is you who encourage me to pursue my dreams. And it is you who accompany the overstressed nights during the thesis sprint. Words just can't express my affection. Table of Content Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 3 A cknow ledgem ent ........................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Content ............................................................................................................................... 5 1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 7 1.1 Research Context ........................................................................................................ 7 1.2 Research Questions and Hypotheses ............................................................................ 9 1.3 Fram ew ork of Study ................................................................................................... 10 1.4 Significance and Im plications...................................................................................... 12 2 Literature Review ................................................................................................................... 13 2.1 Evaluation and Criteria of Planning ............................................................................ 13 2.2 The U se of Crowdsourcing in Plan Evaluation .......................................................... 21 2.3 Things That Have Yet to be Explored ........................................................................ 22 3 Research Objective and Context........................................................................................ 24 3.1 Background of Huilongguan's Developm ent ............................................................. 24 3.2 H uilongguan Plan and H istorical evolution............................................................... 27 3.3 Population Dynam ic and Bedroom Com m unity............................................................. 30 3.3.1 D em ographic inform ation ................................................................................... 30 3.3.2 Spacial m ism atch ................................................................................................. 31 3.4 Arising urban problems in Huilongguan: Work-Residence Separation and amenity scarcity ....................................................................................................................................... 32 3.4.1 Gaps caused by work-residence separation: traffic............................................. 33 3.4.2 Com m ercial am enity and public services .......................................................... 34 3.4.3 Efforts and im provem ents ................................................................................... 34 4 Research M ethod .................................................................................................................... 36 4.1 H istorical and contextual analysis .............................................................................. 36 4.2 Interview s ....................................................................................................................... 36 4.3 Q uantitative analysis on data...................................................................................... 37 4.3.1 H uilongguan Com m unity Forum (hlgnet.com ) ................................................. 37 4.3.2 D azhongdianping (Public Review s).................................................................... 39 5 D evelopm ent of Job Opportunity...................................................................................... 43 5.1 Introduction..................................................................................................................... 43 5.2 Data and m ethods ....................................................................................................... 45 5.2.1 D ata grabbing and processing ............................................................................. 45 5.2.2 Content Categorization .......................................................................................