Urban Vitality Measurement and Influence Mechanism Detection in China

Urban vitality is the life force of a city. In this paper, starting from three subsystems of population, economy, and function, the comprehensive index system for measuring urban vitality was constructed respectively from three scales: grid, prefecture-level administrative region, and urban agglomeration. GIS spatial analysis methods were used to measure the urban vitality index and analyze the spatial distribution pattern. Then, the MGWR was used to reveal the main factors affecting the difference in urban vitality and analyze the influence mechanism of urban vitality. Accordingly, countermeasures and suggestions for creating vibrancy were put forward. The result shows the following: At the grid scale, urban vitality presents a spatial distribution pattern of “large dispersion, small agglomeration”, which has significant differentiation characteristics of city scale and hierarchy. At the administrative region scale, the overall vitality of cities at the prefecture level and above in China is not high, and the spatial differences are large. The spatial scan identified 28 vigorous cities with high potential, belonging to 6 vigorous clusters. On the scale of urban agglomeration, according to the degree of vitality, there are three gradients. The spatial difference in urban vitality was affected by the internal characteristics and external environment.