The livable urban landscape: GIS and remote sensing extracted land use assessment for urban livability in Changchun Proper, China

Highlights

• Urban livability indicators are constructed using GIS and remote sensing techniques.

• Principal component analysis-based method construct an urban livability index.

• Standard values are suggested for urban livability as a benchmark.

• Changchun’s livability is assessed and discussed.

Abstract

Despite the popularity of the term urban livability, it is often used by different groups under different circumstances. A broader understanding of urban livability is that it concerns the quality of life in any human living environment. The World Health Organization, among many others, suggests a four-dimension assessment system based on the concepts of convenience, amenity, health and safety that can be used to evaluate any cities’ potential livability. Following this proposal, the current study taps into the power of GIS and Remote Sensing technologies to generate a set of urban livability evaluating indicators via extracted land use information. Using the city proper of Changchun, Jilin Province of China as an example, the study extracts fifteen individual land use indicators from topographic maps and a remote sensing imagery. A principal component analysis-based approach was used to build an urban livability index with the fifteen indicators. Furthermore, with detailed examination of relevant studies, national documents and local fieldwork, this research also establishes potential benchmark values for all fifteen livability evaluating indicators for comparison purposes. Results suggest that slightly more than half of Changchun’s city proper is above the livability benchmark in the framework of the current study. Residents’ access to parks and open spaces is a major lagging factor for the city proper’s livability. The study provides an alternative of quantifiable and verifiable approach for sustainable urban planning, especially from a land use policy perspective.

Introduction

Urbanization in China has experienced rapid development during the past decades. While rapid urbanization brought tremendous changes on urban landscape, scholars also observe the increase of urban pollution, traffic congestion, shrinking public services and aging infrastructure in Chinese cities (Fang et al., 2016; Liu, 2018; Liu et al., 2014; Yu et al., 2014; Zhan et al., 2018). These so-called “urban diseases” (Fang and Yu, 2016) have adversely impacted on city residents’ daily lives across the entire city. Under such circumstances, both the Chinese government and scholars attempt to address urban livability issues in recent years (Zhan et al., 2018).

Although used liberally, the term urban livability often lacks a consensus of what exactly it refers to. Kashef (2016) summarizes broadly three different aspects of urban livability research, namely, from the design literature, the planning literature, and the popular media and global ranking literature, and advocates for an interdisciplinary understanding that potentially considers all aspects of urban livability. Such suggestions, though conceptually appealing, often lack practical operability. Urban planners and other urban science practitioners, on the other hand, carefully consider urban livability as a balanced and harmonious mode of economic, social, cultural, land use and environmental development in cities (Asgarzadeh et al., 2012; Flores et al., 1998; Kazemi et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2014). A livable city, from the urban planning and land use perspective, is a city that possesses an adequate set of good inhabitable conditions (both natural and cultural) and reasonable land use patterns that meet the needs of the residents in material and spiritual life (Chen et al., 2016; Dumbaugh, 2005; Li and Guo, 2006b; Liu et al., 2017; Mesimaki et al., 2017; Zhan et al., 2018) and support both the city’s and its residents’ long term development needs.

The origin of urban livability has a long history. The ancient Chinese ideology of “nature and humanity” recognizes that harmonious relationships between human and nature is critical for ideal living. In the west, the thought of livability can be traced back to ancient Greece where philosophers often pondered the relationships between human activities and their impacts on the nature (Gideon, 1998). In 1961, American reporter Jane Jacobs proposed to create more suitable and livable cities for human habitation in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs, 2002), which is often seen as the modern research origin of urban livability. In 1976, the world health organization (WHO) put forward the notion of livability that refers to the living environment of “safety, health, convenience and amenity” (Higasa, 1977). In the late 1980s, enhanced awareness of ecological environment construction, increased understanding of the importance of appropriate land use planning and policy in urban development, worldwide consensus for sustainable development and newly emerged urban safety issues have made urban livability the focus of recent studies in human and social development (Beames et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2016; Dumbaugh, 2005; Leach et al., 2017; Liu et al., 2017; Liu, 2018; Newman, 1999; Paul and Sen, 2018; Tan and Hamid, 2014; van Kamp et al., 2003).

China, as one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the contemporary world, is confronted with a struggle of improving the quality of urban environment while in the meantime maintaining its rapid economic development (Fang and Yu, 2016; Liu et al., 2018). Urban livability in China has attracted general attention since Wu and colleagues put forward the concept in their book Science of Habitat Environment (Wu, 1997). Science of Habitat Environment is centered on constructing “pleasant settlements” and establishes the scientific foundation of livable urban research and practices. Based on Ding (2005) and Dong and Yang (2009)’s studies, livable city was initially proposed in order to attract and retain multinational corporations, and later it has become an important reason for the government to implement sustainable urban development strategies (Beames et al., 2018; Dumbaugh, 2005; Flores et al., 1998). With the growing understanding of livable cities, many cities in China began to pay attention to the concept of urban livability and integrate it as one of the goals for sustainable urban development. In the 15th Chapter of the National New Urbanization Planning (2014–2020) issued by the State Council of China in March 2014, it is specifically proposed that China’s new-type urbanization and urban development will strive to optimize the spatial organization and management patterns of cities in order to promote efficient land use practices for the construction of a more livable urban environment. Various agencies and organizations also have carried out the appraisal and rating of urban livability in various cities in China (Fu, 2013; Gu et al., 2007; Li and Guo, 2006a; Liu et al., 2017; Zhan et al., 2018; Zhang, 2007; Zhang et al., 2006). These research and relevant activities signal that urban livability is now becoming one of the top priorities of urban development in China. Deep understanding of the concept of urban livability and its implementation in different cities could provide strong support for sustainable urban land use policies especially in today’s rapidly urbanizing China (Liu et al., 2014).

Many studies of urban livability focus on the selection of livable indexes that quantify livable conditions. These indexes are often obtained from data of social statistics or satisfaction questionnaire which could be difficult to update in real time (Asami, 2001; de Sa and Ardern, 2014; Gideon, 1998; Jiang et al., 2004; Klopp and Petretta, 2017; Leach et al., 2017; Li and Guo, 2006a; Lynch and Mosbah, 2017; Paul and Sen, 2018; Shafer et al., 2000; Zhang, 2007) and might not be reproduce-able when the research shifts to other locations. In this study, instead of relying on statistical yearbooks or field surveys, we aim to develop an alternative set of indicators relying on geographic information analysis (GIS analysis) and remote sensing information process. The individual pixel of the remote sensing image is our basic unit to investigate urban livability. Indicators generated in such a way have the potential to match spatial location relatively accurately and be updated more frequently (Chrysochoou et al., 2012; Fu, 2013). We didn’t include socioeconomic indicators in the current study since we intended to explore urban livability at the pixel level, though by no means did we regard urban socioeconomic factors as irrelevant to urban livability.

In addition, other than relying on subject weighting of individual indicators’ weights as in some livability ranking studies, such as the Mercer Quality of Life Index, or the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Livability Rankings (Kashef, 2016; Shafer et al., 2000), this study attempts a data exploration approach by applying a principal component analysis-based method to generate objective weights for individual indicators to evaluate their contribution to urban livability at the pixel level. The current study contributes to the literature of land use policy studies by applying GIS and remote sensing technologies in urban livability data acquisition and developing a novel PCA-based method to process the data for a potentially more reliable urban livability evaluation framework. The current study of assessing urban livability via GIS and remote sensing might provide an alternative approach for the evaluation of sustainable urban land use practices in China and promotion of China’s new-type urbanization development.

The study takes Changchun, Jilin Province in the northeast of China as the study area and attempts to evaluate its urban livability from the standpoints of urban convenience, amenity, health and safety as proposed by the World Health Organization (Higasa, 1977). The evaluation is based on indictors acquired from a remote sensing image and various topographic maps through GIS analysis at the pixel level. Following this introduction section, we introduce the study area, the city proper of Changchun City, the GIS and remote sensing data processing procedure, and the principal component analysis-based method used for urban livability assessment and individual indicator contribution evaluation. The study then proposes a set of livable indicators derived from topographic maps and remote sensing image. In the fourth section, the study presents the results from the analysis and evaluates urban livability of Changchun based on the standards and criteria developed in the Livable City Scientific Evaluation Criteria proposed by the Ministry of Construction of the People’s Republic of China (PRC, M.o.C.o.t., 2002). We conclude the study in the fifth section.