Urban socio-spatial structure and intracity mobility in Chinese cities : a case study of Shenzhen

Abstract

Urban socio-spatial structure has been studied in social geography to understand the spatial organization of urban space consisted of social space and physical space. However, the analysis of urban socio-spatial structure is static, focusing on patterns and explanations of structures. This thesis attempts to explore the urban socio-spatial structure in a dynamic perspective in the “mobility turn”. While theories in market geography have linked different social groups with shopping behavior, this thesis extends shopping trips, which is part of shopping behavior, to daily travel behavior by hypothesizing that intracity mobility is influenced by both urban socio-spatial structure and spatial structure. Three research questions are proposed: 1) What is the intracity mobility pattern of Chinese cities with respect to different trip purposes? 2) What is the relationship between intracity mobility and urban social areas? 3) How will spatial structure affect travel behavior regarding different social areas? To answer the research questions, an analysis of the city of Shenzhen, China, is carried out with population census data, mobile phone data and spatial structure related data. First, urban socio-spatial structure is analyzed by the identification of urban social areas from principal component analysis and cluster analysis. Then patterns of intracity mobility are analyzed with mobile phone data using clustering algorithms with different trip purposes. Finally, the relationships between mobility pattern, urban socio-spatial structure and spatial structure are explored based on previous results with a group of ANOVA analysis and regression analysis. Major findings of this thesis are summarized in three aspects. Firstly, there are five types of social areas in the case study of Shenzhen: family migrant areas, young residents in urban villages, local old neighborhoods, local new neighborhoods and rural migrant concentrated areas. The urban socio-spatial structure has a central-suburban division and driving forces behind the pattern are economic development, policy, housing market and life cycle. Secondly, intracity mobility in Shenzhen is clustered as Type I, II and III mobility with three mobility indicators: travel space compactness, travel space size and travel distance. Spatial heterogeneity is found in mobility, especially an east-west pattern, and this heterogeneity varies for different trip purposes. Finally, there are variations of trips for different purposes for residents from different social areas. The disparity of intracity mobility within the same social areas indicates that factors in spatial structure also contributes to heterogeneity in mobility pattern. Regression analysis for each social area shows that effects of spatial structure on intracity mobility have variations among different social areas. This thesis contributes to existing literature in the following aspects. It proposes a novel approach for estimating urban village buildings in Chinese cities with accessible data source and simple calculation. It enriches the knowledge of socio-spatial structure in urban China by analyzing the case study of Shenzhen. It shows that urban social areas, as a result of differentiation in socio-economic and housing status, leads to difference in intracity mobility. Finally, by showing that the effect of spatial structure variables on intracity mobility including central/suburban location, accessibility to metro and self-sufficiency has variations among different urban social areas, this thesis proposes that the mobility space can be regarded as the fourth space in urban social space for a better differentiation of residents in the mobility paradigm.