Public Investment Produces An Effect On The Structure Of Urban Residential Space In Xi’an

In order to solve the increasingly prominent issue of “urban disease”, the Xi’anmunicipal government has increased its public infrastructure investments in suburbs. Ithopes that public infrastructure services in suburbs can be improved through betteringpeople’s living conditions and conveniences. It is also expected that the investments canspur the change of consumers’ choice of residential locations, shifting it from theprevious preference to live closer to the city center to the relative far away suburbs. Thegovernment hopes to achieve the goal of balancing residential spaces in all regions bysuch change in residential location choice so as to control the excessive concentration ofpopulation living in the city center. The truth is, at least intuitively, that the increase inpublic infrastructure investments in suburbs does form several mature living regionssurrounding the city center. Thus, does the maturity of the living regions surroundingthe city center really illustrate that the consumers’ choice of residential locations isaffected by the increase of public investments in suburbs? And the formersingle-centered structural character in urban residential space has already lost itsstability and shifted into a multi-centered structural character?In combination with relative documents, the purpose of this paper is to carry outresearch on how public infrastructure investments with the help of consumers’ changeof choice in residential locations has effected urban residential space structure. Theresearch mainly covers: to inspect whether the public infrastructure investments fromXi’an municipal government have actually changed consumers’ choice of residentiallocations, which in turn have affected the former urban residential space structure aswell; to determine whether the urban residential space structure has been shifted into a multi-centered residential space structure by using the method of commercial houseprice gradient in consistent consideration of a regional-concentrated resident populationdistribution regularity and a changing house price gradient regularity.Empirical test result shows that residential space structure in Xi’an in a wholeremains to be a single-centered structure though public infrastructure investments havechanged consumers’ choice of residential locations which affect urban residential spacestructure, encouraging some small-sized central living regions to emerge in suburbs.The residential space structure in Xi’an does not reach the multi-centered structure andits commercial house price gradient principle is that: centered in the Bell Tower andalong the main road, the commercial house price will be reduced by11.3%as thedistance from the house to the main road increases1km.