Spatiotemporal Patterns Of The Use Of Urban Green Spaces And External Factors Contributing To Their Use In Central Beijing

In recent years,with the acceleration of urbanization process,urban structure and people's life style has changed.The crowded streets,dense buildings make the living environment a series of problems.However,due to the increase of people's disposable income and leisure time,the demand for urban leisure life level also increases thus more and more attention is paid on the living environment.As a kind of living environment for city residents,urban green spaces have important ecological value,cultural value and social value.Urban green spaces are a significant infrastructure to realize the sustainable development of city and they play an important role in the shape,the function and the space development of city.In megacities such as Tokyo,New York and Beijing,there are many urban green spaces.However,not all urban green spaces can be used by people effectively.At present,large numbers of studies examine the relationship between the use of urban green spaces and factors.But these studies mainly focus on the internal factors or the post occupancy evaluation.Compared with previous studies that focused on internal factors,this study highlights the external factors(traffic convenience,population density and commercial facilities)contributing to the use of urban green spaces.We conducted a spatiotemporal analysis of the distribution of visitors in 208 selected green spaces in central Beijing.We examined the relationship between the spatial pattern of visitors' distribution within urban green spaces and external factors,using the Gini Coefficient,Kernel Density Estimation,and Geographical Detectors.The three results of the study were as follows.First,there are significant differences in the spatial distribution characteristics of urban green spaces in central Beijing.We found that the degree of spatial agglomeration was highest for community parks.Conversely,it was lowest for belt-shaped parks.The degree of spatial agglomeration of theme parks was relatively high,while comprehensive parks were found to be well-distributed within central Beijing.The distribution of country parks demonstrated the gradual formation of a "park ring" around the Five Ring Road.Second,the spatiotemporal pattern of visitors' distribution within urban green spaces also showed considerable variations.From the temporal perspective,the number of visitors in urban green spaces showed evident variation during both weekdays and on weekends.From the spatial perspective,the degree of spatial agglomeration in urban green spaces was higher on weekdays than on weekends.Specifically,spatial agglomeration was highest in comprehensive parks on weekdays,while it was highest in theme parks on weekends.Moreover,application of the KDE method revealed that the spatial structure of the distribution of visitors evidenced two dual-core agglomerations combined with two single-core agglomerations.Third,the number of visitors visiting urban green spaces in central Beijing was found to be closely correlated with transportation convenience,population density,and commercial facilities.From our findings,we can conclude that commercial facilities have the greatest influence on the distribution of visitors in urban green spaces,followed by population density.Transportation convenience was found to have the least influence on the distribution of visitors in urban green spaces.