Spatiotemporal Matching of Population Density and Distribution of Public Service Facilities in the Urban–Rural Interface under Rapid Urbanization: A Case Study of Luzhi Town in Suzhou, China

Abstract

The urban–rural interface (URI) is a transitional zone between urban and rural areas. With the development of urbanization, it has become a critical area in which urban and rural factors interact dramatically in multiple dimensions, such as population, land, and industry. The demographic composition of the URI is being driven by rapid urbanization in developing countries, which is leading to increasingly diverse phenomena of daily population mobility (DPM), especially in the developed regions. However, these complex realities are often neglected in the existing spatial planning and management systems. Taking Luzhi Town, the most developed interface area of Suzhou in the Yangtze River Delta, as an empirical case, this study investigated the changes in population density (PD) generated by DPM in the URI area and its spatiotemporal relationship with the distribution of public service facilities (PSFs) based on the dynamic population data from the Baidu heat map and the GIS space–time cube model. The study showed significant spatiotemporal differentiation of PD in Luzhi Town, resulting in different polarization patterns of work and residence. The distribution of different hot and cold spot patterns also showed hybridity across administrative boundaries. A spatiotemporal mismatch between PD and DPSFs was observed, highlighting many types of heterogeneous areas, suggesting that the existing allocation of public service facilities (PSFs) has not yet been able to adapt to the spatiotemporal characteristics of these emerging areas. These findings reveal that the URI is transforming into a more open, dynamic, and complex spatiotemporal system under the background of rapid urbanization and provide a reference for policymakers to make targeted adjustments to the allocation of PSFs to promote people-oriented urbanization.

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