Spatial Heterogeneity of Community Built Environment Quality in River Valley City: The Case of Lanzhou, China

Abstract

High-quality development of the community built environment is an essential basis for improving the quality of life of people and solidly promoting common prosperity in the new era. This paper takes Lanzhou, China, a vital node city of the Belt and Road initiative, as an example and constructs a community built environment quality (CBEQ) evaluation index system from the perspective of common prosperity using multiple data sources. The spatial heterogeneity of CBEQ at the community scale is studied using spatial autocorrelation, geographical detectors, and regression analysis. The results show that CBEQ has significant spatial differentiation, with a core-edge spatial distribution from the urban center to the rural–urban fringe. Moran's I for environmental habitability, life convenience, social stability, and spiritual abundance is 0.38, 0.53, 0.59, and 0.34, respectively. There is a significant positive correlation for CBEQ, with highly significant and heterogeneous spatial clustering. Population and land price play a dominant role in CBEQ spatial heterogeneity. In contrast, community distance to subway stations, community road network density, average elevation, and urban planning play a secondary role. The interaction of influencing factors concludes that natural endowment differences, urban planning and renewal, population quality, economic development, and public infrastructure are the divergent mechanisms contributing to the spatial heterogeneity of CBEQ in river valley–type cities.