The restructure of amenities in Beijing's peripheral residential communities

Abstract

China's rapid urbanization has led to many big metropolises absorbing their fringe rural lands to expand their urban boundaries. Beijing is such a metropolis and in its urban peripheral, an increasing number of communities have emerged that are comprised of monotonous housing projects. However, after the basic residential living requirements are satisfied, many other problems (including lack of amenities, distance between home and workplace which is particularly concerned with long commute time, traffic congestion, and etc.) exist. New remedy plans are undertaken to mitigate such problems. Huilongguan is a typical, representative case of amenity scarcity and improvement dynamic. The initial aim of this thesis is to investigate whether planning intervention can be evaluated from a crowdsourcing perspective. Using Huilongguan as a case study, research data are obtained from the Huilongguan Community Forum and Dazhongdianping website. The addition of amenities, such as transportation, shopping malls and work zones, is examined to discover how their restructuring affects the daily lives of residents. Posts on the Huilongguan Community Forum are extracted and categorized according to a specific scheme. The distribution of posts is researched to determine the amenities that have drawn the most attention of residents of this community, as well as the reason. Based on an analysis of sequential content, the attitudes and opinions of residents with regard to amenities are collected and compared to show which amenities are the most satisfactory and those that are problematic. Finally, assessments are made to evaluate amenities from the perspective of users. Using community forum and public reviews is one approach among numerous others to evaluate planning intervention. In general, traditional evaluations investigate the outcome of planning at a certain time. However, since urbanization is a dynamic process, obtaining prolonged and real-time feedback from different interested parties has become a challenge of traditional evaluations. This thesis is an attempt at using crowdsourced data to evaluate planning intervention. Moreover, this tool provides a more transparent and less time-consuming way to analyze first-hand data in order to assess the outcome of planning. New communities such as Huilongguan are popping up throughout China. Many of these new communities face similar problems as Huilongguan. By evaluating the quality of life in Huilongguan, effective methods can be discovered for decision makers and planners to alleviate such problems.