Everyday urbanism in Beijing’s edge cities: on spatial and experience patterns

Wang, Yunlu; Wiedmann, Florian

Abstract

The concentration of people in mega agglomerations in China has been challenging urban governance to reduce daily commuting by planning and investing in new edge cities. The main objective of this paper is to investigate everyday urbanism in two recently developed edge cities in Beijing by considering spatial conditions as well as resulting activity and experience patterns. The applied mapping surveys include land use distributions and density calculations via evaluating GIS data as well as field observations to investigate the typical experiences of 32 representative neighborhood walks. One of the main findings is the overall dependency of neighborhoods on rigid grid planning defining urbanism with large block sizes, resulting in walking experiences with a majority being dominated by compound walls along main roads and only 15% of walks being experienced along active frontages despite rather high urban densities with up to 300 residents per hectare.

Citation

Wang, Y., & Wiedmann, F. (2024). Everyday urbanism in Beijing’s edge cities: on spatial and experience patterns. Journal of Urbanism, https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2024.2383928

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 2, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Aug 18, 2024
• Publication Date: Aug 18, 2024
• Deposit Date: Nov 18, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 20, 2024
• Journal: Journal of Urbanism
• Print ISSN: 1754-9175
• Electronic ISSN: 1754-9183
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2024.2383928
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/38649283
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17549175.2024.2383928