Research ArticleEvaluation of Urban Spatial Equality Based on Accessibility toEconomic Activities Beijing as a Case Study

Xinyu Yang12 Fangqu Niu 123 and Dongqi Sun 12

1Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development ModelingInstitute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100101 China2College of Resources and Environment University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100049 China3Collaborative Innovation Center for Geopolitical Setting of Southwest China and Borderland DevelopmentKunming 650500 China

Correspondence should be addressed to Fangqu Niu niufqlreisaccn and Dongqi Sun sundqigsnrraccn

Received 4 July 2020 Revised 15 August 2020 Accepted 30 August 2020 Published 8 October 2020

Academic Editor Jun Yang

Copyright copy 2020 Xinyu Yang et al is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licensewhich permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited

Urban space is the spatial projection of various social and economic activities Given the complexity of urban functions and theongoing expansion of urban areas the spatial differentiation of various economic activities within cities tends to becomemore andmore clear moreover there tends to be spatial inequalities in resource allocation Taking Beijing as an example this studydevelops a spatial accessibility model at the town (jiedao) level by integrating the spatial distribution of economic activities withthe transport system and evaluating the accessibility (at the spatial level) to various economic activities e equality of theresidentsrsquo economic-related travel activity is also evaluated in line with the population distribution e results show that theaccessibility to economic activities generally decreases in going from the urban center to the peripheral suburbs and this ldquocore toedgerdquo difference is readily apparent In general residents tend to choose areas to settle in which have a high degree of accessibilityhowever the attractiveness of accessibility is constrained within certain limits as evidenced by a reduction of population in thecenter of Beijing Additionally there are inequalities with respect to traveling experiences For instance 278 of residentsexperience very convenient travel conditions mostly in the Xicheng Dongcheng and Haidian districts and this equates to a highlevel of accessibility about half of the residents in Beijing live in areas ranked as being of medium accessibility and where thedistribution of economic activities and transportation facilities are insufficient Residents living in the outlying ChangpingMentougou Shunyi and Fangshan districts have relatively poor access to transportation indicating a low level of accessibilityOverall the evaluation method for spatial equality considers comprehensively the distribution of economic activities trans-portation and population distribution and can provide a reference framework for optimization of the urban spatial structure toimprove urban spatial equality

1 Introduction

e city is the place where residents engage in daily activitiesand the urban space is the spatial projection of various socialand economic activities in a specific urban area whichembody the manifestation and spatiotemporal characteris-tics of all economic activities [1 2] Since the 1970s given thecomplexity of urban functions and the ongoing expansion ofurban areas the differentiation of various economic activ-ities at the regional level within the city has become moreand more evident In developing countries where there may

be rapid growth rates in cities it is common to have conflictbetween the supply and service levels of economic activities[3] In general there is a lack of service location capability insuch cities due to an inequitable allocation of resource space

Spatial equality can be viewed as the spatial distributionof economic activity opportunities that can serve the needsand preferences of all individuals on an equitable basis [4]One of the main objectives of research on spatial equality isto determine whether the distribution of urban services isfair and can adapt to the spatial patterns of society and theeconomy [5] As the process of urbanization continues to

HindawiComplexityVolume 2020 Article ID 4560146 12 pageshttpsdoiorg10115520204560146

accelerate the populations in urban centers are increasingrapidly and the nonadaptability between the support fa-cilities underpinning urban economic activity and the needsof residents has becomemore andmore critical Consideringthe differences in economic activity-related journeys madeby residents spatial equality in the context of transportaccessibility can be better understood in terms of peoplehaving different attributes and requirements for undertakingsuch journeys Regarding research on spatial equality therehas been an abundance of data from independent studiesFor example Talen et al used data from Pueblo Colorado andMacon Georgia (USA) to directly link the spatial distributionof park accessibility with the spatial distribution of socio-economic factors of the population in so doing the researcherscompared the differences in fairness of park distribution in thetwo cities and proposed a new method for fairness evaluation[6] Chen et al selected the ancient city of Shaoxing Zhejiangprovince (China) as an example and used the spatial distri-bution of residential buildings to estimate the spatial distri-bution of permanent residents in the region to calculate at afine scale the equality of citizensrsquo access to green park space[7] It was demonstrated there were two main factors affectingthe evaluation of the spatial equality of urban economic ac-tivity one was the accessibility distribution characteristics ofeconomic activity the other was the spatial distribution as-sociated with the travel needs of the residents From a spatialperspective on the basis of considering the accessibility ofvarious economic activities further attention should be givento the equality of the residentsrsquo journey opportunities a factorwhich is of great significance for improving the urban spatialstructure optimizing the allocation of urban resources andfurther promoting social equality

e concept of accessibility was originally derived fromthe concept of transportation geography and later expandedto include the study of urban planning economic geographysociology and other disciplines [8] is concept was firstproposed by Hansen in the 1950s and defined as the degreeof interconnection for a given point with all other points onthe same surface [9] Since then multiple definitions ofaccessibility have been proposed for tackling different re-search problems [10 11] e spatial accessibility of eco-nomic activities mainly refers to the convenience for peoplethat their commuting and daily traveling needs between agiven location and a target location are met by a certainmode of transport [12] Spatial accessibility reflects thefairness of access to specific economic activities by the in-habitants of different areas and accordingly spatial acces-sibility studies may identify areas where such facilities arelacking Accessibility is not only affected by geographical orspatial distance but also by economic informational andbehavioral influences [13] After the midtwentieth centuryaccessibility gradually became a reference for spatial plan-ning of urban economic activities and the study objectscover almost all categories of economic activity includinggreen space [6 14] medical service facilities [15ndash18] edu-cational facilities [19ndash21] and other services e researchmethods employed in spatial planning and accessibilityinclude the buffer analysis method the cost-weighted dis-tance method the two-step floating catchment area method

and the gravity model method Different methods have theirown advantages and disadvantages moreover they havedifferent requirements for data and reflect different aspectsof accessibility To date no method is able to cover all aspectsof accessibility [22 23]

ere is a close connection between spatial equality andaccessibility From the perspective of supply and demandspatial equality emphasizes the differences of economic ac-tivities acquired by different social groups or different regionsamong which the distribution characteristics of accessibility isone of the important factors affecting space equality [24]Equality is an extension of the concept of accessibility [25]and accessibility provides an effective quantitative approachfor the study of spatial equality In the evaluation of equalityvarious statistical indicators that can detect imbalances andgaps are often used to characterize the balance of regionalresource allocation examples of such include the coefficient ofvariation (CV) [26] the Gini coefficient [27] and the eilindex [28 29] However these indicators only discuss thebalance of the distribution from the perspective of the numberof economic activity opportunities and ignore the differencesin the spatial externalities of economic activities the trans-portation networks and the spatial scales of the research thusthey cannot truly reflect the distribution of economic activityopportunities in an urban setting Different from sociologywhich is concerned with the allocation and deprivation levelof social resources from the perspective of constructing socialequality [30] geography is concerned with measuring thelocation equality and the spatial deprivation from the per-spective of space the accessibility analysis combined with GIStechnology is the main method used to measure the spatialequality of urban economic activities Based on the relevantliterature the study of urban spatial accessibility and equalityhas resulted in a substantial body of research data and in-formation however there are some aspects of the traditionalevaluation methods that need to be improved as a matter ofurgency First most studies focus on a single measure ofaccessibility for an economic activity-related journey [31]while urban economic activities are highly diversified eevaluation results based on a single economic activity are one-sided Second many researchers use the spatial distribution ofaccessibility to explain the spatial equity of economic activities[32 33] ignoring the needs of the participants engaged ineconomic activities namely the equality of journey oppor-tunities for residents undertaking the economic activities sothe approach cannot measure well the equality of resourceallocation ird many studies focus on large-scale urbanintercity spatial equality [34 35] while microanalysis of acityrsquos internal spatial equality is weak and less attention ispaid to the difference in location equality at the town (jiedao)scale erefore it is necessary to move beyond the limitationof traditional spatial accessibility and consider comprehen-sively the distribution of opportunities for various economicactivities the transportation costs and the population dis-tribution from a more detailed scale perspective in order tomeasure the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys

is study in taking Beijing as an example integrates thedistribution of various economic activities and the

2 Complexity

transportation system and establishes a spatial accessibilitymodel at the town scale to evaluate the convenience withrespect to various economic activities of traveling to the citycenter from each start location On this basis combined withthe data for the spatial distribution of the residents theequality of economic activity-related journey opportunitiesfor the residents in the study area may be evaluated andfurther explored Such work provides a reference frameworkfor optimizing the urban spatial structure and improvingurban spatial equality

2 Data and Methodology

21 StudyArea andData Beijing the capital of China has aclear single-center urban structure and is commonly clas-sified into three subregions the inner city the inner-ringsuburbs and the outer-ring suburbs e study area themain metropolitan area of Beijing consists of 12 urbandistricts and 239 towns (Dongcheng Xicheng ChaoyangHaidian Fengtai Shijingshan Daxing Tongzhou ShunyiChangping Mentougou and Fangshan) Shaped by historyand government policies the study area has a large pop-ulation (approximately 21 million) and a high concentrationof diverse economic activities In 2018 permanent residentsaccounted for 921 of the cityrsquos total population and therewas a high degree of economic activity and workforcemobility in the city is study takes the town (jiedao) as thestudy unite town is the basic administrative unit for citiesin China [36] and also the basic geographic unit for peoplewhen assessing various economic activities (the town-basedunit has been shown to reflect more spatial heterogeneitythan a county-based unit) Figure 1 shows the study area atthe district and town levels

e spatial data used in the study included Beijingrsquostraffic network data (including highways urban express-ways national highways provincial roads county roads andsubway lines) which were obtained from the open streetmap (OSM) (httpwwwopenstreetmaporgmap113018761149417) and the economic activity distributiondata and the population data at the town scale for the sixthNational Census in 2010 Among them Beijingrsquos economicactivity distribution data are from the economic census datacombined with field survey data After obtaining the relevantinformation for each town unit the API (ApplicationProgramming Interface) provided by the electronic mapvendor was matched with the POI (Point of Interest) todetermine the spatial coordinates of each enterprise A totalof more than 700000 enterprise information data pointswere obtained including the enterprisersquos spatial locationasset scale and the number of employees e data coveralmost all companies schools research institutes hospitalsand other work units in Beijing Based on these data andusing GIS spatial analysis detailed spatial distribution mapsfor various economic activities in Beijing were produced

22 Methodology In this paper ldquospatial accessibilityrdquo ofurban economic activities is defined as the convenienceof reaching the target economic activity by a certain mode of

transport starting out from a certain town Four represen-tative categories of economic activity in urban life namelyemployment education medical care and shopping andleisure were selected to calculate the respective spatial ac-cessibilities Taking employment as an example the spatialaccessibility of town i refers to the convenience of reachingall the employment positions in the city from town i whichrepresents the location conditions of that town ere aretwo main factors which influence the outcome one is thedistribution of all kinds of economic activity in the city theother is the transport conditions associated with attaining allthese types of economic activity [37] Among them thetraffic conditions represent the convenience of movingbetween towns from the physical traffic level point of viewGenerally the routes are characterized by the shortest dis-tance the minimum time cost or the economic cost We canalso consider comprehensively the time and economic costsassociated with the routes which we call the comprehensivecost

Based on the road traffic road network (consisting ofvarious levels of traffic routes) this paper uses the shortestpath GIS algorithm to identify the shortest path betweentowns and taking the shortest time as the indexe result ofthe traffic evaluation is an mtimesm matrix which representsthe shortest journey time between two towns wherem is thenumber of towns in the urban space Based on the aboveconsiderations the formula for the model is

ai minus1λ

ln1113944j

Wj exp minusλdij1113872 1113873

⎧⎪⎨

⎪⎩

⎫⎪⎬

⎪⎭ (1)

where ai is the spatial accessibility of urban town i Wj is thenumber of economic activity opportunities in the town j1113936jWj is the sum of all the economic activities in the city dij

is the transportation cost from i to j and the distributioncoefficient dij represents the sensitivity of different trafficmodes to distance changesis paper does not delineate thetransportation mode so the value of λ can be 1 Whencalculating the spatial accessibility of town i the distribution

N

0 10 20km

Ring roadDistrict boundary

Figure 1 Administrative divisions for the study area (Beijing)

Complexity 3

transportation system and establishes a spatial accessibilitymodel at the town scale to evaluate the convenience withrespect to various economic activities of traveling to the citycenter from each start location On this basis combined withthe data for the spatial distribution of the residents theequality of economic activity-related journey opportunitiesfor the residents in the study area may be evaluated andfurther explored Such work provides a reference frameworkfor optimizing the urban spatial structure and improvingurban spatial equality

2 Data and Methodology

21 StudyArea andData Beijing the capital of China has aclear single-center urban structure and is commonly clas-sified into three subregions the inner city the inner-ringsuburbs and the outer-ring suburbs e study area themain metropolitan area of Beijing consists of 12 urbandistricts and 239 towns (Dongcheng Xicheng ChaoyangHaidian Fengtai Shijingshan Daxing Tongzhou ShunyiChangping Mentougou and Fangshan) Shaped by historyand government policies the study area has a large pop-ulation (approximately 21 million) and a high concentrationof diverse economic activities In 2018 permanent residentsaccounted for 921 of the cityrsquos total population and therewas a high degree of economic activity and workforcemobility in the city is study takes the town (jiedao) as thestudy unite town is the basic administrative unit for citiesin China [36] and also the basic geographic unit for peoplewhen assessing various economic activities (the town-basedunit has been shown to reflect more spatial heterogeneitythan a county-based unit) Figure 1 shows the study area atthe district and town levels

e spatial data used in the study included Beijingrsquostraffic network data (including highways urban express-ways national highways provincial roads county roads andsubway lines) which were obtained from the open streetmap (OSM) (httpwwwopenstreetmaporgmap113018761149417) and the economic activity distributiondata and the population data at the town scale for the sixthNational Census in 2010 Among them Beijingrsquos economicactivity distribution data are from the economic census datacombined with field survey data After obtaining the relevantinformation for each town unit the API (ApplicationProgramming Interface) provided by the electronic mapvendor was matched with the POI (Point of Interest) todetermine the spatial coordinates of each enterprise A totalof more than 700000 enterprise information data pointswere obtained including the enterprisersquos spatial locationasset scale and the number of employees e data coveralmost all companies schools research institutes hospitalsand other work units in Beijing Based on these data andusing GIS spatial analysis detailed spatial distribution mapsfor various economic activities in Beijing were produced

22 Methodology In this paper ldquospatial accessibilityrdquo ofurban economic activities is defined as the convenienceof reaching the target economic activity by a certain mode of

transport starting out from a certain town Four represen-tative categories of economic activity in urban life namelyemployment education medical care and shopping andleisure were selected to calculate the respective spatial ac-cessibilities Taking employment as an example the spatialaccessibility of town i refers to the convenience of reachingall the employment positions in the city from town i whichrepresents the location conditions of that town ere aretwo main factors which influence the outcome one is thedistribution of all kinds of economic activity in the city theother is the transport conditions associated with attaining allthese types of economic activity [37] Among them thetraffic conditions represent the convenience of movingbetween towns from the physical traffic level point of viewGenerally the routes are characterized by the shortest dis-tance the minimum time cost or the economic cost We canalso consider comprehensively the time and economic costsassociated with the routes which we call the comprehensivecost

Based on the road traffic road network (consisting ofvarious levels of traffic routes) this paper uses the shortestpath GIS algorithm to identify the shortest path betweentowns and taking the shortest time as the indexe result ofthe traffic evaluation is an mtimesm matrix which representsthe shortest journey time between two towns wherem is thenumber of towns in the urban space Based on the aboveconsiderations the formula for the model is

ai minus1λ

ln1113944j

Wj exp minusλdij1113872 1113873

⎧⎪⎨

⎪⎩

⎫⎪⎬

⎪⎭ (1)

where ai is the spatial accessibility of urban town i Wj is thenumber of economic activity opportunities in the town j1113936jWj is the sum of all the economic activities in the city dij

is the transportation cost from i to j and the distributioncoefficient dij represents the sensitivity of different trafficmodes to distance changesis paper does not delineate thetransportation mode so the value of λ can be 1 Whencalculating the spatial accessibility of town i the distribution

N

0 10 20km

Ring roadDistrict boundary

Figure 1 Administrative divisions for the study area (Beijing)

Complexity 3

of economic activity opportunities in all towns of the citywill be summed

e coefficient of the distance parameter dij in the modelis negative (minusλ) When the distance increases the value ofthe exponential function (exp()) becomes smaller and theweight Wj of town j is reducederefore if it is difficult fora person in town i to reach town j (the value of dij is veryhigh) hence the opportunities in j will become meaninglessconversely if j can be easily reached (the value of dij issmall) the number of opportunities has a great impactGiven that the evaluation result for the dimension of theabove model is the same as the dimension of the trans-portation cost (d) the larger the value the smaller theaccessibility erefore formula (1) is further processed Asshown in formula (2) where Ai is the accessibility of thetown i after normalization the higher the value of Ai thehigher the accessibility

Ai max1leilen

ai1113864 1113865 minus ai (2)

e reason for using the above logarithmic summationto evaluate accessibility is that the model includes two as-pects that is the transportation system and the economicactivity distribution the model evaluates accessibility basedon the cityrsquos distribution of economic activities withoutsetting a threshold Formula (1) is based on previous re-search and is an extension of McFaddenrsquos [38] stochasticutility theory

3 Spatial Analysis of Accessibility withRespect to Economic Activity

31 Accessibility by Type of Economic Activity e oppor-tunities for residents to benefit from the diverse types ofresources due to economic activity are determined by theirlocation According to formulae (1) and (2) to calculate theaccessibility to various economic activities it is necessary toset the weight for each town that is to set the number ofactivity opportunitiesWj To avoid errors caused by the sizesof different enterprises this paper adopts the number ofemployees as a measure of the distribution of opportunitiesfor economic activities Accordingly employment oppor-tunities are the total number of jobs in each town and thenumber of opportunities for accessing education medicalcare shopping and leisure activities is given by the numberof employees in the medical educational and other serviceindustries in each town e evaluation results for accessi-bility with respect to the various economic activities arepresented in Figure 2

It can be seen that the spatial patterns of accessibility forthe different types of economic activities in Beijing are quitesimilar with a general decrease occurring in going from thecity center to the peripheral suburbs and the ldquocore to edgerdquodifference in spatial accessibility is clear at is the patternsof economic activity reflect the fact that the distributiondensities of the activities gradually decrease in going fromthe central urban area to the peripheral suburbs In terms ofemployment accessibility (Figure 2(a)) locations within the4th Ring Road have a strong geographical advantage is is

because most of the employment opportunities in Beijing aredistributed in the main urban areas within the 4th Ring Roadand the transportation facilities there are conducive tocommuting As far as educational journeys are concerned(Figure 2(b)) the western region within the 5th Ring Roadhas clear advantages and the suburbs between the 4th RingRoad and the 5th Ring Road also have a high degree ofaccessibilityis reflects the fact that these areas have a largenumber of high-quality primary and secondary schools andcolleges hence the distribution of educational resources isrelatively dense Medical accessibility (Figure 2(c)) andshopping and leisure accessibility (Figure 2(d)) generallyhave similar distributions and the advantageous locationsare concentrated in the main urban areas within the 5th RingRoad is is due to the development in the past of a ldquocakespreadingrdquo effect for various medical facilities large shop-ping malls and supermarkets with clusters forming in thisurban area Given the current deteriorating traffic situationin Beijing relocation of medical activities shopping leisureand other economic activities is imperative

e top and bottom ten towns for the various economicactivities are presented in Table 1 Among them seven of thetop ten towns for employment accessibility are located inXicheng District including the top three towns with thehighest accessibility that is Jinrongjie Yuetan and Xin-jiekou is result illustrates that Xicheng District has goodemployment accessibility benefits from convenient trans-portation conditions and a high concentration of diverseemployment units e next ranked districts for employ-ment accessibility are Haidian and Dongcheng where thereare only two towns and one town respectively among thetop ten moreover employment accessibility is significantlyweaker than in Xicheng District Among the ten lowest-ranking towns for employment accessibility seven are lo-cated in Fangshan District including the town of Puwawhich is the lowest ranked

Among the top ten towns for educational accessibilityfive are located in Xicheng District and four are located inHaidian District Xinjiekou Huayuanlu and Jinrongjie rankamong the top three towns is is due to a large number ofhigh-quality primary and secondary schools and collegeslocated in the Haidian and Xicheng districts where there areample educational resources and well-developed trans-portation facilities In addition Chaoyang District ranksseventh in terms of education accessibility HoweverDongcheng District which is also located in the core urbanarea is not in the top ten indicating that access to educa-tional resources is relatively poor e bottom ten townswith respect to educational accessibility are all located in theFangshan and Mentougou districts

Seven of the top ten towns for medical accessibility arelocated in Xicheng District including the top three townswith the highest accessibility that is Xinjiekou Jinrongjieand Yuetan is situation reflects the fact that XichengDistrict is endowed with substantial medical resources andhas significant advantages with respect to travel accessibilityIn addition the districts of Haidian Dongcheng andChaoyang each have only one town in the top ten thusmedical accessibility needs to be further strengthened in

4 Complexity

these districts e lowest ten towns for medical accessibilityare all located in the Fangshan and Mentougou districts

In terms of shopping and leisure accessibility XichengDistrict has a significant geographical advantage with eighttowns being ranked in the top ten Among them YuetanJinrongjie and Xinjiekou are in the top three In other areasonly one town in each of Ganjiakou in Haidian District andDonghuamen in Dongcheng District rank in the top tenis indicates that shopping and leisure facilities are highly

concentrated in Xicheng District while shopping and leisurefacilities in other areas are less than adequate e lowestranked ten towns in terms of shopping and leisure acces-sibility are all located in the Fangshan and Mentougoudistricts

In general the towns with high accessibility to diverseeconomic activities are mostly in Xicheng District ofwhich Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekou and Shichahai areamong the top ten towns e distribution of the low

11293ndash1263012631ndash13832

Employment accessibility000ndash47674768ndash92079208ndash11292

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(a)

11215ndash1245312454ndash13634

Educational accessibility000ndash57735774ndash94369437ndash11214

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(b)

11224ndash1251512516ndash13833

Medical accessibility000ndash47884789ndash92499250ndash11223

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(c)

11225ndash1242012421ndash13541

Shopping and leisure accessibility000ndash57905791ndash95059506ndash11224

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(d)

Figure 2 Distribution maps for accessibility by type of economic activity (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility(c) Medical accessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Complexity 5

accessibility towns with respect to the various economicactivities is basically the same as was previously the casewith all towns being located in the Fangshan and Men-tougou districts In addition Haidian District has a par-ticular advantage with respect to educational accessibilitywhile Dongcheng District needs to further improve itseducational accessibility

32 Comprehensive Accessibility to Different Types of Eco-nomic Activity Considering the economic implications ofthe data the accessibility to employment education medicalcare and shopping and leisure were weighted equally that isthe weight value for each type of accessibility was 025 Onthis basis the comprehensive accessibility of 239 accom-modation blocks in the study area was calculated and thescores were then classed into five grades (Figure 3) to furtheranalyze the comprehensive distribution patterns for theaccessibility of economic activities in Beijing As shown inFigure 3 the comprehensive accessibility of the selectedeconomic activities in Beijing still exhibits a circular-typestructure that decreases in going from the center to the outersuburbs ere were 56 towns with the highest compre-hensive accessibility score (score gt130) mostly in theXicheng and Haidian districts which are within the 4th RingRoad e status of public transport infrastructure in thisregion is well developed and mature and there is a highdistribution density of economic activity therefore it is veryconvenient to access the diverse resources and service ac-tivities ere were 59 towns with relatively high compre-hensive accessibility (score 120ndash130) most of which aredistributed between the 4th and 5th Ring Roads as well assome areas north of the 5th Ring Road ese areas are close

to the central area where the traffic flow is relatively smooththus these locations have the advantage of easy access toservices and resources ere were 44 towns with moderatecomprehensive accessibility (score 110ndash120) and these townsare located between the 5th and the 6th Ring Roade ability toaccess diverse services and resources in this area is consideredto be below average despite the townsrsquo access to urban eco-nomic service activities having a moderate accessibility score

Table 1 e top and bottom ten towns for accessibility to different economic activities

Employment accessibility Educational accessibility Medical accessibility Shopping and leisureaccessibility

Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District1 Jinrongjie Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng2 Yuetan Xicheng Huayuanlu Haidian Jinrongjie Xicheng Jinrongjie Xicheng3 Xinjiekou Xicheng Jinrongjie Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng4 Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng Desheng Xicheng Shichahai Xicheng Ganjiakou Haidian5 Ganjiakou Haidian Ganjiakou Haidian Ganjiakou Haidian Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng6 Shichahai Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng Zhanlanlu Xicheng7 Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng Anzhen Chaoyang Zhanlanlu Xicheng Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng8 Zhanlanlu Xicheng Beitaipingzhuang Haidian Donghuamen Dongcheng Shichahai Xicheng9 Donghuamen Dongcheng Shichahai Xicheng Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng Donghuamen Dongcheng10 Yangfangdian Haidian Zhongguancun Haidian Anzhen Chaoyang Niujie Xicheng

230 Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan231 Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan232 Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan233 Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou234 Shijiaying Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan Shidu Fangshan235 Shidu Fangshan Shidu Fangshan Shidu Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan236 Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan237 Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou238 Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou239 Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan

120ndash130gt130

Comprehensive accessibilitylt100100ndash110110ndash120

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 3 Comprehensive accessibility of the study area

6 Complexity

ere were 38 towns with low comprehensive accessibility(score 100ndash110) ese areas are located outside the 6th RingRoad far removed from the city center ese towns areinconvenient to access due to poor transport infrastructureand fall outside the service scope of most urban economicactivities such that there is poor accessibility ere were 42towns with the lowest comprehensive accessibility ranking(score lt100) and most of these are in the Fangshan andMentougou districts ese areas are remote from the urbanareas lack convenient transportation and the distribution ofvarious economic activities is quite sparse and the acces-sibility is judged to be very low

Next we used global autocorrelation [39] and localautocorrelation [40] methods to further analyze whether acomprehensive accessibility index gave an indication ofsignificant spatial clustering e global spatial autocorre-lation analysis showed that Moranrsquos I index was 052 the zscore was 373 and the p value was less than 000001 Hencethere is a significant positive correlation in the compre-hensive accessibility indicating that in the whole study areaof Beijing the trend for spatial clustering of similarly ac-cessible towns is clear confirming significant regional dif-ferences for accessing economic activities

e Global Moranrsquos I Index reveals a global spatialclustering feature with respect to accessibility of urbaneconomic activity but it can only reflect the spatialclustering pattern of urban functionally active similarityvalues (positive correlation) or nonsimilarity observationvalues (negative correlation) between regions [41] How-ever Anselin Local Moranrsquos I index and the Local G co-efficient can detect whether a town is a high-value clusteror a low-value cluster thus the agglomeration pattern anddistribution difference of urban spatial accessibility can bemore accurately detected Based on this the cluster andoutlier analysis (Anselin Local Moranrsquos I) tool of ArcGISwas used to conduct local spatial correlation analysis onthe comprehensive accessibility of each town and theresults of clustering and outlier analysis are presented inFigure 4

A ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo is mainly concentrated in the urbancenter within the 5th Ring Road and within the townsthemselves moreover adjacent towns also have high eco-nomic activity accessibility is ldquohigh-highrdquo cluster enjoysfavorable geographical conditions has an established urbaninfrastructure a dense distribution of various economic ac-tivities and an almost ideal road and public transport in-frastructure A ldquolow-low clusterrdquo is concentrated in theFangshan and Mentougou districts in the west of the city aswell as in parts of Shunyi District in the northeast where theaccessibility of the towns to economic activities (includingadjacent towns) is relatively lowMost of these areas are newlybuilt residential areas and the public service facilities in theimmediate area are insufficient so the residents have morelimited choices with respect to economic activities A ldquolow-high outlierrdquo was detected in Beiqijia in Changping Districte accessibility of this town was found to be low but theadjacent towns have a high spatial accessibility with respect toeconomic activities which is negatively correlated in spaceCompared with the ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo the ldquolow-low clusterrdquo

and the ldquolow-high outlierrdquo are generally distributed in theperipheral regions of the city e low density of economicactivities and the limited range of services are the mostimportant factors affecting the residentsrsquo access to variouseconomic opportunities erefore in these areas it is nec-essary to provide new opportunities that meet the employ-ment educational medical care shopping and leisure needsof the residents which in turn will stimulate economicactivity to improve the spatial accessibility of the area

4 Equality Evaluation of Residentsrsquo EconomicActivity-Related Journeys

41 Distribution of Residents e accessibility of economicactivities is mainly a measure of the ease of obtainingeconomic activity opportunities within a certain distancefrom the supply source e equality evaluation of the op-portunities for economic activity-related journeys also needsto consider the requirements of the residents In previousstudies the demand for economic activities was oftencharacterized by the number of people living in a particulararea [42] In general an area with a large population has ahigh demand for all kinds of economic activities Based onthe population statistics of the sixth National Census in 2010the population distribution of Beijing (Figure 5) was ex-amined It can be seen from inspection of Figure 5 that thepopulation distribution in the study area is highest inDongxiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District it is in thesetowns where there is the greatest demand for economicactivities e populations in the districts of FangshanMentougou and Shunyi which are outwith the urban areaare more sparsely distributed and the demands for eco-nomic activities are correspondingly less

Low-high outlierLow-low cluster

LISA cluster map

Not significantHigh-high cluster

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 4 LISA cluster map of comprehensive accessibility

Complexity 7

42 Equality Evaluation by Urban Economic Activity Tofurther explore the relationship between urban accessibilityand population distribution we calculated the populationdistribution under various economic activity accessibilityintervals (Figure 6) and then analyzed the impact of thedifferent economic activities on the residentsrsquo choice ofhousing in order to reveal the spatial equality of the resi-dentsrsquo access to economic activities As can be seen fromFigure 6 the distribution of residents for a particular ac-cessibility interval for the various economic activities hassimilar characteristics with increase in accessibility there isan upward trend in the population agglomeration whichgenerally declines after reaching a maximum level isindicates that the population generally tends to live in areaswith high accessibility however the attractiveness of ac-cessibility to the population is eventually limited Affected bytraffic congestion costs of housing and other factors thereis a tendency for residents to migrate from urban centers tothe peripheral regions in pursuit of a lower cost of living anda better quality of life erefore although the urban centerenjoys the highest levels of accessibility it is still unable tosecure the largest numbers of people thus a decrease inpopulation occurs for the highest levels of accessibility(Figure 6(a)ndash6(d)) e residentsrsquo requirement for timelyand convenient commuting is of the highest importanceAbout 645 of the population in the study area live inareas with high employment accessibility (score gt120)hence the employees can benefit from having a convenientcommuting experience Also of importance to residents isthe shopping and leisure experience with about 643 ofthe population living in towns with a high access toshopping and leisure Of less importance are medical-re-lated journeys where the figure accounts for 616 of thepopulation ese results show that the choice of locationfor residents is mainly dictated by the requirements for

commuting to work and shopping and leisure travel andchoice is less affected by the need to access medical facilitiesgiven that the frequency of such trips is much less than forthe former journeys

Specifically due to the different locations the residentpopulations have different degrees of economic activity-related opportunities As far as employment accessibility isconcerned 322 of the population is concentrated in thetowns which have the highest employment accessibility(score gt130) and these locations enjoy the best commutingsituation Some 187 of the population lives in towns withan accessibility score of less than 110 where not only theability to access employment opportunities is low but alsothe travel experience to work is also inconvenient Withrespect to shopping and leisure accessibility 296 of thepopulation are distributed in towns with the highest medicalaccessibility (score of gt130) while more people (348) aredistributed in towns with medium accessibility (score120ndash130) indicating moderate access to shopping and leisureresources Besides 192 of the population live in townswhere the shopping and leisure accessibility is low (scorelt110) hence the inhabitants cannot experience a conve-nient shopping and leisure trip As for education andmedical-related accessibility only 253 and 228 of thepopulation can access the best journey conditions for ed-ucation and medical activity-related travel respectivelywhile much of the population (3712 and 3883 re-spectively) live in towns with an accessibility score of120ndash130 Furthermore 177 and 195 of the populationlive in towns with education and medical activity-relatedaccessibility scores below 110 respectively ese peoplecannot obtain equal accessibility with respect to undertakingeducation and medical activity-related journeys Clearly theallocation of education and medical resources in these areasneeds to be upgraded

43 Equality Evaluation of the Residentsrsquo Economic Activity-Related Journeys e distribution data for the economic-related journeys of the residents at different levels ofcomprehensive accessibility were calculated and the resultsare presented in Table 2 en combining the populationdistribution data and the comprehensive accessibility data(Figures 5 and 3) we further analyzed the spatial equality ofthe supply and demand of comprehensive accessibility Itcan be seen that the advantages of the comprehensive ac-cessibility of economic activities in the study area are notentirely consistent with the distribution data for the resi-dents and there are different types of inequalities

e area with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) is located in the central urban area within the4th Ring Road this area has a total population of 473million people Among them the districts of XichengDongcheng and Haidian have the most favorable accessi-bility situations and 100 796 and 576 of the residentsin these areas respectively experience the best opportunitiesfor undertaking economic activity-related journeys in thecity However due to the high house prices and living costsin the city center this population only accounts for 278 of

130926ndash201614201615ndash359415

Population2472ndash3795937960ndash7573675737ndash130925

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 5 Population distribution map of the study area

8 Complexity

the total population erefore only a relatively smallnumber of people benefit from the best transport accessi-bility opportunities in the city this situation results in anexcessive concentration of economic activities in the urbancenter and equates to an inequitable distribution of socialresources Clearly this is not conducive to securing spatialequality for the residentsrsquo journeys

e areas with medium comprehensive accessibility(score 110ndash130) are mainly located between the 4th and the

6th Ring Road havingmore than half of the cityrsquos population(527) Most of the residents in the Fengtai (975)Chaoyang (790) Shijingshan (100) Daxing (703) andTongzhou districts (540) fall into this category eseresidents experience medium-level accessibility conditionsfor economic activity-related journeys but the supply of andthe demand for economic activities are not fully met edistribution of economic activities such as employmenteducation medical care and transportation cannot match

334

1240

1682

3224

3223

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

0

130ndash

140

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(a)

360

1107

1998

3712

2525

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(b)

337

1307

1884

3883

2281

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(c)

338

1263

1645

3476

2958

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(d)

Figure 6 Number of residents for the different economic activities (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility (c) Medicalaccessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Table 2 Distributions for residents at different levels of comprehensive accessibility

DistrictAccessibility level

Total number (10000)lt100 100ndash110 110ndash120 120ndash130 gt130

Xicheng 0 0 0 0 12328 12328Dongcheng 0 0 0 1878 7315 9193Haidian 0 1424 1712 10778 18892 32807Fengtai 0 538 1614 12445 1475 16073Chaoyang 0 0 2963 24553 7295 34811Shijingshan 0 0 2094 3838 0 5932Daxing 1534 2240 5573 3349 0 12696Tongzhou 1773 3679 6391 0 0 11843Changping 1552 7288 4702 3063 0 16605Mentougou 524 1027 929 424 0 2905Shunyi 2757 3459 1106 333 0 7655Fangshan 2867 2599 2012 0 0 7478Total 11006 22254 29097 60663 47305 170324

Complexity 9

the needs of the large population e limited resources inthis area result in inequalities

e area with poor comprehensive accessibility (scorelt110) has a population of 333 million and accounts for195 of the total population is area is mainly in thesuburbs outside the 6th Ring Road and comprises the dis-tricts of Changping Mentougou Shunyi and FangshanCompared with other regions the residents in these regionshave limited access to economic activity-related resourcesand there is a lack of public transport thus there is limitedscope for undertaking journeys hence the spatial in-equalities between these districts and the more centralizedregions erefore it is necessary to develop more equitableplans for all kinds of economic activities throughout Beijingand redress the imbalance of the transportation infra-structure in marginal areas so as to ensure more equitabletransport opportunities for residents in the whole city

5 Discussion

Research concerning the accessibility and equality of urbaneconomic activities can provide important information forurban planning including resource allocation Such workhelps in the planning and optimization of future urbaneconomic activities and transport infrastructure and facili-tates the fair distribution of economic-related opportunitiesIn the traditional approach to evaluating urban servicesaccessibility the types of economic activities are rarelydistinguished However diversification of economic activ-ities is of great significance to land use development andadjustment of the urban spatial structure erefore thisstudy has focused on the spatial differences of accessibilitybased on four types of economic activity e accessibilitymodel established for a comprehensive selection of eco-nomic activities makes up for the deficiencies of previousaccessibility evaluations and emphasizes the access oppor-tunities to diverse economic activities for different towns ineffect this model serves as an important indicator for re-vealing the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys In addition in a previous equality evaluationof residentsrsquo journeys the impact of the participantsrsquo needson the evaluation results was rarely considered and only thefairness of the distribution of economic activity-relatedfacilities from a geographic perspective was measured Withregard to the balance between supply and demand for urbanservices this study makes up for the shortage of a spaceequality evaluation method that is normally undertakenfrom a single viewpoint and proposes a more comprehensiveapproach for evaluation of the equality of economic activity-related journeys undertaken by Beijingrsquos residents

Several recommendations can be proposed based on theresults of this study When considering future economicactivities urban planners and decision makers should adoptan evaluation method which examines the spatial accessi-bility of urban economic activities consider comprehen-sively the spatial distribution of the residents and take intoconsideration the residentsrsquo commuting and other economicactivity-related travel factors including for instance theallocation of resources for economic activities and selection

of routes and stations within the urban rail transit systemAlso from the perspective of the spatial equality of op-portunities on the one hand the government should es-tablish appropriate educational medical shopping andleisure facilities for the suburbs and towns which are wellremoved from the center of Beijing and pay more attentionto the construction of transportation infrastructure at theperipheries of urban areas On the other hand the over-concentrated economic service functions in the center of thecity should be decentralized to improve and realize a moreequitable transport system

However there are still some limitations to the study interms of spatial equality analysis Due to the limitations ofthe research data there is mismatch between the dates of theeconomic activity data and the demographic data this needsto be addressed however the present findings are consid-ered robust and adequate for the purposes of explaining thespatial equality problem is research has focused on thestudy of the equality of economic activity-related journeysmade by the residents of Beijing but it does not take intoaccount the demographic structures and special socialgroups (such as children the elderly and groups of differentraces) and other factors In future research the personalizedneeds of different populations in the context of economicactivities need to be further considered so as to further im-prove the accessibility model and spatial equality evaluation

6 Conclusions

In this paper the spatial distribution characteristics and thespatial equality of economic activity-related accessibility inBeijing were analyzed First based on the distribution ofurban economic activities and the transportation systems anaccessibility model was built to calculate the accessibility offour major economic activities namely employment ed-ucation medical care and shopping and leisure e modelenabled us to analyze the respective spatial distributionaccessibility characteristics associated with the four types ofeconomic activity Second we weighted the four types ofaccessibility equally to obtain a comprehensive accessibilityindex and analyzed the spatial agglomeration pattern using aglobal autocorrelation analysis method Finally the spatialequalities of the economic activities were explained byfactoring in the spatial distribution of the resident pop-ulation in Beijing e main conclusions are as follows

(1) e accessibility of various economic activities inBeijing generally follows a law whereby accessibilitydecreases from the city center to the peripheralsuburbs and a ldquocore to edgerdquo feature is clear earea within the 4th Ring Road represents the locationwith strong accessibility for employment and Hai-dian District has a clear advantage in terms of ed-ucation accessibility e accessibility of medicalservices and shopping and leisure has similar dis-tributions with concentrations in the main urbanarea within the 5th Ring Road More specifically thetowns with high accessibility to all kinds of eco-nomic activities are mostly distributed in Xicheng

10 Complexity

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

these districts e lowest ten towns for medical accessibilityare all located in the Fangshan and Mentougou districts

In terms of shopping and leisure accessibility XichengDistrict has a significant geographical advantage with eighttowns being ranked in the top ten Among them YuetanJinrongjie and Xinjiekou are in the top three In other areasonly one town in each of Ganjiakou in Haidian District andDonghuamen in Dongcheng District rank in the top tenis indicates that shopping and leisure facilities are highly

concentrated in Xicheng District while shopping and leisurefacilities in other areas are less than adequate e lowestranked ten towns in terms of shopping and leisure acces-sibility are all located in the Fangshan and Mentougoudistricts

In general the towns with high accessibility to diverseeconomic activities are mostly in Xicheng District ofwhich Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekou and Shichahai areamong the top ten towns e distribution of the low

11293ndash1263012631ndash13832

Employment accessibility000ndash47674768ndash92079208ndash11292

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(a)

11215ndash1245312454ndash13634

Educational accessibility000ndash57735774ndash94369437ndash11214

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(b)

11224ndash1251512516ndash13833

Medical accessibility000ndash47884789ndash92499250ndash11223

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(c)

11225ndash1242012421ndash13541

Shopping and leisure accessibility000ndash57905791ndash95059506ndash11224

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

(d)

Figure 2 Distribution maps for accessibility by type of economic activity (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility(c) Medical accessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Complexity 5

accessibility towns with respect to the various economicactivities is basically the same as was previously the casewith all towns being located in the Fangshan and Men-tougou districts In addition Haidian District has a par-ticular advantage with respect to educational accessibilitywhile Dongcheng District needs to further improve itseducational accessibility

32 Comprehensive Accessibility to Different Types of Eco-nomic Activity Considering the economic implications ofthe data the accessibility to employment education medicalcare and shopping and leisure were weighted equally that isthe weight value for each type of accessibility was 025 Onthis basis the comprehensive accessibility of 239 accom-modation blocks in the study area was calculated and thescores were then classed into five grades (Figure 3) to furtheranalyze the comprehensive distribution patterns for theaccessibility of economic activities in Beijing As shown inFigure 3 the comprehensive accessibility of the selectedeconomic activities in Beijing still exhibits a circular-typestructure that decreases in going from the center to the outersuburbs ere were 56 towns with the highest compre-hensive accessibility score (score gt130) mostly in theXicheng and Haidian districts which are within the 4th RingRoad e status of public transport infrastructure in thisregion is well developed and mature and there is a highdistribution density of economic activity therefore it is veryconvenient to access the diverse resources and service ac-tivities ere were 59 towns with relatively high compre-hensive accessibility (score 120ndash130) most of which aredistributed between the 4th and 5th Ring Roads as well assome areas north of the 5th Ring Road ese areas are close

to the central area where the traffic flow is relatively smooththus these locations have the advantage of easy access toservices and resources ere were 44 towns with moderatecomprehensive accessibility (score 110ndash120) and these townsare located between the 5th and the 6th Ring Roade ability toaccess diverse services and resources in this area is consideredto be below average despite the townsrsquo access to urban eco-nomic service activities having a moderate accessibility score

Table 1 e top and bottom ten towns for accessibility to different economic activities

Employment accessibility Educational accessibility Medical accessibility Shopping and leisureaccessibility

Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District1 Jinrongjie Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng2 Yuetan Xicheng Huayuanlu Haidian Jinrongjie Xicheng Jinrongjie Xicheng3 Xinjiekou Xicheng Jinrongjie Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng4 Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng Desheng Xicheng Shichahai Xicheng Ganjiakou Haidian5 Ganjiakou Haidian Ganjiakou Haidian Ganjiakou Haidian Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng6 Shichahai Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng Zhanlanlu Xicheng7 Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng Anzhen Chaoyang Zhanlanlu Xicheng Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng8 Zhanlanlu Xicheng Beitaipingzhuang Haidian Donghuamen Dongcheng Shichahai Xicheng9 Donghuamen Dongcheng Shichahai Xicheng Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng Donghuamen Dongcheng10 Yangfangdian Haidian Zhongguancun Haidian Anzhen Chaoyang Niujie Xicheng

230 Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan231 Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan232 Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan233 Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou234 Shijiaying Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan Shidu Fangshan235 Shidu Fangshan Shidu Fangshan Shidu Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan236 Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan237 Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou238 Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou239 Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan

120ndash130gt130

Comprehensive accessibilitylt100100ndash110110ndash120

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 3 Comprehensive accessibility of the study area

6 Complexity

ere were 38 towns with low comprehensive accessibility(score 100ndash110) ese areas are located outside the 6th RingRoad far removed from the city center ese towns areinconvenient to access due to poor transport infrastructureand fall outside the service scope of most urban economicactivities such that there is poor accessibility ere were 42towns with the lowest comprehensive accessibility ranking(score lt100) and most of these are in the Fangshan andMentougou districts ese areas are remote from the urbanareas lack convenient transportation and the distribution ofvarious economic activities is quite sparse and the acces-sibility is judged to be very low

Next we used global autocorrelation [39] and localautocorrelation [40] methods to further analyze whether acomprehensive accessibility index gave an indication ofsignificant spatial clustering e global spatial autocorre-lation analysis showed that Moranrsquos I index was 052 the zscore was 373 and the p value was less than 000001 Hencethere is a significant positive correlation in the compre-hensive accessibility indicating that in the whole study areaof Beijing the trend for spatial clustering of similarly ac-cessible towns is clear confirming significant regional dif-ferences for accessing economic activities

e Global Moranrsquos I Index reveals a global spatialclustering feature with respect to accessibility of urbaneconomic activity but it can only reflect the spatialclustering pattern of urban functionally active similarityvalues (positive correlation) or nonsimilarity observationvalues (negative correlation) between regions [41] How-ever Anselin Local Moranrsquos I index and the Local G co-efficient can detect whether a town is a high-value clusteror a low-value cluster thus the agglomeration pattern anddistribution difference of urban spatial accessibility can bemore accurately detected Based on this the cluster andoutlier analysis (Anselin Local Moranrsquos I) tool of ArcGISwas used to conduct local spatial correlation analysis onthe comprehensive accessibility of each town and theresults of clustering and outlier analysis are presented inFigure 4

A ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo is mainly concentrated in the urbancenter within the 5th Ring Road and within the townsthemselves moreover adjacent towns also have high eco-nomic activity accessibility is ldquohigh-highrdquo cluster enjoysfavorable geographical conditions has an established urbaninfrastructure a dense distribution of various economic ac-tivities and an almost ideal road and public transport in-frastructure A ldquolow-low clusterrdquo is concentrated in theFangshan and Mentougou districts in the west of the city aswell as in parts of Shunyi District in the northeast where theaccessibility of the towns to economic activities (includingadjacent towns) is relatively lowMost of these areas are newlybuilt residential areas and the public service facilities in theimmediate area are insufficient so the residents have morelimited choices with respect to economic activities A ldquolow-high outlierrdquo was detected in Beiqijia in Changping Districte accessibility of this town was found to be low but theadjacent towns have a high spatial accessibility with respect toeconomic activities which is negatively correlated in spaceCompared with the ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo the ldquolow-low clusterrdquo

and the ldquolow-high outlierrdquo are generally distributed in theperipheral regions of the city e low density of economicactivities and the limited range of services are the mostimportant factors affecting the residentsrsquo access to variouseconomic opportunities erefore in these areas it is nec-essary to provide new opportunities that meet the employ-ment educational medical care shopping and leisure needsof the residents which in turn will stimulate economicactivity to improve the spatial accessibility of the area

4 Equality Evaluation of Residentsrsquo EconomicActivity-Related Journeys

41 Distribution of Residents e accessibility of economicactivities is mainly a measure of the ease of obtainingeconomic activity opportunities within a certain distancefrom the supply source e equality evaluation of the op-portunities for economic activity-related journeys also needsto consider the requirements of the residents In previousstudies the demand for economic activities was oftencharacterized by the number of people living in a particulararea [42] In general an area with a large population has ahigh demand for all kinds of economic activities Based onthe population statistics of the sixth National Census in 2010the population distribution of Beijing (Figure 5) was ex-amined It can be seen from inspection of Figure 5 that thepopulation distribution in the study area is highest inDongxiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District it is in thesetowns where there is the greatest demand for economicactivities e populations in the districts of FangshanMentougou and Shunyi which are outwith the urban areaare more sparsely distributed and the demands for eco-nomic activities are correspondingly less

Low-high outlierLow-low cluster

LISA cluster map

Not significantHigh-high cluster

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 4 LISA cluster map of comprehensive accessibility

Complexity 7

42 Equality Evaluation by Urban Economic Activity Tofurther explore the relationship between urban accessibilityand population distribution we calculated the populationdistribution under various economic activity accessibilityintervals (Figure 6) and then analyzed the impact of thedifferent economic activities on the residentsrsquo choice ofhousing in order to reveal the spatial equality of the resi-dentsrsquo access to economic activities As can be seen fromFigure 6 the distribution of residents for a particular ac-cessibility interval for the various economic activities hassimilar characteristics with increase in accessibility there isan upward trend in the population agglomeration whichgenerally declines after reaching a maximum level isindicates that the population generally tends to live in areaswith high accessibility however the attractiveness of ac-cessibility to the population is eventually limited Affected bytraffic congestion costs of housing and other factors thereis a tendency for residents to migrate from urban centers tothe peripheral regions in pursuit of a lower cost of living anda better quality of life erefore although the urban centerenjoys the highest levels of accessibility it is still unable tosecure the largest numbers of people thus a decrease inpopulation occurs for the highest levels of accessibility(Figure 6(a)ndash6(d)) e residentsrsquo requirement for timelyand convenient commuting is of the highest importanceAbout 645 of the population in the study area live inareas with high employment accessibility (score gt120)hence the employees can benefit from having a convenientcommuting experience Also of importance to residents isthe shopping and leisure experience with about 643 ofthe population living in towns with a high access toshopping and leisure Of less importance are medical-re-lated journeys where the figure accounts for 616 of thepopulation ese results show that the choice of locationfor residents is mainly dictated by the requirements for

commuting to work and shopping and leisure travel andchoice is less affected by the need to access medical facilitiesgiven that the frequency of such trips is much less than forthe former journeys

Specifically due to the different locations the residentpopulations have different degrees of economic activity-related opportunities As far as employment accessibility isconcerned 322 of the population is concentrated in thetowns which have the highest employment accessibility(score gt130) and these locations enjoy the best commutingsituation Some 187 of the population lives in towns withan accessibility score of less than 110 where not only theability to access employment opportunities is low but alsothe travel experience to work is also inconvenient Withrespect to shopping and leisure accessibility 296 of thepopulation are distributed in towns with the highest medicalaccessibility (score of gt130) while more people (348) aredistributed in towns with medium accessibility (score120ndash130) indicating moderate access to shopping and leisureresources Besides 192 of the population live in townswhere the shopping and leisure accessibility is low (scorelt110) hence the inhabitants cannot experience a conve-nient shopping and leisure trip As for education andmedical-related accessibility only 253 and 228 of thepopulation can access the best journey conditions for ed-ucation and medical activity-related travel respectivelywhile much of the population (3712 and 3883 re-spectively) live in towns with an accessibility score of120ndash130 Furthermore 177 and 195 of the populationlive in towns with education and medical activity-relatedaccessibility scores below 110 respectively ese peoplecannot obtain equal accessibility with respect to undertakingeducation and medical activity-related journeys Clearly theallocation of education and medical resources in these areasneeds to be upgraded

43 Equality Evaluation of the Residentsrsquo Economic Activity-Related Journeys e distribution data for the economic-related journeys of the residents at different levels ofcomprehensive accessibility were calculated and the resultsare presented in Table 2 en combining the populationdistribution data and the comprehensive accessibility data(Figures 5 and 3) we further analyzed the spatial equality ofthe supply and demand of comprehensive accessibility Itcan be seen that the advantages of the comprehensive ac-cessibility of economic activities in the study area are notentirely consistent with the distribution data for the resi-dents and there are different types of inequalities

e area with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) is located in the central urban area within the4th Ring Road this area has a total population of 473million people Among them the districts of XichengDongcheng and Haidian have the most favorable accessi-bility situations and 100 796 and 576 of the residentsin these areas respectively experience the best opportunitiesfor undertaking economic activity-related journeys in thecity However due to the high house prices and living costsin the city center this population only accounts for 278 of

130926ndash201614201615ndash359415

Population2472ndash3795937960ndash7573675737ndash130925

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 5 Population distribution map of the study area

8 Complexity

the total population erefore only a relatively smallnumber of people benefit from the best transport accessi-bility opportunities in the city this situation results in anexcessive concentration of economic activities in the urbancenter and equates to an inequitable distribution of socialresources Clearly this is not conducive to securing spatialequality for the residentsrsquo journeys

e areas with medium comprehensive accessibility(score 110ndash130) are mainly located between the 4th and the

6th Ring Road havingmore than half of the cityrsquos population(527) Most of the residents in the Fengtai (975)Chaoyang (790) Shijingshan (100) Daxing (703) andTongzhou districts (540) fall into this category eseresidents experience medium-level accessibility conditionsfor economic activity-related journeys but the supply of andthe demand for economic activities are not fully met edistribution of economic activities such as employmenteducation medical care and transportation cannot match

334

1240

1682

3224

3223

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

0

130ndash

140

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(a)

360

1107

1998

3712

2525

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(b)

337

1307

1884

3883

2281

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(c)

338

1263

1645

3476

2958

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(d)

Figure 6 Number of residents for the different economic activities (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility (c) Medicalaccessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Table 2 Distributions for residents at different levels of comprehensive accessibility

DistrictAccessibility level

Total number (10000)lt100 100ndash110 110ndash120 120ndash130 gt130

Xicheng 0 0 0 0 12328 12328Dongcheng 0 0 0 1878 7315 9193Haidian 0 1424 1712 10778 18892 32807Fengtai 0 538 1614 12445 1475 16073Chaoyang 0 0 2963 24553 7295 34811Shijingshan 0 0 2094 3838 0 5932Daxing 1534 2240 5573 3349 0 12696Tongzhou 1773 3679 6391 0 0 11843Changping 1552 7288 4702 3063 0 16605Mentougou 524 1027 929 424 0 2905Shunyi 2757 3459 1106 333 0 7655Fangshan 2867 2599 2012 0 0 7478Total 11006 22254 29097 60663 47305 170324

Complexity 9

the needs of the large population e limited resources inthis area result in inequalities

e area with poor comprehensive accessibility (scorelt110) has a population of 333 million and accounts for195 of the total population is area is mainly in thesuburbs outside the 6th Ring Road and comprises the dis-tricts of Changping Mentougou Shunyi and FangshanCompared with other regions the residents in these regionshave limited access to economic activity-related resourcesand there is a lack of public transport thus there is limitedscope for undertaking journeys hence the spatial in-equalities between these districts and the more centralizedregions erefore it is necessary to develop more equitableplans for all kinds of economic activities throughout Beijingand redress the imbalance of the transportation infra-structure in marginal areas so as to ensure more equitabletransport opportunities for residents in the whole city

5 Discussion

Research concerning the accessibility and equality of urbaneconomic activities can provide important information forurban planning including resource allocation Such workhelps in the planning and optimization of future urbaneconomic activities and transport infrastructure and facili-tates the fair distribution of economic-related opportunitiesIn the traditional approach to evaluating urban servicesaccessibility the types of economic activities are rarelydistinguished However diversification of economic activ-ities is of great significance to land use development andadjustment of the urban spatial structure erefore thisstudy has focused on the spatial differences of accessibilitybased on four types of economic activity e accessibilitymodel established for a comprehensive selection of eco-nomic activities makes up for the deficiencies of previousaccessibility evaluations and emphasizes the access oppor-tunities to diverse economic activities for different towns ineffect this model serves as an important indicator for re-vealing the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys In addition in a previous equality evaluationof residentsrsquo journeys the impact of the participantsrsquo needson the evaluation results was rarely considered and only thefairness of the distribution of economic activity-relatedfacilities from a geographic perspective was measured Withregard to the balance between supply and demand for urbanservices this study makes up for the shortage of a spaceequality evaluation method that is normally undertakenfrom a single viewpoint and proposes a more comprehensiveapproach for evaluation of the equality of economic activity-related journeys undertaken by Beijingrsquos residents

Several recommendations can be proposed based on theresults of this study When considering future economicactivities urban planners and decision makers should adoptan evaluation method which examines the spatial accessi-bility of urban economic activities consider comprehen-sively the spatial distribution of the residents and take intoconsideration the residentsrsquo commuting and other economicactivity-related travel factors including for instance theallocation of resources for economic activities and selection

of routes and stations within the urban rail transit systemAlso from the perspective of the spatial equality of op-portunities on the one hand the government should es-tablish appropriate educational medical shopping andleisure facilities for the suburbs and towns which are wellremoved from the center of Beijing and pay more attentionto the construction of transportation infrastructure at theperipheries of urban areas On the other hand the over-concentrated economic service functions in the center of thecity should be decentralized to improve and realize a moreequitable transport system

However there are still some limitations to the study interms of spatial equality analysis Due to the limitations ofthe research data there is mismatch between the dates of theeconomic activity data and the demographic data this needsto be addressed however the present findings are consid-ered robust and adequate for the purposes of explaining thespatial equality problem is research has focused on thestudy of the equality of economic activity-related journeysmade by the residents of Beijing but it does not take intoaccount the demographic structures and special socialgroups (such as children the elderly and groups of differentraces) and other factors In future research the personalizedneeds of different populations in the context of economicactivities need to be further considered so as to further im-prove the accessibility model and spatial equality evaluation

6 Conclusions

In this paper the spatial distribution characteristics and thespatial equality of economic activity-related accessibility inBeijing were analyzed First based on the distribution ofurban economic activities and the transportation systems anaccessibility model was built to calculate the accessibility offour major economic activities namely employment ed-ucation medical care and shopping and leisure e modelenabled us to analyze the respective spatial distributionaccessibility characteristics associated with the four types ofeconomic activity Second we weighted the four types ofaccessibility equally to obtain a comprehensive accessibilityindex and analyzed the spatial agglomeration pattern using aglobal autocorrelation analysis method Finally the spatialequalities of the economic activities were explained byfactoring in the spatial distribution of the resident pop-ulation in Beijing e main conclusions are as follows

(1) e accessibility of various economic activities inBeijing generally follows a law whereby accessibilitydecreases from the city center to the peripheralsuburbs and a ldquocore to edgerdquo feature is clear earea within the 4th Ring Road represents the locationwith strong accessibility for employment and Hai-dian District has a clear advantage in terms of ed-ucation accessibility e accessibility of medicalservices and shopping and leisure has similar dis-tributions with concentrations in the main urbanarea within the 5th Ring Road More specifically thetowns with high accessibility to all kinds of eco-nomic activities are mostly distributed in Xicheng

10 Complexity

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

accessibility towns with respect to the various economicactivities is basically the same as was previously the casewith all towns being located in the Fangshan and Men-tougou districts In addition Haidian District has a par-ticular advantage with respect to educational accessibilitywhile Dongcheng District needs to further improve itseducational accessibility

32 Comprehensive Accessibility to Different Types of Eco-nomic Activity Considering the economic implications ofthe data the accessibility to employment education medicalcare and shopping and leisure were weighted equally that isthe weight value for each type of accessibility was 025 Onthis basis the comprehensive accessibility of 239 accom-modation blocks in the study area was calculated and thescores were then classed into five grades (Figure 3) to furtheranalyze the comprehensive distribution patterns for theaccessibility of economic activities in Beijing As shown inFigure 3 the comprehensive accessibility of the selectedeconomic activities in Beijing still exhibits a circular-typestructure that decreases in going from the center to the outersuburbs ere were 56 towns with the highest compre-hensive accessibility score (score gt130) mostly in theXicheng and Haidian districts which are within the 4th RingRoad e status of public transport infrastructure in thisregion is well developed and mature and there is a highdistribution density of economic activity therefore it is veryconvenient to access the diverse resources and service ac-tivities ere were 59 towns with relatively high compre-hensive accessibility (score 120ndash130) most of which aredistributed between the 4th and 5th Ring Roads as well assome areas north of the 5th Ring Road ese areas are close

to the central area where the traffic flow is relatively smooththus these locations have the advantage of easy access toservices and resources ere were 44 towns with moderatecomprehensive accessibility (score 110ndash120) and these townsare located between the 5th and the 6th Ring Roade ability toaccess diverse services and resources in this area is consideredto be below average despite the townsrsquo access to urban eco-nomic service activities having a moderate accessibility score

Table 1 e top and bottom ten towns for accessibility to different economic activities

Employment accessibility Educational accessibility Medical accessibility Shopping and leisureaccessibility

Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District Jiedao (town) District1 Jinrongjie Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng2 Yuetan Xicheng Huayuanlu Haidian Jinrongjie Xicheng Jinrongjie Xicheng3 Xinjiekou Xicheng Jinrongjie Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng Xinjiekou Xicheng4 Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng Desheng Xicheng Shichahai Xicheng Ganjiakou Haidian5 Ganjiakou Haidian Ganjiakou Haidian Ganjiakou Haidian Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng6 Shichahai Xicheng Yuetan Xicheng Xichangrsquoanjie Xicheng Zhanlanlu Xicheng7 Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng Anzhen Chaoyang Zhanlanlu Xicheng Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng8 Zhanlanlu Xicheng Beitaipingzhuang Haidian Donghuamen Dongcheng Shichahai Xicheng9 Donghuamen Dongcheng Shichahai Xicheng Guangrsquoanmennei Xicheng Donghuamen Dongcheng10 Yangfangdian Haidian Zhongguancun Haidian Anzhen Chaoyang Niujie Xicheng

230 Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan Nanjiao Fangshan231 Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan Zhangfang Fangshan232 Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan Darsquoanshan Fangshan233 Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou Yanchi Mentougou234 Shijiaying Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan Shidu Fangshan235 Shidu Fangshan Shidu Fangshan Shidu Fangshan Shijiaying Fangshan236 Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan Xiayunling Fangshan237 Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou Qingshui Mentougou238 Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou Zhaitang Mentougou239 Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan Puwa Fangshan

120ndash130gt130

Comprehensive accessibilitylt100100ndash110110ndash120

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 3 Comprehensive accessibility of the study area

6 Complexity

ere were 38 towns with low comprehensive accessibility(score 100ndash110) ese areas are located outside the 6th RingRoad far removed from the city center ese towns areinconvenient to access due to poor transport infrastructureand fall outside the service scope of most urban economicactivities such that there is poor accessibility ere were 42towns with the lowest comprehensive accessibility ranking(score lt100) and most of these are in the Fangshan andMentougou districts ese areas are remote from the urbanareas lack convenient transportation and the distribution ofvarious economic activities is quite sparse and the acces-sibility is judged to be very low

Next we used global autocorrelation [39] and localautocorrelation [40] methods to further analyze whether acomprehensive accessibility index gave an indication ofsignificant spatial clustering e global spatial autocorre-lation analysis showed that Moranrsquos I index was 052 the zscore was 373 and the p value was less than 000001 Hencethere is a significant positive correlation in the compre-hensive accessibility indicating that in the whole study areaof Beijing the trend for spatial clustering of similarly ac-cessible towns is clear confirming significant regional dif-ferences for accessing economic activities

e Global Moranrsquos I Index reveals a global spatialclustering feature with respect to accessibility of urbaneconomic activity but it can only reflect the spatialclustering pattern of urban functionally active similarityvalues (positive correlation) or nonsimilarity observationvalues (negative correlation) between regions [41] How-ever Anselin Local Moranrsquos I index and the Local G co-efficient can detect whether a town is a high-value clusteror a low-value cluster thus the agglomeration pattern anddistribution difference of urban spatial accessibility can bemore accurately detected Based on this the cluster andoutlier analysis (Anselin Local Moranrsquos I) tool of ArcGISwas used to conduct local spatial correlation analysis onthe comprehensive accessibility of each town and theresults of clustering and outlier analysis are presented inFigure 4

A ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo is mainly concentrated in the urbancenter within the 5th Ring Road and within the townsthemselves moreover adjacent towns also have high eco-nomic activity accessibility is ldquohigh-highrdquo cluster enjoysfavorable geographical conditions has an established urbaninfrastructure a dense distribution of various economic ac-tivities and an almost ideal road and public transport in-frastructure A ldquolow-low clusterrdquo is concentrated in theFangshan and Mentougou districts in the west of the city aswell as in parts of Shunyi District in the northeast where theaccessibility of the towns to economic activities (includingadjacent towns) is relatively lowMost of these areas are newlybuilt residential areas and the public service facilities in theimmediate area are insufficient so the residents have morelimited choices with respect to economic activities A ldquolow-high outlierrdquo was detected in Beiqijia in Changping Districte accessibility of this town was found to be low but theadjacent towns have a high spatial accessibility with respect toeconomic activities which is negatively correlated in spaceCompared with the ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo the ldquolow-low clusterrdquo

and the ldquolow-high outlierrdquo are generally distributed in theperipheral regions of the city e low density of economicactivities and the limited range of services are the mostimportant factors affecting the residentsrsquo access to variouseconomic opportunities erefore in these areas it is nec-essary to provide new opportunities that meet the employ-ment educational medical care shopping and leisure needsof the residents which in turn will stimulate economicactivity to improve the spatial accessibility of the area

4 Equality Evaluation of Residentsrsquo EconomicActivity-Related Journeys

41 Distribution of Residents e accessibility of economicactivities is mainly a measure of the ease of obtainingeconomic activity opportunities within a certain distancefrom the supply source e equality evaluation of the op-portunities for economic activity-related journeys also needsto consider the requirements of the residents In previousstudies the demand for economic activities was oftencharacterized by the number of people living in a particulararea [42] In general an area with a large population has ahigh demand for all kinds of economic activities Based onthe population statistics of the sixth National Census in 2010the population distribution of Beijing (Figure 5) was ex-amined It can be seen from inspection of Figure 5 that thepopulation distribution in the study area is highest inDongxiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District it is in thesetowns where there is the greatest demand for economicactivities e populations in the districts of FangshanMentougou and Shunyi which are outwith the urban areaare more sparsely distributed and the demands for eco-nomic activities are correspondingly less

Low-high outlierLow-low cluster

LISA cluster map

Not significantHigh-high cluster

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 4 LISA cluster map of comprehensive accessibility

Complexity 7

42 Equality Evaluation by Urban Economic Activity Tofurther explore the relationship between urban accessibilityand population distribution we calculated the populationdistribution under various economic activity accessibilityintervals (Figure 6) and then analyzed the impact of thedifferent economic activities on the residentsrsquo choice ofhousing in order to reveal the spatial equality of the resi-dentsrsquo access to economic activities As can be seen fromFigure 6 the distribution of residents for a particular ac-cessibility interval for the various economic activities hassimilar characteristics with increase in accessibility there isan upward trend in the population agglomeration whichgenerally declines after reaching a maximum level isindicates that the population generally tends to live in areaswith high accessibility however the attractiveness of ac-cessibility to the population is eventually limited Affected bytraffic congestion costs of housing and other factors thereis a tendency for residents to migrate from urban centers tothe peripheral regions in pursuit of a lower cost of living anda better quality of life erefore although the urban centerenjoys the highest levels of accessibility it is still unable tosecure the largest numbers of people thus a decrease inpopulation occurs for the highest levels of accessibility(Figure 6(a)ndash6(d)) e residentsrsquo requirement for timelyand convenient commuting is of the highest importanceAbout 645 of the population in the study area live inareas with high employment accessibility (score gt120)hence the employees can benefit from having a convenientcommuting experience Also of importance to residents isthe shopping and leisure experience with about 643 ofthe population living in towns with a high access toshopping and leisure Of less importance are medical-re-lated journeys where the figure accounts for 616 of thepopulation ese results show that the choice of locationfor residents is mainly dictated by the requirements for

commuting to work and shopping and leisure travel andchoice is less affected by the need to access medical facilitiesgiven that the frequency of such trips is much less than forthe former journeys

Specifically due to the different locations the residentpopulations have different degrees of economic activity-related opportunities As far as employment accessibility isconcerned 322 of the population is concentrated in thetowns which have the highest employment accessibility(score gt130) and these locations enjoy the best commutingsituation Some 187 of the population lives in towns withan accessibility score of less than 110 where not only theability to access employment opportunities is low but alsothe travel experience to work is also inconvenient Withrespect to shopping and leisure accessibility 296 of thepopulation are distributed in towns with the highest medicalaccessibility (score of gt130) while more people (348) aredistributed in towns with medium accessibility (score120ndash130) indicating moderate access to shopping and leisureresources Besides 192 of the population live in townswhere the shopping and leisure accessibility is low (scorelt110) hence the inhabitants cannot experience a conve-nient shopping and leisure trip As for education andmedical-related accessibility only 253 and 228 of thepopulation can access the best journey conditions for ed-ucation and medical activity-related travel respectivelywhile much of the population (3712 and 3883 re-spectively) live in towns with an accessibility score of120ndash130 Furthermore 177 and 195 of the populationlive in towns with education and medical activity-relatedaccessibility scores below 110 respectively ese peoplecannot obtain equal accessibility with respect to undertakingeducation and medical activity-related journeys Clearly theallocation of education and medical resources in these areasneeds to be upgraded

43 Equality Evaluation of the Residentsrsquo Economic Activity-Related Journeys e distribution data for the economic-related journeys of the residents at different levels ofcomprehensive accessibility were calculated and the resultsare presented in Table 2 en combining the populationdistribution data and the comprehensive accessibility data(Figures 5 and 3) we further analyzed the spatial equality ofthe supply and demand of comprehensive accessibility Itcan be seen that the advantages of the comprehensive ac-cessibility of economic activities in the study area are notentirely consistent with the distribution data for the resi-dents and there are different types of inequalities

e area with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) is located in the central urban area within the4th Ring Road this area has a total population of 473million people Among them the districts of XichengDongcheng and Haidian have the most favorable accessi-bility situations and 100 796 and 576 of the residentsin these areas respectively experience the best opportunitiesfor undertaking economic activity-related journeys in thecity However due to the high house prices and living costsin the city center this population only accounts for 278 of

130926ndash201614201615ndash359415

Population2472ndash3795937960ndash7573675737ndash130925

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 5 Population distribution map of the study area

8 Complexity

the total population erefore only a relatively smallnumber of people benefit from the best transport accessi-bility opportunities in the city this situation results in anexcessive concentration of economic activities in the urbancenter and equates to an inequitable distribution of socialresources Clearly this is not conducive to securing spatialequality for the residentsrsquo journeys

e areas with medium comprehensive accessibility(score 110ndash130) are mainly located between the 4th and the

6th Ring Road havingmore than half of the cityrsquos population(527) Most of the residents in the Fengtai (975)Chaoyang (790) Shijingshan (100) Daxing (703) andTongzhou districts (540) fall into this category eseresidents experience medium-level accessibility conditionsfor economic activity-related journeys but the supply of andthe demand for economic activities are not fully met edistribution of economic activities such as employmenteducation medical care and transportation cannot match

334

1240

1682

3224

3223

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

0

130ndash

140

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(a)

360

1107

1998

3712

2525

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(b)

337

1307

1884

3883

2281

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(c)

338

1263

1645

3476

2958

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(d)

Figure 6 Number of residents for the different economic activities (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility (c) Medicalaccessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Table 2 Distributions for residents at different levels of comprehensive accessibility

DistrictAccessibility level

Total number (10000)lt100 100ndash110 110ndash120 120ndash130 gt130

Xicheng 0 0 0 0 12328 12328Dongcheng 0 0 0 1878 7315 9193Haidian 0 1424 1712 10778 18892 32807Fengtai 0 538 1614 12445 1475 16073Chaoyang 0 0 2963 24553 7295 34811Shijingshan 0 0 2094 3838 0 5932Daxing 1534 2240 5573 3349 0 12696Tongzhou 1773 3679 6391 0 0 11843Changping 1552 7288 4702 3063 0 16605Mentougou 524 1027 929 424 0 2905Shunyi 2757 3459 1106 333 0 7655Fangshan 2867 2599 2012 0 0 7478Total 11006 22254 29097 60663 47305 170324

Complexity 9

the needs of the large population e limited resources inthis area result in inequalities

e area with poor comprehensive accessibility (scorelt110) has a population of 333 million and accounts for195 of the total population is area is mainly in thesuburbs outside the 6th Ring Road and comprises the dis-tricts of Changping Mentougou Shunyi and FangshanCompared with other regions the residents in these regionshave limited access to economic activity-related resourcesand there is a lack of public transport thus there is limitedscope for undertaking journeys hence the spatial in-equalities between these districts and the more centralizedregions erefore it is necessary to develop more equitableplans for all kinds of economic activities throughout Beijingand redress the imbalance of the transportation infra-structure in marginal areas so as to ensure more equitabletransport opportunities for residents in the whole city

5 Discussion

Research concerning the accessibility and equality of urbaneconomic activities can provide important information forurban planning including resource allocation Such workhelps in the planning and optimization of future urbaneconomic activities and transport infrastructure and facili-tates the fair distribution of economic-related opportunitiesIn the traditional approach to evaluating urban servicesaccessibility the types of economic activities are rarelydistinguished However diversification of economic activ-ities is of great significance to land use development andadjustment of the urban spatial structure erefore thisstudy has focused on the spatial differences of accessibilitybased on four types of economic activity e accessibilitymodel established for a comprehensive selection of eco-nomic activities makes up for the deficiencies of previousaccessibility evaluations and emphasizes the access oppor-tunities to diverse economic activities for different towns ineffect this model serves as an important indicator for re-vealing the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys In addition in a previous equality evaluationof residentsrsquo journeys the impact of the participantsrsquo needson the evaluation results was rarely considered and only thefairness of the distribution of economic activity-relatedfacilities from a geographic perspective was measured Withregard to the balance between supply and demand for urbanservices this study makes up for the shortage of a spaceequality evaluation method that is normally undertakenfrom a single viewpoint and proposes a more comprehensiveapproach for evaluation of the equality of economic activity-related journeys undertaken by Beijingrsquos residents

Several recommendations can be proposed based on theresults of this study When considering future economicactivities urban planners and decision makers should adoptan evaluation method which examines the spatial accessi-bility of urban economic activities consider comprehen-sively the spatial distribution of the residents and take intoconsideration the residentsrsquo commuting and other economicactivity-related travel factors including for instance theallocation of resources for economic activities and selection

of routes and stations within the urban rail transit systemAlso from the perspective of the spatial equality of op-portunities on the one hand the government should es-tablish appropriate educational medical shopping andleisure facilities for the suburbs and towns which are wellremoved from the center of Beijing and pay more attentionto the construction of transportation infrastructure at theperipheries of urban areas On the other hand the over-concentrated economic service functions in the center of thecity should be decentralized to improve and realize a moreequitable transport system

However there are still some limitations to the study interms of spatial equality analysis Due to the limitations ofthe research data there is mismatch between the dates of theeconomic activity data and the demographic data this needsto be addressed however the present findings are consid-ered robust and adequate for the purposes of explaining thespatial equality problem is research has focused on thestudy of the equality of economic activity-related journeysmade by the residents of Beijing but it does not take intoaccount the demographic structures and special socialgroups (such as children the elderly and groups of differentraces) and other factors In future research the personalizedneeds of different populations in the context of economicactivities need to be further considered so as to further im-prove the accessibility model and spatial equality evaluation

6 Conclusions

In this paper the spatial distribution characteristics and thespatial equality of economic activity-related accessibility inBeijing were analyzed First based on the distribution ofurban economic activities and the transportation systems anaccessibility model was built to calculate the accessibility offour major economic activities namely employment ed-ucation medical care and shopping and leisure e modelenabled us to analyze the respective spatial distributionaccessibility characteristics associated with the four types ofeconomic activity Second we weighted the four types ofaccessibility equally to obtain a comprehensive accessibilityindex and analyzed the spatial agglomeration pattern using aglobal autocorrelation analysis method Finally the spatialequalities of the economic activities were explained byfactoring in the spatial distribution of the resident pop-ulation in Beijing e main conclusions are as follows

(1) e accessibility of various economic activities inBeijing generally follows a law whereby accessibilitydecreases from the city center to the peripheralsuburbs and a ldquocore to edgerdquo feature is clear earea within the 4th Ring Road represents the locationwith strong accessibility for employment and Hai-dian District has a clear advantage in terms of ed-ucation accessibility e accessibility of medicalservices and shopping and leisure has similar dis-tributions with concentrations in the main urbanarea within the 5th Ring Road More specifically thetowns with high accessibility to all kinds of eco-nomic activities are mostly distributed in Xicheng

10 Complexity

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

ere were 38 towns with low comprehensive accessibility(score 100ndash110) ese areas are located outside the 6th RingRoad far removed from the city center ese towns areinconvenient to access due to poor transport infrastructureand fall outside the service scope of most urban economicactivities such that there is poor accessibility ere were 42towns with the lowest comprehensive accessibility ranking(score lt100) and most of these are in the Fangshan andMentougou districts ese areas are remote from the urbanareas lack convenient transportation and the distribution ofvarious economic activities is quite sparse and the acces-sibility is judged to be very low

Next we used global autocorrelation [39] and localautocorrelation [40] methods to further analyze whether acomprehensive accessibility index gave an indication ofsignificant spatial clustering e global spatial autocorre-lation analysis showed that Moranrsquos I index was 052 the zscore was 373 and the p value was less than 000001 Hencethere is a significant positive correlation in the compre-hensive accessibility indicating that in the whole study areaof Beijing the trend for spatial clustering of similarly ac-cessible towns is clear confirming significant regional dif-ferences for accessing economic activities

e Global Moranrsquos I Index reveals a global spatialclustering feature with respect to accessibility of urbaneconomic activity but it can only reflect the spatialclustering pattern of urban functionally active similarityvalues (positive correlation) or nonsimilarity observationvalues (negative correlation) between regions [41] How-ever Anselin Local Moranrsquos I index and the Local G co-efficient can detect whether a town is a high-value clusteror a low-value cluster thus the agglomeration pattern anddistribution difference of urban spatial accessibility can bemore accurately detected Based on this the cluster andoutlier analysis (Anselin Local Moranrsquos I) tool of ArcGISwas used to conduct local spatial correlation analysis onthe comprehensive accessibility of each town and theresults of clustering and outlier analysis are presented inFigure 4

A ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo is mainly concentrated in the urbancenter within the 5th Ring Road and within the townsthemselves moreover adjacent towns also have high eco-nomic activity accessibility is ldquohigh-highrdquo cluster enjoysfavorable geographical conditions has an established urbaninfrastructure a dense distribution of various economic ac-tivities and an almost ideal road and public transport in-frastructure A ldquolow-low clusterrdquo is concentrated in theFangshan and Mentougou districts in the west of the city aswell as in parts of Shunyi District in the northeast where theaccessibility of the towns to economic activities (includingadjacent towns) is relatively lowMost of these areas are newlybuilt residential areas and the public service facilities in theimmediate area are insufficient so the residents have morelimited choices with respect to economic activities A ldquolow-high outlierrdquo was detected in Beiqijia in Changping Districte accessibility of this town was found to be low but theadjacent towns have a high spatial accessibility with respect toeconomic activities which is negatively correlated in spaceCompared with the ldquohigh-high clusterrdquo the ldquolow-low clusterrdquo

and the ldquolow-high outlierrdquo are generally distributed in theperipheral regions of the city e low density of economicactivities and the limited range of services are the mostimportant factors affecting the residentsrsquo access to variouseconomic opportunities erefore in these areas it is nec-essary to provide new opportunities that meet the employ-ment educational medical care shopping and leisure needsof the residents which in turn will stimulate economicactivity to improve the spatial accessibility of the area

4 Equality Evaluation of Residentsrsquo EconomicActivity-Related Journeys

41 Distribution of Residents e accessibility of economicactivities is mainly a measure of the ease of obtainingeconomic activity opportunities within a certain distancefrom the supply source e equality evaluation of the op-portunities for economic activity-related journeys also needsto consider the requirements of the residents In previousstudies the demand for economic activities was oftencharacterized by the number of people living in a particulararea [42] In general an area with a large population has ahigh demand for all kinds of economic activities Based onthe population statistics of the sixth National Census in 2010the population distribution of Beijing (Figure 5) was ex-amined It can be seen from inspection of Figure 5 that thepopulation distribution in the study area is highest inDongxiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District it is in thesetowns where there is the greatest demand for economicactivities e populations in the districts of FangshanMentougou and Shunyi which are outwith the urban areaare more sparsely distributed and the demands for eco-nomic activities are correspondingly less

Low-high outlierLow-low cluster

LISA cluster map

Not significantHigh-high cluster

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 4 LISA cluster map of comprehensive accessibility

Complexity 7

42 Equality Evaluation by Urban Economic Activity Tofurther explore the relationship between urban accessibilityand population distribution we calculated the populationdistribution under various economic activity accessibilityintervals (Figure 6) and then analyzed the impact of thedifferent economic activities on the residentsrsquo choice ofhousing in order to reveal the spatial equality of the resi-dentsrsquo access to economic activities As can be seen fromFigure 6 the distribution of residents for a particular ac-cessibility interval for the various economic activities hassimilar characteristics with increase in accessibility there isan upward trend in the population agglomeration whichgenerally declines after reaching a maximum level isindicates that the population generally tends to live in areaswith high accessibility however the attractiveness of ac-cessibility to the population is eventually limited Affected bytraffic congestion costs of housing and other factors thereis a tendency for residents to migrate from urban centers tothe peripheral regions in pursuit of a lower cost of living anda better quality of life erefore although the urban centerenjoys the highest levels of accessibility it is still unable tosecure the largest numbers of people thus a decrease inpopulation occurs for the highest levels of accessibility(Figure 6(a)ndash6(d)) e residentsrsquo requirement for timelyand convenient commuting is of the highest importanceAbout 645 of the population in the study area live inareas with high employment accessibility (score gt120)hence the employees can benefit from having a convenientcommuting experience Also of importance to residents isthe shopping and leisure experience with about 643 ofthe population living in towns with a high access toshopping and leisure Of less importance are medical-re-lated journeys where the figure accounts for 616 of thepopulation ese results show that the choice of locationfor residents is mainly dictated by the requirements for

commuting to work and shopping and leisure travel andchoice is less affected by the need to access medical facilitiesgiven that the frequency of such trips is much less than forthe former journeys

Specifically due to the different locations the residentpopulations have different degrees of economic activity-related opportunities As far as employment accessibility isconcerned 322 of the population is concentrated in thetowns which have the highest employment accessibility(score gt130) and these locations enjoy the best commutingsituation Some 187 of the population lives in towns withan accessibility score of less than 110 where not only theability to access employment opportunities is low but alsothe travel experience to work is also inconvenient Withrespect to shopping and leisure accessibility 296 of thepopulation are distributed in towns with the highest medicalaccessibility (score of gt130) while more people (348) aredistributed in towns with medium accessibility (score120ndash130) indicating moderate access to shopping and leisureresources Besides 192 of the population live in townswhere the shopping and leisure accessibility is low (scorelt110) hence the inhabitants cannot experience a conve-nient shopping and leisure trip As for education andmedical-related accessibility only 253 and 228 of thepopulation can access the best journey conditions for ed-ucation and medical activity-related travel respectivelywhile much of the population (3712 and 3883 re-spectively) live in towns with an accessibility score of120ndash130 Furthermore 177 and 195 of the populationlive in towns with education and medical activity-relatedaccessibility scores below 110 respectively ese peoplecannot obtain equal accessibility with respect to undertakingeducation and medical activity-related journeys Clearly theallocation of education and medical resources in these areasneeds to be upgraded

43 Equality Evaluation of the Residentsrsquo Economic Activity-Related Journeys e distribution data for the economic-related journeys of the residents at different levels ofcomprehensive accessibility were calculated and the resultsare presented in Table 2 en combining the populationdistribution data and the comprehensive accessibility data(Figures 5 and 3) we further analyzed the spatial equality ofthe supply and demand of comprehensive accessibility Itcan be seen that the advantages of the comprehensive ac-cessibility of economic activities in the study area are notentirely consistent with the distribution data for the resi-dents and there are different types of inequalities

e area with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) is located in the central urban area within the4th Ring Road this area has a total population of 473million people Among them the districts of XichengDongcheng and Haidian have the most favorable accessi-bility situations and 100 796 and 576 of the residentsin these areas respectively experience the best opportunitiesfor undertaking economic activity-related journeys in thecity However due to the high house prices and living costsin the city center this population only accounts for 278 of

130926ndash201614201615ndash359415

Population2472ndash3795937960ndash7573675737ndash130925

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 5 Population distribution map of the study area

8 Complexity

the total population erefore only a relatively smallnumber of people benefit from the best transport accessi-bility opportunities in the city this situation results in anexcessive concentration of economic activities in the urbancenter and equates to an inequitable distribution of socialresources Clearly this is not conducive to securing spatialequality for the residentsrsquo journeys

e areas with medium comprehensive accessibility(score 110ndash130) are mainly located between the 4th and the

6th Ring Road havingmore than half of the cityrsquos population(527) Most of the residents in the Fengtai (975)Chaoyang (790) Shijingshan (100) Daxing (703) andTongzhou districts (540) fall into this category eseresidents experience medium-level accessibility conditionsfor economic activity-related journeys but the supply of andthe demand for economic activities are not fully met edistribution of economic activities such as employmenteducation medical care and transportation cannot match

334

1240

1682

3224

3223

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

0

130ndash

140

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(a)

360

1107

1998

3712

2525

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(b)

337

1307

1884

3883

2281

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(c)

338

1263

1645

3476

2958

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(d)

Figure 6 Number of residents for the different economic activities (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility (c) Medicalaccessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Table 2 Distributions for residents at different levels of comprehensive accessibility

DistrictAccessibility level

Total number (10000)lt100 100ndash110 110ndash120 120ndash130 gt130

Xicheng 0 0 0 0 12328 12328Dongcheng 0 0 0 1878 7315 9193Haidian 0 1424 1712 10778 18892 32807Fengtai 0 538 1614 12445 1475 16073Chaoyang 0 0 2963 24553 7295 34811Shijingshan 0 0 2094 3838 0 5932Daxing 1534 2240 5573 3349 0 12696Tongzhou 1773 3679 6391 0 0 11843Changping 1552 7288 4702 3063 0 16605Mentougou 524 1027 929 424 0 2905Shunyi 2757 3459 1106 333 0 7655Fangshan 2867 2599 2012 0 0 7478Total 11006 22254 29097 60663 47305 170324

Complexity 9

the needs of the large population e limited resources inthis area result in inequalities

e area with poor comprehensive accessibility (scorelt110) has a population of 333 million and accounts for195 of the total population is area is mainly in thesuburbs outside the 6th Ring Road and comprises the dis-tricts of Changping Mentougou Shunyi and FangshanCompared with other regions the residents in these regionshave limited access to economic activity-related resourcesand there is a lack of public transport thus there is limitedscope for undertaking journeys hence the spatial in-equalities between these districts and the more centralizedregions erefore it is necessary to develop more equitableplans for all kinds of economic activities throughout Beijingand redress the imbalance of the transportation infra-structure in marginal areas so as to ensure more equitabletransport opportunities for residents in the whole city

5 Discussion

Research concerning the accessibility and equality of urbaneconomic activities can provide important information forurban planning including resource allocation Such workhelps in the planning and optimization of future urbaneconomic activities and transport infrastructure and facili-tates the fair distribution of economic-related opportunitiesIn the traditional approach to evaluating urban servicesaccessibility the types of economic activities are rarelydistinguished However diversification of economic activ-ities is of great significance to land use development andadjustment of the urban spatial structure erefore thisstudy has focused on the spatial differences of accessibilitybased on four types of economic activity e accessibilitymodel established for a comprehensive selection of eco-nomic activities makes up for the deficiencies of previousaccessibility evaluations and emphasizes the access oppor-tunities to diverse economic activities for different towns ineffect this model serves as an important indicator for re-vealing the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys In addition in a previous equality evaluationof residentsrsquo journeys the impact of the participantsrsquo needson the evaluation results was rarely considered and only thefairness of the distribution of economic activity-relatedfacilities from a geographic perspective was measured Withregard to the balance between supply and demand for urbanservices this study makes up for the shortage of a spaceequality evaluation method that is normally undertakenfrom a single viewpoint and proposes a more comprehensiveapproach for evaluation of the equality of economic activity-related journeys undertaken by Beijingrsquos residents

Several recommendations can be proposed based on theresults of this study When considering future economicactivities urban planners and decision makers should adoptan evaluation method which examines the spatial accessi-bility of urban economic activities consider comprehen-sively the spatial distribution of the residents and take intoconsideration the residentsrsquo commuting and other economicactivity-related travel factors including for instance theallocation of resources for economic activities and selection

of routes and stations within the urban rail transit systemAlso from the perspective of the spatial equality of op-portunities on the one hand the government should es-tablish appropriate educational medical shopping andleisure facilities for the suburbs and towns which are wellremoved from the center of Beijing and pay more attentionto the construction of transportation infrastructure at theperipheries of urban areas On the other hand the over-concentrated economic service functions in the center of thecity should be decentralized to improve and realize a moreequitable transport system

However there are still some limitations to the study interms of spatial equality analysis Due to the limitations ofthe research data there is mismatch between the dates of theeconomic activity data and the demographic data this needsto be addressed however the present findings are consid-ered robust and adequate for the purposes of explaining thespatial equality problem is research has focused on thestudy of the equality of economic activity-related journeysmade by the residents of Beijing but it does not take intoaccount the demographic structures and special socialgroups (such as children the elderly and groups of differentraces) and other factors In future research the personalizedneeds of different populations in the context of economicactivities need to be further considered so as to further im-prove the accessibility model and spatial equality evaluation

6 Conclusions

In this paper the spatial distribution characteristics and thespatial equality of economic activity-related accessibility inBeijing were analyzed First based on the distribution ofurban economic activities and the transportation systems anaccessibility model was built to calculate the accessibility offour major economic activities namely employment ed-ucation medical care and shopping and leisure e modelenabled us to analyze the respective spatial distributionaccessibility characteristics associated with the four types ofeconomic activity Second we weighted the four types ofaccessibility equally to obtain a comprehensive accessibilityindex and analyzed the spatial agglomeration pattern using aglobal autocorrelation analysis method Finally the spatialequalities of the economic activities were explained byfactoring in the spatial distribution of the resident pop-ulation in Beijing e main conclusions are as follows

(1) e accessibility of various economic activities inBeijing generally follows a law whereby accessibilitydecreases from the city center to the peripheralsuburbs and a ldquocore to edgerdquo feature is clear earea within the 4th Ring Road represents the locationwith strong accessibility for employment and Hai-dian District has a clear advantage in terms of ed-ucation accessibility e accessibility of medicalservices and shopping and leisure has similar dis-tributions with concentrations in the main urbanarea within the 5th Ring Road More specifically thetowns with high accessibility to all kinds of eco-nomic activities are mostly distributed in Xicheng

10 Complexity

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

42 Equality Evaluation by Urban Economic Activity Tofurther explore the relationship between urban accessibilityand population distribution we calculated the populationdistribution under various economic activity accessibilityintervals (Figure 6) and then analyzed the impact of thedifferent economic activities on the residentsrsquo choice ofhousing in order to reveal the spatial equality of the resi-dentsrsquo access to economic activities As can be seen fromFigure 6 the distribution of residents for a particular ac-cessibility interval for the various economic activities hassimilar characteristics with increase in accessibility there isan upward trend in the population agglomeration whichgenerally declines after reaching a maximum level isindicates that the population generally tends to live in areaswith high accessibility however the attractiveness of ac-cessibility to the population is eventually limited Affected bytraffic congestion costs of housing and other factors thereis a tendency for residents to migrate from urban centers tothe peripheral regions in pursuit of a lower cost of living anda better quality of life erefore although the urban centerenjoys the highest levels of accessibility it is still unable tosecure the largest numbers of people thus a decrease inpopulation occurs for the highest levels of accessibility(Figure 6(a)ndash6(d)) e residentsrsquo requirement for timelyand convenient commuting is of the highest importanceAbout 645 of the population in the study area live inareas with high employment accessibility (score gt120)hence the employees can benefit from having a convenientcommuting experience Also of importance to residents isthe shopping and leisure experience with about 643 ofthe population living in towns with a high access toshopping and leisure Of less importance are medical-re-lated journeys where the figure accounts for 616 of thepopulation ese results show that the choice of locationfor residents is mainly dictated by the requirements for

commuting to work and shopping and leisure travel andchoice is less affected by the need to access medical facilitiesgiven that the frequency of such trips is much less than forthe former journeys

Specifically due to the different locations the residentpopulations have different degrees of economic activity-related opportunities As far as employment accessibility isconcerned 322 of the population is concentrated in thetowns which have the highest employment accessibility(score gt130) and these locations enjoy the best commutingsituation Some 187 of the population lives in towns withan accessibility score of less than 110 where not only theability to access employment opportunities is low but alsothe travel experience to work is also inconvenient Withrespect to shopping and leisure accessibility 296 of thepopulation are distributed in towns with the highest medicalaccessibility (score of gt130) while more people (348) aredistributed in towns with medium accessibility (score120ndash130) indicating moderate access to shopping and leisureresources Besides 192 of the population live in townswhere the shopping and leisure accessibility is low (scorelt110) hence the inhabitants cannot experience a conve-nient shopping and leisure trip As for education andmedical-related accessibility only 253 and 228 of thepopulation can access the best journey conditions for ed-ucation and medical activity-related travel respectivelywhile much of the population (3712 and 3883 re-spectively) live in towns with an accessibility score of120ndash130 Furthermore 177 and 195 of the populationlive in towns with education and medical activity-relatedaccessibility scores below 110 respectively ese peoplecannot obtain equal accessibility with respect to undertakingeducation and medical activity-related journeys Clearly theallocation of education and medical resources in these areasneeds to be upgraded

43 Equality Evaluation of the Residentsrsquo Economic Activity-Related Journeys e distribution data for the economic-related journeys of the residents at different levels ofcomprehensive accessibility were calculated and the resultsare presented in Table 2 en combining the populationdistribution data and the comprehensive accessibility data(Figures 5 and 3) we further analyzed the spatial equality ofthe supply and demand of comprehensive accessibility Itcan be seen that the advantages of the comprehensive ac-cessibility of economic activities in the study area are notentirely consistent with the distribution data for the resi-dents and there are different types of inequalities

e area with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) is located in the central urban area within the4th Ring Road this area has a total population of 473million people Among them the districts of XichengDongcheng and Haidian have the most favorable accessi-bility situations and 100 796 and 576 of the residentsin these areas respectively experience the best opportunitiesfor undertaking economic activity-related journeys in thecity However due to the high house prices and living costsin the city center this population only accounts for 278 of

130926ndash201614201615ndash359415

Population2472ndash3795937960ndash7573675737ndash130925

Ring road

N

0 10 20km

Figure 5 Population distribution map of the study area

8 Complexity

the total population erefore only a relatively smallnumber of people benefit from the best transport accessi-bility opportunities in the city this situation results in anexcessive concentration of economic activities in the urbancenter and equates to an inequitable distribution of socialresources Clearly this is not conducive to securing spatialequality for the residentsrsquo journeys

e areas with medium comprehensive accessibility(score 110ndash130) are mainly located between the 4th and the

6th Ring Road havingmore than half of the cityrsquos population(527) Most of the residents in the Fengtai (975)Chaoyang (790) Shijingshan (100) Daxing (703) andTongzhou districts (540) fall into this category eseresidents experience medium-level accessibility conditionsfor economic activity-related journeys but the supply of andthe demand for economic activities are not fully met edistribution of economic activities such as employmenteducation medical care and transportation cannot match

334

1240

1682

3224

3223

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

0

130ndash

140

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(a)

360

1107

1998

3712

2525

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(b)

337

1307

1884

3883

2281

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(c)

338

1263

1645

3476

2958

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(d)

Figure 6 Number of residents for the different economic activities (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility (c) Medicalaccessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Table 2 Distributions for residents at different levels of comprehensive accessibility

DistrictAccessibility level

Total number (10000)lt100 100ndash110 110ndash120 120ndash130 gt130

Xicheng 0 0 0 0 12328 12328Dongcheng 0 0 0 1878 7315 9193Haidian 0 1424 1712 10778 18892 32807Fengtai 0 538 1614 12445 1475 16073Chaoyang 0 0 2963 24553 7295 34811Shijingshan 0 0 2094 3838 0 5932Daxing 1534 2240 5573 3349 0 12696Tongzhou 1773 3679 6391 0 0 11843Changping 1552 7288 4702 3063 0 16605Mentougou 524 1027 929 424 0 2905Shunyi 2757 3459 1106 333 0 7655Fangshan 2867 2599 2012 0 0 7478Total 11006 22254 29097 60663 47305 170324

Complexity 9

the needs of the large population e limited resources inthis area result in inequalities

e area with poor comprehensive accessibility (scorelt110) has a population of 333 million and accounts for195 of the total population is area is mainly in thesuburbs outside the 6th Ring Road and comprises the dis-tricts of Changping Mentougou Shunyi and FangshanCompared with other regions the residents in these regionshave limited access to economic activity-related resourcesand there is a lack of public transport thus there is limitedscope for undertaking journeys hence the spatial in-equalities between these districts and the more centralizedregions erefore it is necessary to develop more equitableplans for all kinds of economic activities throughout Beijingand redress the imbalance of the transportation infra-structure in marginal areas so as to ensure more equitabletransport opportunities for residents in the whole city

5 Discussion

Research concerning the accessibility and equality of urbaneconomic activities can provide important information forurban planning including resource allocation Such workhelps in the planning and optimization of future urbaneconomic activities and transport infrastructure and facili-tates the fair distribution of economic-related opportunitiesIn the traditional approach to evaluating urban servicesaccessibility the types of economic activities are rarelydistinguished However diversification of economic activ-ities is of great significance to land use development andadjustment of the urban spatial structure erefore thisstudy has focused on the spatial differences of accessibilitybased on four types of economic activity e accessibilitymodel established for a comprehensive selection of eco-nomic activities makes up for the deficiencies of previousaccessibility evaluations and emphasizes the access oppor-tunities to diverse economic activities for different towns ineffect this model serves as an important indicator for re-vealing the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys In addition in a previous equality evaluationof residentsrsquo journeys the impact of the participantsrsquo needson the evaluation results was rarely considered and only thefairness of the distribution of economic activity-relatedfacilities from a geographic perspective was measured Withregard to the balance between supply and demand for urbanservices this study makes up for the shortage of a spaceequality evaluation method that is normally undertakenfrom a single viewpoint and proposes a more comprehensiveapproach for evaluation of the equality of economic activity-related journeys undertaken by Beijingrsquos residents

Several recommendations can be proposed based on theresults of this study When considering future economicactivities urban planners and decision makers should adoptan evaluation method which examines the spatial accessi-bility of urban economic activities consider comprehen-sively the spatial distribution of the residents and take intoconsideration the residentsrsquo commuting and other economicactivity-related travel factors including for instance theallocation of resources for economic activities and selection

of routes and stations within the urban rail transit systemAlso from the perspective of the spatial equality of op-portunities on the one hand the government should es-tablish appropriate educational medical shopping andleisure facilities for the suburbs and towns which are wellremoved from the center of Beijing and pay more attentionto the construction of transportation infrastructure at theperipheries of urban areas On the other hand the over-concentrated economic service functions in the center of thecity should be decentralized to improve and realize a moreequitable transport system

However there are still some limitations to the study interms of spatial equality analysis Due to the limitations ofthe research data there is mismatch between the dates of theeconomic activity data and the demographic data this needsto be addressed however the present findings are consid-ered robust and adequate for the purposes of explaining thespatial equality problem is research has focused on thestudy of the equality of economic activity-related journeysmade by the residents of Beijing but it does not take intoaccount the demographic structures and special socialgroups (such as children the elderly and groups of differentraces) and other factors In future research the personalizedneeds of different populations in the context of economicactivities need to be further considered so as to further im-prove the accessibility model and spatial equality evaluation

6 Conclusions

In this paper the spatial distribution characteristics and thespatial equality of economic activity-related accessibility inBeijing were analyzed First based on the distribution ofurban economic activities and the transportation systems anaccessibility model was built to calculate the accessibility offour major economic activities namely employment ed-ucation medical care and shopping and leisure e modelenabled us to analyze the respective spatial distributionaccessibility characteristics associated with the four types ofeconomic activity Second we weighted the four types ofaccessibility equally to obtain a comprehensive accessibilityindex and analyzed the spatial agglomeration pattern using aglobal autocorrelation analysis method Finally the spatialequalities of the economic activities were explained byfactoring in the spatial distribution of the resident pop-ulation in Beijing e main conclusions are as follows

(1) e accessibility of various economic activities inBeijing generally follows a law whereby accessibilitydecreases from the city center to the peripheralsuburbs and a ldquocore to edgerdquo feature is clear earea within the 4th Ring Road represents the locationwith strong accessibility for employment and Hai-dian District has a clear advantage in terms of ed-ucation accessibility e accessibility of medicalservices and shopping and leisure has similar dis-tributions with concentrations in the main urbanarea within the 5th Ring Road More specifically thetowns with high accessibility to all kinds of eco-nomic activities are mostly distributed in Xicheng

10 Complexity

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

the total population erefore only a relatively smallnumber of people benefit from the best transport accessi-bility opportunities in the city this situation results in anexcessive concentration of economic activities in the urbancenter and equates to an inequitable distribution of socialresources Clearly this is not conducive to securing spatialequality for the residentsrsquo journeys

e areas with medium comprehensive accessibility(score 110ndash130) are mainly located between the 4th and the

6th Ring Road havingmore than half of the cityrsquos population(527) Most of the residents in the Fengtai (975)Chaoyang (790) Shijingshan (100) Daxing (703) andTongzhou districts (540) fall into this category eseresidents experience medium-level accessibility conditionsfor economic activity-related journeys but the supply of andthe demand for economic activities are not fully met edistribution of economic activities such as employmenteducation medical care and transportation cannot match

334

1240

1682

3224

3223

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

0

130ndash

140

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(a)

360

1107

1998

3712

2525

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

05

10152025303540

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(b)

337

1307

1884

3883

2281

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(c)

338

1263

1645

3476

2958

0ndash10

10ndash2

020

ndash30

30ndash4

040

ndash50

50ndash6

060

ndash70

70ndash8

080

ndash90

90ndash1

0010

0ndash11

011

0ndash12

012

0ndash13

013

0ndash14

0

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Prop

ortio

n of

pop

ulat

ion

()

(d)

Figure 6 Number of residents for the different economic activities (a) Employment accessibility (b) Educational accessibility (c) Medicalaccessibility (d) Shopping and leisure accessibility

Table 2 Distributions for residents at different levels of comprehensive accessibility

DistrictAccessibility level

Total number (10000)lt100 100ndash110 110ndash120 120ndash130 gt130

Xicheng 0 0 0 0 12328 12328Dongcheng 0 0 0 1878 7315 9193Haidian 0 1424 1712 10778 18892 32807Fengtai 0 538 1614 12445 1475 16073Chaoyang 0 0 2963 24553 7295 34811Shijingshan 0 0 2094 3838 0 5932Daxing 1534 2240 5573 3349 0 12696Tongzhou 1773 3679 6391 0 0 11843Changping 1552 7288 4702 3063 0 16605Mentougou 524 1027 929 424 0 2905Shunyi 2757 3459 1106 333 0 7655Fangshan 2867 2599 2012 0 0 7478Total 11006 22254 29097 60663 47305 170324

Complexity 9

the needs of the large population e limited resources inthis area result in inequalities

e area with poor comprehensive accessibility (scorelt110) has a population of 333 million and accounts for195 of the total population is area is mainly in thesuburbs outside the 6th Ring Road and comprises the dis-tricts of Changping Mentougou Shunyi and FangshanCompared with other regions the residents in these regionshave limited access to economic activity-related resourcesand there is a lack of public transport thus there is limitedscope for undertaking journeys hence the spatial in-equalities between these districts and the more centralizedregions erefore it is necessary to develop more equitableplans for all kinds of economic activities throughout Beijingand redress the imbalance of the transportation infra-structure in marginal areas so as to ensure more equitabletransport opportunities for residents in the whole city

5 Discussion

Research concerning the accessibility and equality of urbaneconomic activities can provide important information forurban planning including resource allocation Such workhelps in the planning and optimization of future urbaneconomic activities and transport infrastructure and facili-tates the fair distribution of economic-related opportunitiesIn the traditional approach to evaluating urban servicesaccessibility the types of economic activities are rarelydistinguished However diversification of economic activ-ities is of great significance to land use development andadjustment of the urban spatial structure erefore thisstudy has focused on the spatial differences of accessibilitybased on four types of economic activity e accessibilitymodel established for a comprehensive selection of eco-nomic activities makes up for the deficiencies of previousaccessibility evaluations and emphasizes the access oppor-tunities to diverse economic activities for different towns ineffect this model serves as an important indicator for re-vealing the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys In addition in a previous equality evaluationof residentsrsquo journeys the impact of the participantsrsquo needson the evaluation results was rarely considered and only thefairness of the distribution of economic activity-relatedfacilities from a geographic perspective was measured Withregard to the balance between supply and demand for urbanservices this study makes up for the shortage of a spaceequality evaluation method that is normally undertakenfrom a single viewpoint and proposes a more comprehensiveapproach for evaluation of the equality of economic activity-related journeys undertaken by Beijingrsquos residents

Several recommendations can be proposed based on theresults of this study When considering future economicactivities urban planners and decision makers should adoptan evaluation method which examines the spatial accessi-bility of urban economic activities consider comprehen-sively the spatial distribution of the residents and take intoconsideration the residentsrsquo commuting and other economicactivity-related travel factors including for instance theallocation of resources for economic activities and selection

of routes and stations within the urban rail transit systemAlso from the perspective of the spatial equality of op-portunities on the one hand the government should es-tablish appropriate educational medical shopping andleisure facilities for the suburbs and towns which are wellremoved from the center of Beijing and pay more attentionto the construction of transportation infrastructure at theperipheries of urban areas On the other hand the over-concentrated economic service functions in the center of thecity should be decentralized to improve and realize a moreequitable transport system

However there are still some limitations to the study interms of spatial equality analysis Due to the limitations ofthe research data there is mismatch between the dates of theeconomic activity data and the demographic data this needsto be addressed however the present findings are consid-ered robust and adequate for the purposes of explaining thespatial equality problem is research has focused on thestudy of the equality of economic activity-related journeysmade by the residents of Beijing but it does not take intoaccount the demographic structures and special socialgroups (such as children the elderly and groups of differentraces) and other factors In future research the personalizedneeds of different populations in the context of economicactivities need to be further considered so as to further im-prove the accessibility model and spatial equality evaluation

6 Conclusions

In this paper the spatial distribution characteristics and thespatial equality of economic activity-related accessibility inBeijing were analyzed First based on the distribution ofurban economic activities and the transportation systems anaccessibility model was built to calculate the accessibility offour major economic activities namely employment ed-ucation medical care and shopping and leisure e modelenabled us to analyze the respective spatial distributionaccessibility characteristics associated with the four types ofeconomic activity Second we weighted the four types ofaccessibility equally to obtain a comprehensive accessibilityindex and analyzed the spatial agglomeration pattern using aglobal autocorrelation analysis method Finally the spatialequalities of the economic activities were explained byfactoring in the spatial distribution of the resident pop-ulation in Beijing e main conclusions are as follows

(1) e accessibility of various economic activities inBeijing generally follows a law whereby accessibilitydecreases from the city center to the peripheralsuburbs and a ldquocore to edgerdquo feature is clear earea within the 4th Ring Road represents the locationwith strong accessibility for employment and Hai-dian District has a clear advantage in terms of ed-ucation accessibility e accessibility of medicalservices and shopping and leisure has similar dis-tributions with concentrations in the main urbanarea within the 5th Ring Road More specifically thetowns with high accessibility to all kinds of eco-nomic activities are mostly distributed in Xicheng

10 Complexity

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

the needs of the large population e limited resources inthis area result in inequalities

e area with poor comprehensive accessibility (scorelt110) has a population of 333 million and accounts for195 of the total population is area is mainly in thesuburbs outside the 6th Ring Road and comprises the dis-tricts of Changping Mentougou Shunyi and FangshanCompared with other regions the residents in these regionshave limited access to economic activity-related resourcesand there is a lack of public transport thus there is limitedscope for undertaking journeys hence the spatial in-equalities between these districts and the more centralizedregions erefore it is necessary to develop more equitableplans for all kinds of economic activities throughout Beijingand redress the imbalance of the transportation infra-structure in marginal areas so as to ensure more equitabletransport opportunities for residents in the whole city

5 Discussion

Research concerning the accessibility and equality of urbaneconomic activities can provide important information forurban planning including resource allocation Such workhelps in the planning and optimization of future urbaneconomic activities and transport infrastructure and facili-tates the fair distribution of economic-related opportunitiesIn the traditional approach to evaluating urban servicesaccessibility the types of economic activities are rarelydistinguished However diversification of economic activ-ities is of great significance to land use development andadjustment of the urban spatial structure erefore thisstudy has focused on the spatial differences of accessibilitybased on four types of economic activity e accessibilitymodel established for a comprehensive selection of eco-nomic activities makes up for the deficiencies of previousaccessibility evaluations and emphasizes the access oppor-tunities to diverse economic activities for different towns ineffect this model serves as an important indicator for re-vealing the equality of the residentsrsquo economic activity-re-lated journeys In addition in a previous equality evaluationof residentsrsquo journeys the impact of the participantsrsquo needson the evaluation results was rarely considered and only thefairness of the distribution of economic activity-relatedfacilities from a geographic perspective was measured Withregard to the balance between supply and demand for urbanservices this study makes up for the shortage of a spaceequality evaluation method that is normally undertakenfrom a single viewpoint and proposes a more comprehensiveapproach for evaluation of the equality of economic activity-related journeys undertaken by Beijingrsquos residents

Several recommendations can be proposed based on theresults of this study When considering future economicactivities urban planners and decision makers should adoptan evaluation method which examines the spatial accessi-bility of urban economic activities consider comprehen-sively the spatial distribution of the residents and take intoconsideration the residentsrsquo commuting and other economicactivity-related travel factors including for instance theallocation of resources for economic activities and selection

of routes and stations within the urban rail transit systemAlso from the perspective of the spatial equality of op-portunities on the one hand the government should es-tablish appropriate educational medical shopping andleisure facilities for the suburbs and towns which are wellremoved from the center of Beijing and pay more attentionto the construction of transportation infrastructure at theperipheries of urban areas On the other hand the over-concentrated economic service functions in the center of thecity should be decentralized to improve and realize a moreequitable transport system

However there are still some limitations to the study interms of spatial equality analysis Due to the limitations ofthe research data there is mismatch between the dates of theeconomic activity data and the demographic data this needsto be addressed however the present findings are consid-ered robust and adequate for the purposes of explaining thespatial equality problem is research has focused on thestudy of the equality of economic activity-related journeysmade by the residents of Beijing but it does not take intoaccount the demographic structures and special socialgroups (such as children the elderly and groups of differentraces) and other factors In future research the personalizedneeds of different populations in the context of economicactivities need to be further considered so as to further im-prove the accessibility model and spatial equality evaluation

6 Conclusions

In this paper the spatial distribution characteristics and thespatial equality of economic activity-related accessibility inBeijing were analyzed First based on the distribution ofurban economic activities and the transportation systems anaccessibility model was built to calculate the accessibility offour major economic activities namely employment ed-ucation medical care and shopping and leisure e modelenabled us to analyze the respective spatial distributionaccessibility characteristics associated with the four types ofeconomic activity Second we weighted the four types ofaccessibility equally to obtain a comprehensive accessibilityindex and analyzed the spatial agglomeration pattern using aglobal autocorrelation analysis method Finally the spatialequalities of the economic activities were explained byfactoring in the spatial distribution of the resident pop-ulation in Beijing e main conclusions are as follows

(1) e accessibility of various economic activities inBeijing generally follows a law whereby accessibilitydecreases from the city center to the peripheralsuburbs and a ldquocore to edgerdquo feature is clear earea within the 4th Ring Road represents the locationwith strong accessibility for employment and Hai-dian District has a clear advantage in terms of ed-ucation accessibility e accessibility of medicalservices and shopping and leisure has similar dis-tributions with concentrations in the main urbanarea within the 5th Ring Road More specifically thetowns with high accessibility to all kinds of eco-nomic activities are mostly distributed in Xicheng

10 Complexity

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

District and include Jinrongjie Yuetan Xinjiekouand Shichahai

(2) e districts with the highest level of comprehensiveaccessibility are Xicheng District and Haidian Dis-trict while Fangshan District and Mentougou Dis-trict have the lowest level of comprehensiveaccessibility e trend towards the spatial agglom-eration of towns with similar accessibility levels isclear and results in significant regional differenceswith respect to access to economic activities eurban center within the 5th Ring Road enjoys a highdegree of accessibility and superior infrastructureconditions In the districts of Fangshan Mentougouand Shunyi there are some areas where the townswith low levels of accessibility group together overallthe infrastructure conditions are poor in theselocations

(3) In general towns with large populations have a highdemand for all kinds of economic activities Dong-xiaokou Huilongguan and Beijiazhen in ChangpingDistrict and Xueyuanlu in Haidian District have thelargest demand for economic activities whereasthere is much less demand in the districts of Men-tougou Fangshan and Shunyi e graph of therelationship between the accessibility level and thenumber of residents shows that the populationgenerally tends to settle in the areas with high ac-cessibility but the attractiveness of accessibility hasan upper limit there being a reduction in populationfor the central urban area at the highest levels ofaccessibility In terms of the attractiveness of eco-nomic activities for residents the need for trans-portation to the workplace is the most importantfactor while the need to access medical facilities isthe least important of the four economic categoriesexamined

(4) e advantageous locations regarding comprehen-sive accessibility of economic activities and distri-bution of residents are not entirely consistent Some278 of the population in the study area live in theregion with the highest comprehensive accessibility(score gt130) which is mainly in the districts ofXicheng Dongcheng and Haidian these districtshaving the best opportunities for economic activity-related journeys More than half of the population(527) live in areas with moderate comprehensiveaccessibility (score 110ndash130) these areas include thedistricts of Fengtai Chaoyang Shijingshan Daxingand Tongzhou e distribution of economic activ-ities and traffic conditions in these areas cannot meetthe needs of a large number of people and thisresults in inequalities due to a relative scarcity ofresources Some 195 of the population live in areaswith a low comprehensive accessibility score (scorelt110) mostly in the Changping Mentougou Shu-nyi and Fangshan districts Residents in these areashave poor economic activity-related journey op-portunities and moreover journeys made by

residents between these regions are not equal interms of accessibility

Data Availability

e economic activity distribution data and demographicdata used to support the findings of this study were suppliedby National Bureau of Statistics of China under license andso cannot be made freely available Requests for access tothese data should be made to Yang (yangxy19sigsnrraccn)

Conflicts of Interest

e authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest

Acknowledgments

is study was supported by the National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (Grant No 42071153) Strategic Pri-ority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No XDA20080000)

References

[1] K Y Wang and L Xiao ldquoAnalysis on the motive mechanismof developing for urban spatial structurerdquo Journal of SouthChina Normal University (Natural Science Edition) vol 3pp 116ndash122 2005

[2] Y Wang Analysis of Mechanism and Routes of RegionalUrban Space Restructuring in Northeast China NortheastNormal University Changchun China 2012

[3] B Cohen ldquoUrbanization in developing countries currenttrends future projections and key challenges for sustain-abilityrdquo Technology in Society vol 28 no 1-2 pp 63ndash80 2006

[4] K W Tsou Y T Hung and Y L Chang ldquoAn accessibility-based integrated measure of relative spatial equity in urbanpublic facilitiesrdquo Cities vol 22 no 6 pp 424ndash435 2005

[5] E Talen and L Anselin ldquoAssessing spatial equity an evalu-ation of measures of accessibility to public playgroundsrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 30no 4 pp 595ndash613 1998

[6] E Talen ldquoe social equity of urban service distribution anexploration of park access in Pueblo Colorado and MaconGeorgiardquo Urban Geography vol 18 no 6 pp 521ndash541 1997

[7] Q X Chen Y Hou and SWu ldquoAssessment of accessibility tourban parks in Shaoxing City from the perspective of op-portunity equityrdquo Scientia Geographica Sinica vol 36pp 375ndash383 2016

[8] Z B Liu C Zhang and T Q Dai ldquoMeasuring accessibility ofmulti-type urban public service facilities with entropy inBeijingrdquo Economic Geography vol 38 pp 77ndash84 2018

[9] W G Hansen ldquoHow accessibility shapes land userdquo Journal ofthe American Institute of Planners vol 25 no 2 pp 73ndash761959

[10] G H Pirie ldquoMeasuring accessibility a review and proposalrdquoEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space vol 11no 3 pp 299ndash312 1979

[11] J A Pooler ldquoe use of spatial separation in the measurementof transportation accessibilityrdquo Transportation Research PartA (Policy and Practice) vol 29 pp 1ndash427 1995

Complexity 11

[12] D Halden P Jones and S Wixey Accessibility AnalysisLiterature Review Measuring Accessibility as Experienced byDifferent Socially Disadvantage Groups pp 1ndash55 2005

[13] L A Aday and R Andersen ldquoA framework for the study ofaccess to medical carerdquo Health Services Research vol 9pp 208ndash220 1974

[14] H W Yin and F H Kong ldquoAccessibility analysis of urbangreen space in Jinanrdquo Journal of Plant Ecology vol 30pp 17ndash24 2006

[15] S Kalogirou R Foley P Health and Hanly ldquoHealth placeand Hanly modelling accessibility to hospitals in IrelandrdquoIrish Geography vol 39 no 1 pp 52ndash68 2006

[16] T S Hare and H R Barcus ldquoGeographical accessibility andKentuckyrsquos heart-related hospital servicesrdquo Applied Geogra-phy vol 27 pp 1ndash205 2007

[17] L Rosero-Bixby ldquoSpatial access to health care in costa rica andits equity a GIS-based studyrdquo Social Science amp Medicinevol 58 no 7 pp 1271ndash1284 2004

[18] Y Liu Y Jing L Zhang et al ldquoAssessing spatial accessibilityof public and private residential aged care facilities a casestudy in Wuhan central Chinardquo ISPRS International Journalof Geo-Information vol 6 p 304 2017

[19] Y Gao Q He Y Liu L Zhang H Wang and E CaildquoImbalance in spatial accessibility to primary and secondaryschools in China guidance for education sustainabilityrdquoSustainability vol 8 no 12 p 1236 2016

[20] Y H Han and Y Q Lu ldquoAccessibility assessment andplanning of public service facilities for education a case studyon senior high schools in Yizheng Cityrdquo Geographica Sinicavol 32 pp 822ndash827 2012

[21] J P Sung ldquoMeasuring public library accessibility a case studyusing GISrdquo Library amp Information Science Research vol 34pp 13ndash21 2012

[22] M-P Kwan A T Murray M E OrsquoKelly and M TiefelsdorfldquoRecent advances in accessibility research representationmethodology and applicationsrdquo Journal of GeographicalSystems vol 5 no 1 pp 129ndash138 2003

[23] S L Handy and D A Niemeier ldquoMeasuring accessibility anexploration of issues and alternativesrdquo Environment andPlanning A Economy and Space vol 29 no 7 pp 1175ndash11941997

[24] M D Gu and H W Yin ldquoResearch review on the spatialaccessibility and equity of public facilityrdquo Urban Problemsvol 5 pp 25ndash29 2010

[25] J S Wu M L Si and W F Li ldquoSpatial equity analysis ofurban green space from the perspective of balance betweensupply and demand a case study of Futian district Shenz-henChinardquo Chinese Journal of Applied Ecology vol 27pp 2831ndash2838 2016

[26] L A Guzman D Oviedo and C Rivera ldquoAssessing equity intransport accessibility to work and study the Bogota regionrdquoJournal of Transport Geography vol 58 pp 236ndash246 2017

[27] B Wail S Hanchane and A Kamal ldquoA new data set ofeducational inequality in the world 1950-2010 gini index ofeducation by age grouprdquo SSRN Electronic Journal vol 104pp 184ndash198 2011

[28] O A Ajala and K Asres ldquoAccessibility in equality to basiceducation in amhara region Ethiopiardquo Ethiopian Journal ofEducation amp Sciences vol 3 pp 11ndash26 2008

[29] W Pan H Fu and P Zheng ldquoRegional poverty and in-equality in the xiamen-zhangzhou-quanzhou city cluster inChina based on NPPVIIRS night-time light imageryrdquo Sus-tainability vol 12 pp 2ndash20 2020

[30] P Townsend Poverty in United Kingdom A Survey ofHousehold Resources and Standards of Living pp 15ndash50Penguin London UK 1979

[31] N Heynen H A Perkins and P Roy ldquoe political ecologyof uneven urban green spacerdquo Urban Affairs Review vol 42no 1 pp 3ndash25 2006

[32] J B Gao C S Zhou Y M Wang et al ldquoSpatial analysis onurban public service facilities of Guangzhou City during theeconomy system transformationrdquo Geographical Researchvol 30 pp 424ndash436 2011

[33] C Yin Q He Y Liu W Chen and Y Gao ldquoInequality ofpublic health and its role in spatial accessibility to medicalfacilities in Chinardquo Applied Geography vol 92 pp 50ndash622018

[34] Y D Wei and C C Fan ldquoRegional inequality in China a casestudy of Jiangsu Provincerdquo e Professional Geographervol 3 pp 455ndash469 2010

[35] Y D Wei ldquoSpatiality of regional inequalityrdquo Applied Geog-raphy vol 61 pp 1ndash10 2015

[36] L Hu T Sun and L Wang ldquoEvolving urban spatial structureand commuting patterns a case study of Beijing ChinardquoTransportation Research Part D Transport and Environmentvol 59 pp 11ndash22 2018

[37] F Q NiuW D Liu and J X Feng ldquoModeling urban housingprice the perspective of household activity demandrdquo ActaGeographica Sinica vol 71 pp 1731ndash1740 2016

[38] DMcFadden ldquoModelling the choice of residential locationrdquo inSpatial Interaction eory and Planning Models A Karlqvistet al Ed pp 75ndash96 North Holland Amsterdam Netherland1978

[39] A D Cliff Spatial Autocorrelation pp 7ndash17 Pion LondonUK 1973

[40] R Kosfeld H-F Eckey and M Turck ldquoLISA (local indicatorsof spatial association)rdquo WiSt-WirtschaftswissenschaftlichesStudium vol 36 no 3 pp 157ndash162 2007

[41] S P Chen M Fang and D Zhuang ldquoAnalysis of road densityspatial heterogeneity and its influences for urban form ofGuangzhourdquo Geomatics World vol 26 pp 37ndash43 2019

[42] I Omer ldquoEvaluating accessibility using house-level data aspatial equity perspectiverdquo Computers Environment andUrban Systems vol 30 no 3 pp 254ndash274 2006

12 Complexity