Distribution of Urban Blue and Green Space in Beijing and Its Influence Factors

• Published in: Sustainability 2020-03, Vol.12 (6), p.2252
• Main Authors: Wang, Haoying, Hu, Yunfeng, Tang, Li, Zhuo, Qi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Cities; Drones; Ecological effects; Housing; Landscape; Mental health; Methods; Neural networks; Normalized difference vegetative index; Population density; Remote sensing; Researchers; Satellites; Social factors; Spatial distribution; Sustainability; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Urban areas; Urban environments; Urban studies; Vegetation
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su12062252

Urban blue and green space is a key element supporting the normal operation of urban landscape ecosystems and guaranteeing and improving people's lives. In this paper, 97.1k photos of Beijing were captured by using web crawler technology, and the blue sky and green vegetation objects in the photos were extracted by using the Image Cascade Network (ICNet) neural network model. We analyzed the distribution characteristics of the blue–green space area proportion index and its relationships with the background economic and social factors. The results showed the following. (1) The spatial distribution of Beijing's blue–green space area proportion index showed a pattern of being higher in the west and lower in the middle and east. (2) There was a positive correlation between the satellite remote sensing normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the proportion index of green space area, but the fitting degree of geospatial weighted regression decreased with an increasing analysis scale. (3) There were differences in the relationship between the housing prices in different regions and the proportion index of blue–green space, but the spatial fitting degree of the two increased with the increase of study scale. (4) There was a negative correlation between the proportion index of blue–green space and population density, and the low-population areas per unit blue–green space were mainly distributed in the south of the city and the urban fringe areas beyond the Third Ring Road. The urban blue–green space analysis that was constructed by this study provides new aspect for urban landscape ecology study, and the results proposed here also provide support for government decision-makers to optimize urban ecological layouts.