Land Use Team Update

This post is by Tucker Bryant, Zirai Huang, Mercedes Peterson, Yuxiao Pu

The bulk of the progress made so far in team Land Use (a better name is to be decided) has been in solidifying our research purpose, approach, and plan. As far as our purpose is concerned, we decided that, with the resources available to us, we wanted to focus our study on understanding who in Beijing has access to what kinds of services and amenities—a question whose answer lies in the way Beijing’s land is used. We felt that this would be an important question to investigate because answering it will help us understand how different living environments around the city can influence the degree to which a citizen’s day-to-day needs are met, and how a lack of access to certain services can lead to costs (especially environmentally and economically) that have important implications on the sustainability of Beijing’s urban communities.

In order to answer our research question, we will be investigating land use patterns around two different types of residences. One will be an older apartment building with socialist characteristics, and the other will be a more modern commercial apartment building. The reason we have chosen to compare land use patterns around these two buildings is because they tend to be occupied by substantially different demographics, which may help us to understand what kinds of people do and do not have access to services in Beijing. Our research will involve us venturing to these two residences and making a record of every public amenity within a 500 m radius of the building. These services will be separated into 17 different categories in order to give us an idea of what the service provision is like for people in different living scenarios. We will be doing this research on Monday and Tuesday, meaning that our next step is to complete the physical field work and to process the data to be ready for a visualization in our final presentation.
目前“土地利用”组(之后会取一个更好的名字)的进展是:我们巩固了研究目的、方法和计划。利用现有的资源,我们决定重点了解在北京不同人群可以获得什么样的服务和便利设施——回答了“北京土地是如何被利用的?” 这一问题。这是个很具有调研意义的问题,因为解答它可以帮助我们了解城市中不同的居住环境是如何影响市民的日常生活,以及缺乏某些服务可能造成的经济与环境方面的损失,这些对北京城市社区的可持续性有重要影响。
为了回答研究的问题,我们将会调研两种不同的居民土地利用模式。一种是具有社会属性的旧楼房,另外一种是更加现代化的商业公寓。我们选择这两种类型的建筑是因为它们被不同类型的人口所占有,这可以帮助我们理解在北京哪些人可以获得哪些服务。我们将深入到这两种居民楼中,记录半径500米以内所包含的建筑和公共设施。这些服务设施会被分为17种,告诉我们不同生活场景下的不同服务是什么样的。我们的下一步计划是在周一、二进行实地调研,然后分析处理数据,为我们的最终展示做准备。