Using Spatial Semantics and Interactions to Identify Urban Functional Regions

The spatial structures of cities have changed dramatically with rapid socio-economic development in ways that are not well understood. To support urban structural analysis and rational planning, we propose a framework to identify urban functional regions and quantitatively explore the intensity of the interactions between them, thus increasing the understanding of urban structures. A method for the identification of functional regions via spatial semantics is proposed, which involves two steps: (1) the study area is classified into three types of functional regions using taxi origin/destination (O/D) flows; and (2) the spatial semantics for the three types of functional regions are demonstrated based on point-of-interest (POI) categories. To validate the existence of urban functional regions, we explored the intensity of interactions quantitatively between them. A case study using POI data and taxi trajectory data from Beijing validates the proposed framework. The results show that the proposed framework can be used to identify urban functional regions and promotes an enhanced understanding of urban structures.