A walking-based measurement for understanding the relationship between dense urban form and community facility distribution: a case study in the old town of Fuzhou, China

Improving the livability and sustainability of the dense urban environments in the old town of cities has been a focus of attention in urban planning, particularly from the perspective of optimizing facility distribution. Given the study about how to understand the relationship between dense urban form and community facility distribution under the premise of satisfying the walking distance is limited, which caused a lack of basis for environment renewal and facility planning. This study uses Fuzhou, China as a case study and proposes a comprehensive spatial analysis framework based on a walking-based measurement, which combines the quantification of urban form metrics, density analysis, network analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and fine-scale multi-source dataset. Results show that there is a close spatial correlation between the dense urban form and community facility distribution; a few correlations between dense urban form metrics and density of community facilities are significant, i.e., community facilities tend to gather in areas with high distribution density and volume density of surrounding buildings and residential areas, and areas with high flow and visibility of surrounding intersections. These findings contribute to making effective planning interventions for enhancing dense urban form and optimizing the distribution of community facilities, so as to attract and promote the site selection of facilities, and ultimately improve the livability and sustainability of the old town’s environment.