The Scale Effect of Street View Images and Urban Vitality Is Consistent with a Gaussian Function Distribution

Jie Yin (), Ran Chen, Ruixiang Zhang, Xiang Li and Yuan Fang ()
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Jie Yin: School of Urban Planning and Design, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China
Ran Chen: School of Urban Planning and Design, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China
Ruixiang Zhang: School of Urban Planning and Design, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China
Xiang Li: School of Urban Planning and Design, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China
Yuan Fang: Key Laboratory of Earth Surface System and Human-Earth Relations of Ministry of Natural Resources of China, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-14

Abstract: Street view images are often used to assess the impact of the built environment on urban vitality from an eye-level perspective. However, the influence of analyzing scale on the accuracy of assessment results is often ignored. To find the appropriate scale, we need to quantify the scale effect of street view images and urban vitality. Therefore, in this study, Shenzhen is selected as the study area. Urban vitality is characterized by Weibo check-in records. VGG19 is employed to learn the features of street view images and performs regression analysis of the image features and Weibo check-in records in different sizes of grids (100 m, 150 m, …, 1000 m). Finally, we fit the scale effect of their correlation via a function. We find that as the scale increases, the correlation between street view images and urban vitality tends to increase and then decrease, which is consistent with the distribution law of a Gaussian function. This study provides a basis for selecting appropriate scales of the correlation between street view images and urban vitality.

Keywords: street view image; scale effect; urban vitality; Gaussian function; VGG19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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