Categories and characteristics of urban villages by GIS-based analysis: A case study of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone

Studies on the characteristics of urban villages have attracted much interest in urban geography. However, how to advance the development of further theoretical analysis and quantitative methodologies, especially in the era that GIS and digital-urban technologies develop rapidly and provide precious resources on spatial issues, has always been a heated debate and difficulty. In this paper, a mathematical model based on spatial analysis is introduced to deal with the categorization and characterization of urban villages. A total of 89 urban villages in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) are used in this case study. Using ArcGIS tools on buffer analysis, distance and density calculation, and socio-economic and spatial attributes conjunction, urban villages' 31 spatial variables in 4 aspects-social, economic, locational, and physical-are extracted, and 6 principal factors are concluded by principal components analysis to indicate the spatial characteristic of urban villages. Based on the 6 principal factors, 6 types of urban villages, including rapidly sprawling, large, rapidly industrializing periphery, overcrowded, intensively mobile and economically backward, are divided through the Hierarchical Clustering method. Moreover, the spatial features and formation mechanisms of each type of urban villages are provided. Finally, the advantages and the shortcomings of the methodology for this specific application are also given. Furthermore, several guidelines on urban village management and renewal are provided based on the result of type classification. The outcome of the paper depends on the informational and technological support from the development of digital-city management, and is able to in turn provide basis on monitoring and improving urban villages which can further digital urban framework.