Abstract
We are now going through a shift to a new epoch when urban planning relies more on data and digital technology than intuitive thought. In this context, China is involved in a critical transformation in its urban planning system at this moment. A new collection of rational planning methods focusing on natural resources, synthetic ecologies as well as potential risks of the city now compute, regulate, and wheel the urban development. Enriqueta Llabres, who proposed the theory of ‘Relational Urban Models’ says, ‘the advent of digital technologies and the resulting array of available technologies for capturing and interpreting data have shifted how we look at and analyze the urban domain’. In other words, digital technologies have changed the way we understand our urban ecology. With the application of data and data analysis methods in urban planning, we can assess and understand our urban ecology from a digital perspective. Such a type of evaluation driven by numbers and data for planning called the urban physical evaluation, reveals the contributions or potential risks of the city and leads to the guidance of corresponding urban renewal policy. This research introduced the planning practice of capturing and analyzing data from multiple sources in the urban physical evaluation in downtown Jianshui. This research calculated the scale of urban construction and the green coverage based on the remote sensing data. ‘Point of Interest’ data were also used and interpreted into the coverage rate of public service facilities in ArcGIS. Besides, cellular signaling data were accessed to study the change regulation of population mobility and the accumulation areas of population vitality inside the city. A collection of social and economic data was obtained from the government departments for a more comprehensive evaluation. Through the analytic results, this research built a complex evaluation system by ‘50+n’ indexes of eight dimensions in the end and used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to calculate the weight and value of each index. Out of the evaluation values, we could find out how the deficiency or potential risk exists in the growing urbanization. The urban physical evaluation plays a critical role in urban renewal. The evaluation methodology and its result could provide a basis for formulating urban renewal policies, optimizing urban governance, and solving the urban development difficulties. Keywords Data Analysis, Urban Physical Examination, Evaluation Index System, Urban Renewal
