Exploring the Impact of Urban Road Network Characteristics on City Fringe Tourist Areas: A Case Study of Xi’an, China

Abstract

With the process of urban expansion, the urban road infrastructure gradually develops and improves, and the urban fringe tourism area gradually receives the attention of tourists, meaning there may be a mismatch between the demand and the early transportation planning for the urban fringe tourism area. In order to explore the relationship between urban road network structure characteristics and urban fringe tourist areas, this study chose Kunming Lake in Xi’an City as the research object and obtained the consumer development characteristics of urban fringe tourist areas through a comparison of POI data. We explored the traffic development trend in urban fringe tourist areas based on a spatial syntactic model by quantifying the road network structure characteristics using the indexes related to depth, integration, and choice. The results of the study show that the consumer development level of the urban fringe tourism area is poor compared with that of the built-up scenic area, and tourists tend to travel in the scenic area but do not live in this neighborhood. The average normalized depth values in the axial and segmental maps were 0.52 and 0.42, respectively, indicating that expressways and ring roads can improve the accessibility of urban fringe tourist areas. The expansion of motorized transportation activities gradually increases the importance of urban fringe tourist areas. There is a significant correlation between the road network density and route selection, although the correlation between the two gradually decreases as the measured radius increases. The conclusions drawn from this study provide methodological references and research paradigms for the development of city fringe tourist areas and urban transportation planning.