Road Landscape Morphology of Valley City Blocks under the Concept of “Open Block”—Taking Lanzhou City as an Example

Abstract

The unique valley geographical environment and the congestion-prone road landscape make valley city traffic jammed easily. In this paper, under the background of “open blocks”, two open patterns, which correspond to two different road landscapes ("ideal grid opening" and "open under realistic conditions"), are proposed. Taking Lanzhou city as an example, six basic statistical characteristics are used to compare and analyze the changes of road network topology in blocks to find out which open pattern is more suitable for valley cities. The results show that the pattern "open under realistic conditions" has a significant effect on the improvement of network performance and capacity. Specifically, breaking the "large blocks" and developing the small-scale blocks help to alleviate the traffic pressure. Besides, the opening of blocks located along river valley has a more positive effect on improving road network performance than the blocks sited in the inner area of cities.