Spatial Distribution Characteristics of Public Fitness Venues: An Urban Accessibility Perspective

Abstract

In the context of healthy China, the study of the spatial distribution characteristics of urban sports venues is not only beneficial to planning the construction of sports venues in cities, but also to the health protection of urban residents. Therefore, to promote a fair and scientific approach to constructing public fitness sites in the city and meet the needs of urban residents’ fitness activities, this study targeted public fitness sites larger than 10 m2 in the main urban area of Jinan City to study spatial distribution characteristics and accessibility. We combine the traffic road network and other data and use spatial and buffer zone analyses to assess the sites from the perspective of different travel modes of urban residents. The results show that the public fitness venues in the main urban area are mainly concentrated centrally; there is no significant pattern between the construction of venue area and population. For the time range of 0–15 min, Lixia District has the highest ratio of public fitness venue service area for walking, cycling, and car travel, with 22.54%, 62.25%, and 100%, respectively, and Changqing District has the lowest. In terms of travel mode, the highest service area ratio is 62.7% for car travel, followed by 28.7% for cycling, and 7.7% for walking. It is concluded that the construction of public fitness venues in Jinan has an unbalanced layout, does not fully consider the population factor, and different modes of travel have a significant impact on accessibility. It is therefore suggested that the government should increase public fitness venue construction in the areas surrounding the main city; moreover, future planning of urban public fitness venues should fully consider the distribution characteristics of population quantity and age in each area. Finally, the main travel mode characteristics of urban residents should also be considered to promote the future scientific development of urban public fitness venue construction.