A Study on the Influence Mechanisms of Neighborhood Vitality and the Characteristics of Spatial and Temporal Differentiation in the Urban Fringe Areas of Wuhan City

Achieving effective integration of urban–rural relationships and promoting the flow of resources between urban and rural areas in megacities are a key priority in the development of China’s new urbanization efforts. As a transitional zone between urban and rural areas, the urban fringe is the frontier of urban–rural integration. The specific research object of this paper is the urban fringe areas of Wuhan City. This paper quantifies the neighborhood vitality of the fringe areas by the short-stay visitors in the fringe areas and selects the 5D elements of the built environment and social media data from multiple sources to construct the indicator system assessing the neighborhood vitality of the urban fringe areas. This paper analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics of neighborhood vitality and its influencing factors in urban fringe areas and investigates the connection between neighborhood vitality and its influencing factors through the application of the multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model. Based on the regression results, relevant planning recommendations are made on how to enhance the vitality of neighborhoods in urban fringe areas. The results show that the index system constructed by “5D” elements of built environment and social media data can well explain the spatial distribution of neighborhood vitality in urban fringe areas. Among the influencing factors, the absolute value of the correlation coefficient of network exposure is the largest, followed by road density and functional density. Thanks to the different bandwidths given by MGWR to the influencing factors, the global influencing factors are only two indicators—development intensity and functional mixing degree—while the other influencing factors are all local, and the influence degree of different regions is different, so it is necessary to analyze and put forward different planning suggestions accordingly.