Delineating intra-urban spatial connectivity patterns by travel-activities: A case study of Beijing, China

Travel activities have been widely applied to quantify spatial interactions between places, regions, and nations. In this paper, we model the spatial connectivities between 652 Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) in Beijing by a taxi OD dataset. First, we unveil the gravitational structure of intra-urban spatial connectivities of Beijing. Overall, the inter-TAZ interactions are well governed by the Gravity Model G_ij= λp_ip_j/d_ij, where p_i, p_j are degrees of TAZ i, j and d_ij the distance between them, with a goodness-of-fit around 0.8. Second, the network-based analysis well reveals the polycentric form of Beijing. Last, we detect the semantics of inter-TAZ connectivities based on their spatiotemporal patterns. We further find that inter-TAZ connections deviating from the Gravity Model can be well explained by link semantics.