City centers really lived up to the hype? Evidence from human perceptions of over 4000 communities in China

Abstract

The way how to form well-being cities has been a longstanding challenge in urban planning. Existing studies often assume that residents of urban centers experience more pleasant environments than those living in suburban areas. This study critically investigates whether this assumption holds true by examining the perceptions of pleasantness across over 4000 communities in six major cities within the Pearl River Delta region in China. Using the “Six-Type-Perception” model, we analyze community perceptions across different urban settings by delineating urban-suburban-rural boundaries through nighttime lighting data and leveraging deep learning on street view images for perception measurement. The results reveal a significant center-suburban disparity in environmental pleasantness perception, providing new evidence that “suburbs” are perceived as more pleasant than city “center” across multiple spatial scales in the Pearl River Delta: peripheral cities significantly outperform core cities, peripheral districts generally surpass core districts and suburban communities also fare better than central one. Regression analysis further identifies key environmental factors associated with higher pleasantness perceptions, including a higher sky view index, greater green space density, lower densities of buildings, residential areas, and transportation infrastructure, and higher densities of institutional and commercial facilities. These findings highlight that residents' perceptions of pleasantness are closely associated with specific urban environmental features, offering new perspectives for the planning and design of well-being cities.