Spatiotemporal Heterogeneity and Multi-Scale Determinants of Human Mobility Pulses: The Case of Harbin City

To enhance winter tourism competitiveness and address seasonal tourist flow pressures, this study adopts Harbin as a case study and introduces a metamodernist theoretical framework. This framework redefines the “population pulse” phenomenon as a structural oscillation involving periodic switching between the two poles of global tourist consumption and local resident daily needs. By integrating multi-source spatiotemporal data, the study employs X-means clustering to identify population aggregation–dispersion patterns and combines the Geographical Detector and GWR model to construct a complete technical pathway ranging from global factor detection to local heterogeneity analysis. The findings reveal that (1) population activity in Harbin exhibits a “monocentric polarization” pattern during the peak season, which shifts to a “polycentric weak agglomeration” mode in the off-season, reflecting the seasonal oscillation of the city’s functional roles; (2) X-means clustering identifies three types of functional zones: transit-oriented areas on the urban periphery, commercial supporting service zones, and core commercial districts; (3) the Geographical Detector quantifies the independent explanatory power and interactive effects of various influencing factors, identifying the interaction between POI density and road network accessibility as having the strongest explanatory power regarding population aggregation; (4) GWR analysis reveals significant spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the effects of various built environment and socioeconomic driving factors. This study provides specific evidence and technical support for urban planning practices in Harbin and other similar cities, deepens the theoretical understanding of the “constitutive conditions” of urban vitality, and explores a post-paradigmatic research path in geographical methodology that can embrace complexity and analyze oscillatory behavior.