Urban business districts frequently evolve in ways that deviate from initial expectations due to business dynamics and urban development. Although numerous scholars have investigated these districts, a crucial premise is often overlooked: business districts are neither confined nor static regions. Existing delineation methods, such as government documents and cognitive maps, inadequately capture their spatial complexities. Therefore, this study focuses on Huaqiangbei, a classical business district, and proposes a framework to analyze the evolution of its spatial scope and business semantics (the collective understanding of its functional attributes). Toponym co-occurrences between Huaqiangbei and name of POI were extracted from web pages to delineate the spatial scopes of Huaqiangbei using KDE and the fuzzy set method, while business semantics were identified through TF-IDF algorithm. Then the changes in spatial scopes and business semantics with multiple time series were traced. The findings reveal that Huaqiangbei's vague region differs from its officially planned boundary, exhibiting a dynamic and multi-level core-peripheral structure. Additionally, core regions feature "Electronics Hypermarket" as the dominant business semantic and present diverse semantic combination patterns. The district's evolution is intricately linked to Shenzhen's urban development, reflecting its growth trajectory. This study offers an innovative perspective for comprehending business district development, offering valuable insights for optimizing business services and governance policies, thereby enhancing urban consumption and promoting high-quality development.
Ma et al. (Wed,) studied this question.