Everyday urbanism in Beijing’s edge cities: on spatial and experience patterns

The concentration of people in mega agglomerations in China has been challenging urban governance to reduce daily commuting by planning and investing in new edge cities. The main objective of this paper is to investigate everyday urbanism in two recently developed edge cities in Beijing by considering spatial conditions as well as resulting activity and experience patterns. The applied mapping surveys include land use distributions and density calculations via evaluating GIS data as well as field observations to investigate the typical experiences of 32 representative neighborhood walks. One of the main findings is the overall dependency of neighborhoods on rigid grid planning defining urbanism with large block sizes, resulting in walking experiences with a majority being dominated by compound walls along main roads and only 15% of walks being experienced along active frontages despite rather high urban densities with up to 300 residents per hectare.