Correlation Analysis Between Everyday Public Space and Urban Built Environment and a Study of Its Evaluation Framework: Taking Tianjin as an Example

As global urbanization accelerates, many regions—including Chinese cities—are continuously advancing their urban development. Urban renewal, as a component of urbanization, has increasingly become a focal point of attention in recent years. Achieving high-quality urban renewal requires an in-depth study of the interaction between the built environment and public space. Everyday public space, a subset of public space, represents residents’ everyday practices in the urban environment based on their own needs and is a recurring challenge in contemporary urban renewal and management. This study takes three distinct urban zones in Tianjin as case examples and employs quantitative analysis. From the perspectives of land-use patterns, residential indicators, urban design, and transportation systems, we compare the relationships between built-environment elements (both at the sub-regional and city-wide levels) and the distribution of everyday public spaces. In addition, we construct an evaluation model by integrating Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assess everyday public spaces. The results show that the spatial distribution of everyday public spaces is significantly correlated with various urban elements, and these relationships differ across regions. Overall, the strongest correlations are found with large markets, residential area, population density, building density, and the 160 m integration index. Regarding evaluation, users and designers differ markedly in their focal points: users prioritize concrete elements such as the presence of specific facilities, whereas designers emphasize aspects that can be directly addressed through design interventions. In summary, we propose a complete research pathway—identification and evaluation based on the built environment—that can provide systematic, actionable, technical support for formulating and implementing urban-renewal policies, offering substantial practical value.