Spatial Patterns of Public Service Facilities and Planning Responses in a Valley City: A Case Study of Lanzhou, China
Abstract
Public service facilities constitute key spatial underpinnings for optimizing territorial resource allocation and securing residents’ daily well-being. As a typical valley-constrained city, Lanzhou faces pronounced geographical bottlenecks alongside stark development gaps between its central urban core and peripheral districts and counties. Drawing on 28 686 2025 points-of-interest (POI) records of public service amenities, this study reclassifies facilities into six groups: elderly care, healthcare, public transport, basic education, cultural-sports services, and commercial services. We apply kernel density estimation, standard deviational ellipse analysis, correlation analysis, and the CRITIC objective-weighting approach to unpack spatial-clustering characteristics, directional expansion trends, inter-facility correlations, and the composite distribution of these amenities. Results indicate a strong central-clustering tendency across Lanzhou’s public-service system: the interconnected Chengguan-Qilihe-Anning zone functions as the dominant high-density hub, while facility availability diminishes outwards toward peripheral counties. Healthcare, commercial, and cultural-sports services demonstrate high centrality; basic-education and public-transport amenities achieve wider geographical reach; yet elderly-care provision remains spatially limited. Collectively, all six facility types stretch along a northwest–southeast axis and feature robust spatial co-occurrence, with elderly-care services representing the main exception and showing partial spatial decoupling from other everyday-life amenities. The composite assessment confirms a distinct “core-concentration–peripheral-decline” gradient. In response, this paper puts forward place-specific planning strategies: upgrading existing facilities within central urban districts, filling gaps in basic-service provision across peripheral counties, aligning public-service construction with residential-industrial growth in new towns and development zones, and enhancing synergies between public-service nodes and major transport corridors.