The coordination relationship between urban development and urban life satisfaction in Chinese cities - An empirical analysis based on multi-source data

Achieving balanced development in both urban development level and urban life satisfaction is a key focus in the people-oriented guideline of the national New Type urbanization plan and constructing livable and sustainable cities. This study evaluates urban development levels based on nighttime light (NTL) data and LandScan population data and assesses urban life satisfaction by fusing urban amenities from objective built environment using Amap POIs and subjective emotions from human perspective based on sentiment analysis of Weibo social media data. The study then analyzes the coupling and coordination relationship and the relative development levels of these two aspects. The results indicate that first, urban development levels in China exhibit differentiated characteristics under the combined influence of economics and population. Second, cities with higher levels of urban life satisfaction are mostly cities in the eastern coastal regions and provincial capitals. Third, urban life satisfaction in China generally lags behind urban development levels. On one hand, this study innovatively combined subjective sentimental analysis and objective amenity assessment in urban life satisfaction evaluation. On the other hand, it enriches the case studies on the relationship between urban development and urban life satisfaction providing planning evidence for the livability and sustainable development of cities.