University of Sheffield - Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Geographic Data Science Lab, University of Liverpool - Department of Geography and Planning, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Sci Data. 2022 Sep 3;9(1):541. doi: 10.1038/s41597-022-01556-3.
Town centres and high streets typically form the social and commercial cores of UK cities and towns, yet, there is no uniform definition of what a town centre or high street is. In this study the spatial delineations of retail agglomerations are generated using open-source data for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The extent and boundaries of these physical retail areas are identified based on the density and connectivity patterns of individual retail units over space. A high resolution hexagonal grid is superimposed over spatial clusters of retail points and a network-based algorithm used to identify mutually exclusive tracts. Agglomerations are then pruned and fine-tuned according to a series of heuristic rules. Our retail agglomerations represent local commerce areas with shopping amenities and are assigned to a hierarchical classification ranking from the largest Regional Centres, Major Town Centres and Town Centres, down to Small Local Centres and Retail Parks. The classification into one of eleven hierarchies is based on a combination of relative rank in the local area and absolute size of retail units within the area. These retail agglomeration boundaries, hierarchical classification and lookups form an open-source spatial data product available for wide use and research implementation.
城镇中心和主要商业街通常构成英国城镇的社会和商业核心，但对于什么是城镇中心或主要商业街并没有统一的定义。在这项研究中，使用英格兰、威尔士、苏格兰和北爱尔兰的开源数据生成了零售集聚区的空间划定。这些实体零售区域的范围和边界是根据单个零售单位在空间上的密度和连接模式确定的。在零售点的空间聚类上叠加一个高分辨率的六边形网格，并使用基于网络的算法来识别相互排斥的地段。然后根据一系列启发式规则对集聚体进行修剪和微调。我们的零售集聚区代表具有购物设施的地方商业区域，并根据从最大的区域中心、主要城镇中心和城镇中心到小型地方中心和零售公园的层级分类进行分配。这种分类是基于在当地的相对排名和该地区内零售单位的绝对规模的组合。这些零售集聚区边界、层级分类和查询形成了一个开源的空间数据产品，可供广泛使用和研究实施。
