PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2022, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (8): 1428-1439.doi: 10.18306/dlkxjz.2022.08.007

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Urban-suburban heterogeneity of mobile office development in recent years: Based on mobile office app usage big data of China Unicom users in Wuhan in 2019 and 2021

NIU Qiang(), ZHANG Hao, WU Lei, ZOU Wenjun   

  1. School of Urban Design, Wuhan University, Research Center for Hubei Habitat Environmental Engineering & Technology, Wuhan 430072, China
  • Received:2022-01-06 Revised:2022-05-26 Online:2022-08-28 Published:2022-10-25
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(51778503)

Abstract:

Using mobile office is a new production and office activity in the information era. The development of mobile office is of great value to the digital transformation of office activities in big cities, the improvement of suburban office location, and the optimization and reorganization of urban and suburban office location. Based on the big data of mobile office app usage by users of China Unicom and enterprises in the urban and suburban areas of Wuhan City in 2019 and 2021, this research used conventional mathematical statistics, Getis-Ord Gi*, and hierarchical spatial clustering, as well as geographical detectors to explore the heterogeneity characteristics and trend of change of mobile office in Wuhan. The results show that: 1) From the perspective of the proportion of mobile office workers and average using duration, the suburbs are very close to the urban area, and the growth rate of mobile office usage in the suburbs is higher than that of the urban area, reflecting the flat development trend of mobile office. 2) From the perspective of spatial differentiation, the high value areas of the proportion of mobile office workers and mobile office average using duration in the suburban metro-cities are far more than those in the urban area. And in the surburban area, far more away from the urban area, the higher the most-value is, so is the degree of local agglomeration, indicating that mobile office has a good complementary effect on suburban office location. 3) From the point of view of industry type and size, the mobile office development level of producer and consumer services is higher in the urban area, while the mobile office development level of the information technology and manufacturing industry is higher in the suburban areas. In the urban area, the development level of mobile office is higher in the large-scale agglomeration centers with more enterprises, while in the suburban metro-cities, the development level of mobile office is higher in the small-scale agglomeration centers with fewer enterprises. This research contributes to clarify the spatial distribution characteristics of cities' mobile office activities in the mobile-information era, explore the mobile office development pattern of different industries, and optimize and reorganize the suburban office location. The method based on mobile office app usage using big data to analyze cities' mobile office activities also provides a new reference for probing city online activities.

Key words: mobile office, urban-suburban heterogeneity, office location, mobile apps, big data, Wuhan City