UMS’s latest research, published in Sustainable Cities and Society (JCR Q1, IF 12.0), reveals that urban green space patterns look radically different depending on whether they are measured from the aerial perspective or from the street-level perspective, especially under rapid urban expansion.
The paper, “Understanding multi-perspective urban green space patterns under urban expansion: Evidence from Guangzhou,” was authored by Qiming Liu, Shaoqing Dai, Guosheng Yang, and Cai Wu. It appears in Sustainable Cities and Society and is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2026.107534.
We are excited to share the latest publication from the Urban Morphology Studio. Using high-resolution satellite imagery, nearly 250,000 street-view sampling points aggregating nearly 990,000 directional images, and multi-source urban morphological data from Guangzhou, the study reframes how computational urban analytics should assess urban green space by moving from single-perspective evaluation to multi-perspective integration.
The study also shows that aerial greenness and street-level greenness are not interchangeable. Only by combining both can we truly understand how urban expansion reshapes the quantity, quality, and equity of green space.
This work was conducted by researchers affiliated with the Urban Governance and Design Thrust at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), the School of Public Administration and Policy at Renmin University of China, and the School of Resource and Environmental Sciences at Wuhan University.