TRAVEL-ACTIVITY BASED RESEARCH FRAME OF URBAN SPATIAL STRUCTURE

Along with the humanistic and post-modernistic trend of thought, Western human geography has paid much attention to substantial issues about human being as well as its society. Social factors such as culture, institute, psychology, rather than those related to physical and economic environment, are gradually becoming the main focus of researches on human geographic phenomenon. Accordingly, studies of space have turned their perspectives from physical to social and behavioral space. Meanwhile, the study object has also emphasized much more on social significance of improving daily life instead of economic growth. Therein, travel-activity behaviors as well as activity system, which provide a new approach to life, began to draw more and more research interest in related fields of study.Travel-activity based research traces back to Chapin's activity It refers to residents' daily activities, such as commuting, shopping etc., spaces where these take place constitutes so-called urban travel-activity space system. Such concepts comprise activities and their relationships, thus help to not only understand mutuality of different parts in the city, but also make sound planning of facilities to improve life. Especially, this approach has contributed much to the development of transportation. Travel is regarded as the derived demand of activity. Besides, transportation problems can be addressed from both macro space and micro individual behavior and from both time and space dimensions.This paper tries to propose a research framework of space based on travel-activity. In the new framework, the interaction between travel-activity behavior and space is the research focus. Studies of space stress on institutional analysis of physical and functional space, while studies of residents' behavior draw more on choice behavior in the socio-economic context. Such research tries to derive ideal behavior and space from realistic ones by understanding their connection mechanism, and also to make clear the rule of space change on the reflection on individual and household level. To implement this very framework, multiple disciplines as well as different methods and technologies are needed.