Introduction

Urbanization and the continued growth of cities, both demographically and spatially, are topics of research studied across a range of disciplines in the urban millennium — a time in history when the majority of people live in cities. However, scholarly research has focused little attention on secondary cities, despite being the most rapidly growing cities in many low-and middle-income countries. Secondary cities, defined by their function rather than population size, are vital nodes for regional commerce and services. As these cities have historically been understudied, they lack geospatial data and the associated analyses important for local planners to understand how to meet current needs and plan for future growth. With this research, openly available geospatial data are evaluated, including both global (i.e., population distribution), local (i.e., municipal data), and data for four service categories (i.e., education, social, health, and food services). This research presents techniques to provide baseline understanding of data needs and accessibility of services in secondary cities with limited geospatial data and expertise.

Case description

We examine two secondary cities, Pokhara, Nepal, and Douala, Cameroon. These cities are experiencing unplanned growth, development, and exposure to conditions that contribute to intra-urban inequalities. This research takes a spatial approach—coupling locally-created data sources (i.e., municipality data, field-collected, and non-governmental organizations’ data) with global databases (i.e., world population and satellite images) to demonstrate how spatial data can be integrated and analyzed to enrich our limited understanding of secondary cities and the needs of resident populations. Four categories of services are evaluated and the distance to services from populated areas is calculated.

Discussion and evaluation

This research suggests that the distribution of services in both cities does not align with high-need, densely populated areas for certain services, a result of unplanned urban growth. Conversely, populations in areas far from the city center must travel relatively far distances to reach services, indicating lower levels of accessibility.

Conclusion

The results of this research serve to identify mapping needs and service accessibility. Projects focusing on geospatial data creation provide information needed for local populations to assess their community and the network of services offered. Additionally, local-decision makers can seek policy options to address unmet needs for community improvements and inequality reduction.

中文翻译：

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需求网络：二级城市的地理空间分析

介绍

城市化和城市的人口和空间的持续增长，是城市千年中跨学科研究的研究主题，这是历史上大多数人居住在城市的时期。然而，尽管是许多低收入和中等收入国家中发展最快的城市，但学术研究很少将注意力集中在二级城市上。根据城市的功能而非人口规模来定义的二级城市，是区域商业和服务业的重要节点。由于对这些城市的历史研究不足，因此它们缺乏地理空间数据和相关分析，这对于地方规划者了解如何满足当前需求和规划未来增长非常重要。通过这项研究，评估了公开可用的地理空间数据，包括全球（即人口分布），局部（即 例如市政数据）和四个服务类别（即教育，社会，卫生和食品服务）的数据。这项研究提出的技术可提供对地理空间数据和专业知识有限的二级城市的数据需求和服务可及性的基线理解。

案例说明

我们考察了尼泊尔的博卡拉和喀麦隆的杜阿拉两个二级城市。这些城市正在经历计划外的增长，发展，并面临导致城市内部不平等的条件。这项研究采用空间方法-将本地创建的数据源（例如，市政数据，实地收集的数据和非政府组织的数据）与全球数据库（例如，世界人口和卫星图像）相结合，以展示如何利用空间数据进行整合和分析，以丰富我们对二级城市和居民需求的有限了解。评估了四类服务，并计算了与人口稠密地区之间的服务距离。

讨论与评估

这项研究表明，由于计划外的城市发展，两个城市的服务分配与某些服务的高需求，人口稠密地区不符。相反，远离市中心的地区的人们必须走很远的距离才能获得服务，这表明可及性较低。

结论

这项研究的结果有助于确定映射需求和服务可访问性。专注于地理空间数据创建的项目为当地居民提供了评估其社区和所提供服务网络所需的信息。此外，地方决策者可以寻求政策选择，以满足社区改善和减少不平等现象的未满足需求。