Spatial Pattern and Mechanism of the Life Service Industry in Polycentric Cities: Experience from Wuhan, China

The life service industry is the basic industry to increase employment and to meet people's needs. Therefore, it is important to reveal its spatial pattern and mechanism. In this paper, we apply the methodologies of kernel density analysis, entropy index, and standard deviational ellipse (SDE) to the point of interest data to explore the spatial distribution of the life service industry in Wuhan, a representative polycentric city in China. We focus on the following seven types of the life service industry: catering, scenic leisure, shopping, scientific-educational, transportation, sports, and healthcare. Our results show that (1) all seven types of the life service industry display a distribution of coexistence of single and multiple centers. (2) The spatial distribution of the seven types of the life service industry in Wuhan shows a pattern of a high degree of mixed use in the central urban area but a low degree in the peripheral urban area. (3) The centers of the SDE are close to one another and are distributed in Wuchang and Jianghan. (4) Except for transportation, the other six types of the life service industry show a trend of development toward the southeast. Our study provides key information for the spatial planning of the life service industry in polycentric cities.