Impact of Built Environment on Urban Vitality in Shrinking Cities: Moderating Effect of Housing Vacancy

Urban vitality is one of the key indicators of sustainable urban development and an important factor for shrinking cities to achieve internal optimization. The relationship between the built environment and urban vitality has been extensively discussed. However, the moderating effect of housing vacancy on the built environment’s effect on urban vitality in shrinking cities has not been explored in detail. This paper selected Yichun District in Yichun City of Heilongjiang Province, a typical shrinking city in Northeast China, as the study area, focusing on the effect of the built environment on urban vitality in shrinking cities based on residential and commercial electricity consumption data for 2013 and 2018. Moreover, this study also explored the moderating mechanisms of residential and commercial housing vacancies on the built environment’s effect on urban vitality. The results demonstrate that the spatial pattern of urban vitality in the Yichun District is ‘high in the center and low in the periphery’. Population density, building age, road density, and catering facilities are recognized as the main built environment factors affecting the vitality of shrinking cities. Residential and commercial housing vacancies have a significant moderating effect on the built environment’s effect on urban vitality. Residential housing vacancies enhance the positive effect of road density and the negative effect of greening rate. In addition, commercial housing vacancies suppress the positive effect of building density and enhance the positive effect of accessibility to urban service facilities. The study indicates that built environment factors exhibit heterogeneous effects on vitality in the context of urban shrinkage, as moderated by housing vacancies. Targeted regulation of built environment factors is of practical significance in realizing the internal development and vitality enhancement of shrinking cities.