Characterizing Urban Youth Based on Express Delivery Data

Abstract

The urban youth has emerged as a new concept in recent years, which reflects the degree of rejuvenation of a city. The fine-grained urban youth characterization has the potential value of multi-industry development orientation and business configuration optimization. However, there is no formal definition and structured characterizing system for urban youth between the academic field and the business field. In addition, the express delivery industry has ushered in explosive growth driven by e-commerce. The scale and value of express delivery data increase accordingly. This paper attempts to characterize the urban youth based express delivery data. Along this line, we first propose a concept of Youth Index (YI) to quantify the urban youth. Then, we construct the Youth Index Assessment Model (YIAM) to calculate urban YI, where a Youth Index Dictionary (YID) is constructed based on relevant sociological studies as an auxiliary tool. Furthermore, the YI of urban areas is presented visually combined with a road network-based urban functional area division strategy, which characterizes a fine-grained urban YI. Finally, experiments on Xi’an (a Chinese provincial city) show that urban youth can be characterized excellently according to the comparison with the actual situation of the experimental samples.